For this #CYO4 I listened to an episode of The Dirt Podcast, "Spilling the Antiqui-tea: Artifact Trafficking and the Antiquities Black Market," an interesting dive into the history and current state of looting and black markets.

Anna and Amber begin by highlighting the problem - quoting a NatGeo article, "tomb raiders are strip-mining our past." There are multiple concerns here.
1) the actual cultural theft (remember our discussions on repatriation)
2) funding of terrorist groups doing the looting

3) loss of provenance + provenience
Obviously 1 and 2 are terrible, but archaeologically, we really have to deal with the consequences of 3.
With large quantities of objects being looted and sold, we lose a huge amount of context.

The question is: should we ignore this large body of evidence because it lacks context, or somehow attempt to synthesize it despite its significant limitations?
Both Amber and Anna say no - "it's art, not archaeology." What are your thoughts?

So how did this happen? Well let's look at safeguards to prevent illegal sales of antiquities (specifically in the US).
1935 - Historic Sites Act creates National Historic Register and provisions for protecting historic sites
But it wasn't until 40 years later, in 1974,

that the Architectural and Historical Preservation Act actually required federal agencies to be responsible for their own damage to these sites. Yikes? For 40 years later, probably.
In 1970 the UNESCO convention against illicit trafficking sets forth a few guidelines.

1) Preventative measures - education, monitoring trade, etc
2) Restitution + repatriation - make sure stolen goods are returned! (unless stolen after 1970)
3) International cooperation framework - how to cooperate to prevent looting + trafficking

We've seen this before, in our discussions of the Elgin marbles! They were all removed before this 1970 Convention, which complicates the issue and eliminates the legal requirements for repatriation.

But in many ways this convention document is more about the spirit of international cooperation than the nitty gritty of the law - making the argument that the marbles shouldn't be returned bc of this law a bit spurious. This clip communicats that well

Switching back to the US - in 1987 the Abandoned Shipwreck Act makes most shipwrecks federal property and therefore protects them, and the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act is really the last such protective act for archaeological/historical sites.

Importantly, all these acts were passed well before the internet was really a thing. That means that most of the legislative protections that exist in the US (and in the world) have not adapted to the new world of illegal looting and trafficking.

And from a lot of examples given in the podcast, it's clear that such measures are necessary given the prevalence of illegal sales online. ISIS is a big player and has drawn a lot of media attention to looting and illegal trafficking, and many of these artifacts end up online.

The proceeds from these sales not only fund terrorism but also make laundering money easier!
It's estimated that about 80% of artifacts sold online have no legal provenance - making most likely looted or fake. These aren't sold through sketchy dark web sites either!

The largest marketplaces are familiar, Facebook, Amazon, Ebay, and WhatsApp. Their policies are confined to "report it and we'll take it down," but this rarely happens, since buyers aren't reporting objects without provenance.

For one of the most horrifying examples, see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/opinion/hobby-lobby-iraq-artifacts.html, describing how Hobby Lobby bought 40k looted artifacts, falsely labelling the packages as "handmade clay tiles." WTF??

The consequences are VERY mild. They forfeited stolen artifacts they "accidentally" fraudulently imported and paid a $3M fine. Funding terrorism, committing international fraud, and receiving stolen property might require a prison sentence. But clearly that isn't the case.

It's hard to suppress the supply of these artifacts - take getting rid of ISIS, for instance, so what needs to be focused on is diminishing demand. This is one of the goals of the 1970 UNESCO document - raising awareness and preventing this trafficking from occuring.

We need to educate the Steve Greens and Hobby Lobbies of the world as to how culturally destructive (and terrorist-fundy) buying these artifacts is. No, it's not just a clay tablet, it's destroying our collective archaeological record and robbing culture.

While this seems bleak, as a whole it's getting better! We're taking this class, @FlintDibble and others are bringing straight facts to social media, and more online marketplaces will clamp down as unflattering stories surface in the NYT and WSJ (see podcast link for full list).