1. First of all, looting as a practice has existed for thousands of years and will likely exist for several thousand more. In my opinion, the Middle East is too unstable to spend the funds to stop looting and many civilians in war torn and impoverished areas recognize artifacts as valuable resources that can be sold to feed their families. Popular looted goods on the ever-expanding antiquities market include cylinder seals, coinage, and ceramics. The question then becomes how to regulate the sale of antiquities to make sure that looted goods, stolen from hundreds of known sites throughout the Middle East without any sort of archaeological documentation, do not enter the market. I believe a two-pronged approach is necessary to address this …show more content…
The first group, violent looting “mafias,” work in elaborate teams and often have vast insider knowledge of their targeted site. These groups are armed not only with guns but also with expensive land-moving machinery to search for precious antiquities (Ikram 2013, p. 368). While these groups certainly need to be stopped, in my opinion it will be a long time before this can happen and efforts must be directed elsewhere to curb the problem of looting. Even if paid guards are present protecting a site, as we saw from the tragic events at Deir el-Bersha where two guards were recently killed organized violent looters will go to drastic measures to take over a site for its …show more content…
Although this task will be difficult considering how easily a fake certificate of authenticity can be created, it is certainly worth the effort and funds that will go into it. More funding is needed to pay the salaries of those trained to hunt out illegally listed antiquities online. A legal antiquities market can work but it must not be a free-for-all like some online auction sites where the item for sale is only briefly described and photographed. Online item descriptions need to contain information about where an item comes from, the dates of the excavation it was pulled from, along with the contact information of the seller and the team which excavated a site. Also, any dealer that shows a hint of corruption or association with terror groups like ISIS needs to be restricted from selling antiquities. We need to take a strong stand on the sale of antiquities now in order to create a culture where past civilizations are looked at as something we can all learn from instead of something that can be profited
Other countries that are taking these artifacts that aren’t even theirs are way out of line. In the third
St. Clair, William. “The Elgin Marbles: Questions of stewardship and accountability,” International Journal of Cultural Property Volume 8 Issue 2 (1999): 391-521.
However, I feel this act forces archeologists to halt further investigations and possibly damages lost records of history. Returning these artifacts and bones prevents them from being preserved a...
"Should Britain Return the Elgin Marbles?" The Week UK. N.p., 14 Feb. 2009. Web. 13 Feb.
For years on end, countries have been fighting with big museums from other countries for ancient artifacts that belong to the original countries. The argument of whether or not the museums should be able to keep them still remains. It is the right of the country to have their own artifacts. It is imperative for countries to be able showcase their historical artifacts, therefor museums should return them to their rightful owners.
Personally, I believe that the overwhelming number of historical cases of theft conducted by the poor can be attributed to a whole host of potential motivations. Firstly, the motivation to survive, many of those who were distinguishable as impoverished were often unable to live subsistent. Nevertheless theft was perceived and punishable in a very serious manner. However, the economic climate of the 18th and 19th century was begin to boom as a result of industrialization. The overwhelming pressure to cater to the emerging notion of consumerism promoted further potential for crime to arise, because the poor would often engage in pickpocketing or begging, whereas women often engaged in shoplifting to acquire goods for her family to outwardly
In “Whose Culture Is It, Anyway? ”, Kwame Anthony Appiah begins by pointing out that some of the museums of the world, particularly in the West, have large collections of artefacts and objects which were robbed from developing and poor countries. He then raises a question: who owns these cultural patrimony and properties? Our first answer may be that since they make up the cultural heritage of a people, they belong to the people and culture from whom they were taken. Appiah has doubt about this and argues that if some cultural artefacts are potentially valuable to all human beings, they should belong to all of humanity. He thinks that when they make contribution to world culture, they should be protected by being made available to those who would benefit from experiencing them and put into trusteeship of humanity.
Now, about 13 years after the statues were destroyed, the world is at conflict, as to whether they should leave the remains of the statues in the valley as they are, or use the remains to rebuild the statues, or try and make copies of them. Opinions vary and are split, which makes the decision even a harder one. The countries that donate the most for these statues, and would have to finance any rebuilding, think the statues should be left as they are, at least for now. While on the other hand, the Afghani government wants at least one of the two destroyed statues rebuilt. Countries that would be funding this process fear that because the remains are so little, the process would be more of a reproduction, rather than a rebuilding. Yet the Afghani government still insists, believing it would be an accomplishment seen as a symbolic victory over the Taliban. Political ideology and restoration policies are at the heart of the conflict. (http://buddhism.alltop.com/)
Recently the major countries that were part of WWII are starting to try and push for museums to send back the stolen art to their rightful owners. With the millions of pieces that were stolen during WWII the number of pieces that have not been returned to its heirs is well over 100,000 pieces of art and most of them are currently missing.("Nazi Plunder," n.d.) To help return stolen art, museums search through all of their art to check if any of it was stolen during WWII. Currently though the progress has stopped for returning stolen artwork back to its rightful heirs, because the museums are refusing to give back some of the more major pieces of art. Also the lack of knowing who the art truly belongs to is also slowing down the
Organized crime is a collective result of the commitment, knowledge, and actions of three components: (1) Criminal groups, who are core persons tied by racial, linguistic, ethnic or other bonds; (2) Protectors, who are persons who protect the group’s interests; and (3) Specialist support, which are persons who knowingly render services on an side-job basis to enhance the group’s interests. In order to thrive, an organized crime group needs many different elements. First, it needs an ensured continuity of members, clients, supporters, funds, etc. Additionally, it needs structure, criminality, violence, memberships based on common grounds, and a willingness to corrupt a power and profit goal. Generally, mafia organized crime groups disguise themselves behind the ownership of a legitimate business to avoid questioning from the Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) regarding any financial sources. The ille...
Kauffman, Joshua. “Putting the Legal Squeeze on Stolen Art” Art Business News 36. Wilson, Claire. “Documenting Museum Forgeries” Art and antiques (2001):
What historians can understand from a work of art’s provenance is where and when that piece is from. The acceptance of forged works of art changes what art historians thought about the provenance of several works of art to be incorrect. In the chapter, Dr. Serros recalls a bronze head that was once present in the Getty Museum that was originally thought to be from the Hellenistic age, but proved to have features similar to a work in a museum in Italy. A second fake was purchased by the Getty Museum in 1984. The museums mentioned previously are also worth noting for the forgeries detected by John Pope-Hennessey. The appearance of so many fakes in museums raises the question of how it was possible that they were accepted without detection of their
Is ‘Steal Art Thief’ happening because of their organizational structure or organizational culture? And how Zara evade the law and overcome this situation when customers found out parts of their products are
The process of the discovery of these artifacts were poor. The archeologists who found the arts were educated and wealthy white European men who just wanted to “try it”. They had no experience or skill at doing this. They put all of the artifacts into jeopardy. Jeopardizing the very history that the creators tried so hard to preserve and show in their
British police concludes that criminal organisations are ready to use extreme actions in order to their hands on the target of robbery. They cover all places where valuable pieces can be located-“museums, libraries, archives and private collections”[2] in order to keep their stockpiles. Statistics says that 60000 items of art were stolen since 1991, just from UK. Further saying, not only “light items” take the interest of underworld, like paintings and statues, th...