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Organized Temple Looting and International Trafficking

Fri, Nov 21, 8:00 to 9:20am, Marriott, Salon 6, Lower B2 Level

Abstract

Empirical studies of the international market in looted antiquities have tended to focus either on the source end, through interviews with looters, or the market end, through interviews with dealers, museums and collectors. Trafficking, in the sense of the movement of illicit artifacts across borders from source to market, has until now been more or less an empirical black hole. This paper presents our empirical studies of trafficking networks that deal in statues and parts of temples, using case study data gathered in South East Asia and South America using a variety of methods. The data begin to answer many of the pressing but unresolved questions in academic studies of antiquities trafficking, such as whether organized crime is involved (yes), and how many stages (surprisingly few) there are in this type of trafficking network between looting at source and the placing of objects for public sale in internationally respected venues, which is effectively a type of criminal infiltration of an open and presumed legitimate market. Links between trafficking in temple statuary and other types of trafficking in ‘cultural collectibles’ will be considered.

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