Illicit Antiquities: The Theft of Culture and the Extinction of Archaeology
ISBN: 9780203165461
Platform/Publisher: Taylor & Francis / Routledge
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Humanities; Development Studies Environment Social Work Urban Studies; Archaeology; Cultural Studies; Cultural Heritage;

The exploitation of archaeological sites for commercial gain is a serious problem worldwide. In peace and during wartime archaeological sites and cultural institutions, both on land and underwater, are attacked and their contents robbed for sale on an international 'antiquities' market. Objects are excavated without record, smuggled across borders and sold for exorbitant prices in the salesrooms of Europe and North America. In some countries this looting has now reached such a scale as to threaten the very survival of their archaeological and cultural heritage.
This volume highlights the deleterious effects of the trade on cultural heritage, but in particular it focuses upon questions of legal and local responses: How can people become involved in the preservation of their past and what, in economic terms, are the costs and benefits? Are international conventions or export restrictions effective in diminishing the volume of the trade and the scale of its associated destruction?

Neil Brodie is an Archaeologist who since 1988 has been Coordinator of the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge.
Kathryn Walker Tubb is an Archaeological Conservator and Lecturer at the Institue of Archaeology, University College London. She has co-organized a major international conference entitled 'Conservation and the AntiquitiesTrade' in 1993 for the UK Institute for Conservation Archaeology Section.

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