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…
Dal sole24ore, Dicember 4, 2017, scritto da R. Galullo e A. Mincuzzi. Otto minuti di cammino separano la costruzione di vetro e acciaio del quartier generale di Ubs dal più inaccessibile museo della terra. Carouge, nella parte sudoccidentale di Ginevra, è un luogo di misteri. Il palazzo dell’Ubs ospitava fino a qualche anno fa la…
As recently discovered by Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis, a forensic archaeologist and Affiliated Researcher in the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Glasgow, Lot no. 292, from the forthcoming auction of Millon, on Friday, 8th of December, in Paris, at Hotel Drouot, has quiet some doubtful origin. According to the Millon…
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”…
The ARCA blog obtained the permission of London journalist Howard Swains to republish his Medium article, London’s Loot: The Legacy of Robin Symes, in its entirety. Swains is a journalist and feature writer with experience across print and digital titles, including The Times, the Guardian, Independent, Newsweek, the Sunday Times Magazine and CNN. The article discusses in detail…
Sotheby’s offers the upper part of a Greek marble funerary stele on his next auction in London, on June 12, 2017 (lot 8) (see picture on the right). The funerary stele derives clearly from the confiscated Gianfranco Becchina archive according to Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis, a forensic archaeologist and Affiliated Researcher in the Scottish Centre for…
A recently published article by Nick Romeo at the National Geographic’s webpage describes the work of Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis who detects regularly illicit objects in museum’s collections and auction houses. The article is cited in the following. A few years ago, Christos Tsirogiannis was looking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s online collection when he…
Syria and Iraq: Culture at Risk. Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Goods – 31/03/2017, Stockholm (Sweden) In the footsteps of war and unrest, antiquities are being looted from ancient sites and museums. These objects are sold illegally on a growing international market. This trade is a strong threat to proper documentation of our cultural heritage and…
Eight crates containing 33 archaeological artifacts and 600 coins, including some ancient masterpieces dating to the 12th and 13th centuries B.C., arrived at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens from Munich end of March 2017. The remarkable finds, most in very good condition, included amphorae, bird-shaped vases, a pottery statue of a chariot driver and…
Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis identified recently another antiquity likely of illicit origin at the Royal-Athena Galleries, New York, on February 17, 2017. Royal-Athena Galleries is the same New York gallery recently in the news about an illicitly trafficked sarcophagus fragment. The provenance and sales details listed for the amphora recently seized was stated on the gallery’s…
EAA-Committee on the Illicit Trade in Cultural Material 