Why should we care?

The looting crisis

Illicit antiquities trade

Museum acquisitions

Plunder is a crime

What can we do?

Treaties & legislation

Bilateral agreements

Success stories

Every day, looting and plundering of priceless cultural treasures continues all over the world. The problem is most acute in Africa, Southeast Asia, China, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Himalaya region.

The Red List recently compiled by The International Council of Museums (ICOM) indicates widespread damage to archaeological sites throughout Nigeria, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Ghana, and Ivory Coast, as well as Colombia, Peru, and Mexico.

For decades, rampant looting has similarly devastated pre-Columbian sites in Guatemala, Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Ecuador, and Bolivia.

The underground antiquities trade prospers in such places, because many third-world countries are rich in undiscovered cultural treasure. Local residents are often tempted to trade their heritage for quick income that represents a tiny percentage of the artifacts’ true value.

In China, for example, experts estimate that the looting of cultural treasures during the past 20 years has surpassed the destruction that occurred during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976. Recently, the Washington Post reported that Buddhist statues stolen directly from Beijing’s Forbidden Palace had been sold in October 2002 at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong.

Any economic benefit that communities derive from looting is grossly exaggerated—and tiny compared to the benefit those communities would derive from keeping the artifacts in situ. According to “Stealing History: The Illicit Trade in Cultural Material”—a report from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research—looting undermines the economic base of a community just as surely as it depletes its history.

On the other hand, legitimate archaeology provides regular economic support for local communities—by employing local residents for work crews, supporting local businesses, generating work for regional departments of antiquities research, and preserving objects for museum display that tourists will travel great distances to see. Disrupting legitimate excavations exacerbates the already dire economic conditions of the population. Looting only benefits the middlemen and dealers, who typically pocket 95% to 99% of the final price of a looted artifact.

Looting of archaeological sites is not confined to the developing world. There are serious threats to the integrity of archaeological sites all over the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. According to a 1988 Congressional report on vandalism and looting in the Four Corners region of the United States (where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado intersect), up to 90% of known Native American archaeological sites in the area are believed to have been vandalized. (See The Trade and Environment Database Case Studies, American University, Case number: 216.)