Finally, the Portable Antiquities of the Netherlands (PAN) is online. All started with a project of Prof. dr. N.G.A.M. Roymans, University of Amsterdam. PAN is similar to the English and Welsh PAS, the Danish DIME, and the Flemish MEDEA, and all are part of the North Sea Area Finds Recording Group, which registers archaeological artefacts. The…
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…
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…
Europol has joined forces with law enforcement authorities from 18 countries, INTERPOL, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the World Customs Organization (WCO) to tackle the theft and illicit trafficking of cultural goods. Operation Pandora, as EUROPOL just noticed in a press release on January 23, 2016, was successfully led by…
La Repubblica.it and other journals informs today, January 18, 2017 that 12 persons were arrested since they were caught to be involved in plundering archaeological sites in Crotone, Calabria (Southern Italy) since years and selling their finds on the black market. The group of tombaroli was lead by numismatic prof. P. G. Attianese. With him arrested was…
On 15-16 June 2017, the Digital Archaeology Research Group and the Centre for Global Heritage and Development at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University will jointly host the 2017 annual meeting of the Centre for Digital Heritage (CDH). The theme of the CDH 2017 meeting will be Heritage under Threat. Armed conflicts are currently threatening…
A recent article from the German TV-Channel ‘Das Erste’ by Andreas Wolter (in German) discusses the unsecure provenance of a Poseidon statuette recently sold at Gorny & Mosch in Munich (though the auction house is not mentioned by name). The auction house names as provenance only ‘Ex collection A.T., Munich, since 1985’. But the statue…
Our committee is now also officially contributing to the ICOM International Observatory on Illicit Traffic in Cultural Goods! But why? Every day, somewhere in the world, an object is either stolen or looted in order to be illegally sold on the market. Illicit trafficking in works of art and cultural property has become a serious…
The SAA organises online seminars. One of special interest for us is the one on November 10, 2016, on Working With Metal Detectorists: Citizen Science at historic Montpelier and Engaging a New Constituency. The seminar will be held by Matthew Reeves, the Director of Archaeology at James Madison’s Montpelier. The goals of this one hour,…
The webpage archaeologyinbulgaria.com gives a very good overview on recent cases of illegal excavations, trafficking of cultural objects, and different strategies against it. If you want to be updated, just subscribe to their blog via email. Reading that roughly 500,000 people in Bulgaria are dealing with treasure hunting and thus destroying the country’s archaeological, historical,…
EAA-Community on the Illicit Trade in Cultural Material 