By Alessandro Vanzetti. During the night between September 6th and 7th 2017, the mostly wooden structure protecting the Late Roman Villa at Faragola, Commune of Ascoli Satriano, province of Foggia, Apulia, Italy (41°13′41.76″ N, 15°33′35.47″ E) was destroyed by fire. The devastation of the covering structure is total, and the technicians of the Italian Cultural…
Organised by Professor Duncan Chappell, Dr Saskia Hufnagel, and Ms Marissa Marjos, this is the third of three Art Crime focused workshops, the first two of which were in London. This workshop specifically focuses on the looting, plunder, and destruction of heritage. I’ll be giving a regional case study: trafficking of antiquities in and out…
This article was published in US today on August 16, 2017. The arrest of five antiquities dealers in Jerusalem, who allegedly helped Hobby Lobby purchase illegally obtained ancient artifacts has shone a spotlight on the sale of antiquities in Israel and revived questions about the ethics of the trade in general. Five Jerusalem-based Palestinian dealers were…
The following article was copied from theconversation.com and written by Alice Stevenson, UCL; it was published July 13, 2017. Illicit antiquities are once again in the headlines. US retailer Hobby Lobby was recently fined US$3m (£2.3m) for illegally acquiring antiquities that were most likely looted from Iraq. Collectors and museums are therefore being reminded to undertake…
In the fall of 2016, Co-Director and cinematographer Trevor Wallace travelled with the archaeologist Gino Caspari to far Western China. They located over 100 graves in the militarized border zones near Russia and Kazakhstan. They followed the trail of stolen grave goods, escaped the military border guards, and spent time in traditional Kazakh villages wrestling…
‘We should give back art looted by the Nazis’, so a recent article by J. Miller, BBC, August 22, 2018, who is discussing the restitution of art looted by the Nazis in the German company Dr. Oetker‘s. The company now tries to find the original owners of the items of their vaste collection in order…
We would like to share with you the email of our colleagues in Bergen, Norway, head of department Asbjørn Engevik and Prof. Knut Andreas Bergsvik, informing about a burglary at the University Museum of Bergen: It is with deep regret that we have to inform you that there has been a burglary at the University…
By Neil Brodie, Policy Brief No. 3, July 2017, from The Antiquities Coalition. Illicit antiquities, some pilfered from war zones where jihadist groups operate, are increasingly finding their way online where they are being snapped up by unknowing buyers and further driving the rampant plunder of archaeological sites. These internet sales are spurring a vicious…
For decades it was proudly displayed in the Greco-Roman galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a 2,300-year-old, vividly painted vase that depicts Dionysus, god of the grape harvest, riding in a cart pulled by a satyr. Today it sits in an evidence room at the district attorney’s office in Manhattan after prosecutors quietly seized…
A leading antiquities dealer, H. Aboutaam, sued The Wall Street Journal on Monday (you can read the lawsuit here), asserting he had been damaged by an article in May that said he was under investigation for possibly trafficking in artifacts looted by ISIS. In the libel suit, the dealer, Hicham Aboutaam, said he has never…
EAA-Community on the Illicit Trade in Cultural Material 