By John Phillips (Rome) and Justin Huggler (Berlin) for the Telegraph, July 4, 2018. Police have arrested an international ring of traffickers alleged to have smuggled thousands of stolen Sicilian archaeological treasures worth more than £30 million to collectors and auction houses across Europe. A British art dealer and 20 Italians have been arrested, along…
At the annual conference of the EAA in Barcelona, 5-8 September 2018, our committee organises a session on: CULTURAL PROPERTY: FROM LOOTING AND ILLEGAL TRADE TO RESTITUTION Theme: Archaeology and the European Year of Cultural Heritage (Session #763) Author: Dr Mödlinger, Marianne (France) – Université Bordeaux Montaigne Organisors: Dr Kairiss, Andris (Latvia) – Latvian Academy…
From Straits Times, November 30, 2017. A Chinese court has handed a death sentence to a “master” tomb raider from northern China who made a 30-year career out of robbing historical burial sites. A native of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, 55-year-old Yao Yuzhong was found guilty of “digging ancient cultural sites and ancient graves”…
From The Guardian, November 22, 2017. A multimillion-dollar trade in fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls fuelled by a surge in interest from wealthy evangelicals in the US includes a significant number of suspected forgeries, two prominent experts have said. On scholar said the problem was so serious that up to 90% of the 75…
A flood of potentially stolen art objects from the Middle East is showing up on Amazon, eBay, Facebook and WhatsApp, often ensnaring unsuspecting buyers. By Georgi Kantchev, Nov. 1, 2017 Earlier this year, Stephennie Mulder was in her office at the University of Texas at Austin when she received a Facebook message from Yemen with…
Planning to buy an ancient coin on eBay? Perhaps it would be wise to reconsider. Up to 80 percent of the antiquities for sale online are likely looted or fake, according to new research. By Julia Halperin, November 1, 2017 from artnet. The Wall Street Journal has conducted a thorough investigation into the surge in…
Programme The meeting will be held at ETH, Zürich, Switzerland on November 16-17, 2017. Eight presentation will introduce the problems around the antiquities and ilicite art trade. Round of short presentations by representatives of AMS laboratories; sharing experiance and practice in dating antiquites. Organiser, contact ETH Zürich (Hönggerberg) – Ion Beam Physics Otto-Stern-Weg 5, 8093…
A Swedish academic who bought a rare antique Italian manuscript online from a university student in Bologna has helped police uncover a trove of stolen artwork and books. When his online purchase arrived from Italy to Sweden, the perspicacious professor from Lund University noticed a small antique ink stamp from the “Royal Library of Turin”…
Trading in antiquities in Israel requires a license sanctioned by the Antiquities Authority (IAA). Currently, however, only a small number of dealers are only allowed to trade items that that came into private hands prior to the year 1978. Since that time, every antiquity discovered in Israel is property of the state and cannot be…
The University of Padoa, Italy, organises an international winter school on Anthropology of Forgery 13-17 February 2017. The schhol takes places at the University of Padoa, the Gallerie d’Italia in Vicenza, and the Palazzo Zuckermann, Padoa. You can find the program and further information here: program_winter-school_anthropology-of-forgery_2017
EAA-Committee on the Illicit Trade in Cultural Material 