As recently reported, an Etruscan vessel dating from 470 BC was seized at Royal Athena Galleries, New York. The vessel, which was valued at $ 250,000, was seized by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and will be now returned to Italy. It was already formally returned to the Italian consul general in New York, Francesco…
At this year’s annual conference of the European Association of Archaeologists in Maastricht, our Committee organises a Round Table on ‘Archaeology on sale: how to prevent official selling of illegally excavated objects?‘ You can find the abstract of our Round Table here. Archaeology on sale. We welcome any contribution to our session. If you’re interested,…
Carabinieri seized five archaeological objects dating to the 7th-3rd century BC which were in private possession in Tarquinia. The owner did not declare the possession of the objects to the soprintendenza. The objects are currently catalogued and their value estimated. The seizure of the objects is part of a bigger investigation on illegal excavation and…
Five arrests during a coin fair in Munich, Germany, on March 4-5, 2017: Four men tried to sell coins without certificates of provenance outside the fair. Criminal proceedings have been instituted against them. Inside the fair, a merchant from Denmark was not only selling coins but also spear heads and jewellery. The origin of these…
About 200 Etruscan, Apulian and Magna Graecia vases, small statues, ceramics and bronze archaeological finds illegally kept in the house of a former art dealer have been recovered by the Italian police in Cossato, northern Italy. The looted pieces, dating from the eighth to third centuries BC and with an estimated value of well over…
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…
One of the artifacts stolen from the Kocaeli Archaeology Museum in 2009 has been found at an auction in Germany. The Culture and Tourism Ministry reported theft of the Roman-era colour marble relief, which is valued at around 32,000 euros in the auction, to Interpol. Following the illegal excavations there, the Kocaeli Archaeology Museum initiated…
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…
As recently posted, the Royal-Athena Galleries, New York,had until recently a sarcophagus, which presents a battle between Greeks and Trojans (c. 200 A.D.), on sale. The gallery is owned by Dr. Jerome Eisenberg, New York, and has a more than doubtful history, since it is tighly connected with the Italian illicit antiquities dealer Gianfranco Becchina.…
Donna Yates, archaeologist in the criminology department of the University of Glasgow, starts a free online course: From fakes and fraud, to thefts and trafficking, art crime has turned archaeological sites in Iraq and Syria into “lunar landscapes”, decapitated Buddha sculptures in Cambodia and left empty frames on museum walls. So how do we protect…
EAA-Community on the Illicit Trade in Cultural Material 