A new agenda for U.S. cultural policy: Stopping the trade of looted artifacts
By Fiona Rose-Greenland
The global trade of looted antiquities not only endangers our cultural history, but also can fund terrorist organizations like the self-proclaimed Islamic State. It is an issue obscured by insufficient research. The truth is, we don’t know who is paying how much for stolen artifacts, or what share of the money is going to ISIS.
An important step for U.S. cultural policy is the Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act, which President Obama signed into law on Monday. The act imposes import restrictions on cultural materials that left Syria illegally after the start of the civil war, and urges the creation of an interagency authority to coordinate efforts to protect international cultural property threatened by conflict, political upheaval and natural disaster. The new law puts us on a closer footing with allied countries including Germany, which has already cracked down on the importation of blood antiquities from the Islamic State.
Now we are at a crossroads. We can make this an opportunity for a fundamental change in the way we approach the global antiquities trade. Or we can hope that the import ban works and then go back to business as usual.
Business as usual assigns blame primarily to the looters, ignoring the broader forces that drive the looting in the first place. Business as usual sees the antiquities trade as worthy of policy attention only when big money is involved.
On the other hand, a fundamental change in our approach to cultural resources promises to create enduring, positive effects far beyond the market. This involves understanding the rationale behind looting, supporting research that will lead to policy initiatives, and updating trade regulations to not only end the ISIS antiquities trade but also prevent similar cultural violence in the future.
First, we need to get a lot better at understanding who loots and why. The evidence points to several factors. Donna Yates, an archaeologist at Glasgow University who has studied illicit excavation in Bolivia, found that poverty, population shifts, political disenfranchisement, and organized crime are all factors in why people loot. It is too simplistic, however, to suggest that looters are all just trying to put food on the table. Morag Kersel, professor of anthropology at DePaul University, shows that looters in Jordan are motivated by cultural factors, too, including national identity and traditional practice. There is every reason to think that the looting situation is just as complicated in Syria and Iraq. Identifying the complexities with precision, as Yates and Kersel have done, is a big step toward policies and programs that can address the problem at the source.
Second, we need to support research that can generate badly needed insight into the specific conditions in which antiquities trafficking thrives. Right now our attempts to answer key questions about the trade are challenged by spotty data, lack of rigorous quantitative methodologies, and institutional barriers to specializing in looting studies (which is still a low-status niche field in most universities). If the United States government is serious about stopping the blood antiquities trade, it must direct resources to scholarly projects that can yield better data and, from there, more powerful policy tools.
Third, we need to take a hard look at the demand side of the trade. In the U.S., antiquities dealers operate within a framework of law, industry best-practices guidelines, and voluntary regulations. Several questions must be addressed in collaborative fashion: Is this framework effective? Do we need to replace the voluntary guidelines with legally binding regulations? One’s personal opinion on whether there should be a legal antiquities market is irrelevant. The trade is legal, and we need to ensure that resources are available to enforce existing laws and create a social environment in which buyers demand evidence of dealers’ adherence to the highest standards of due diligence.
Better information about the value of missing antiquities would help as well. Our current approach to the problem inflates the values of the stolen objects, muddling our understanding of whether the numbers accurately reflect the situation on the ground. Media stories have circulated for over a year now with impressive-sounding figures for the antiquities’ monetary value, ranging from $7 billion (an estimate linked with a UNESCO report) to the low millions and, most recently, $200 million (an estimate offered in a report delivered to the UN Security Council by Vitaly Churkin, Russian Ambassador to the United States). None of these figures have been substantiated.
If what we want is a secure future for our shared past, we must acknowledge that there is a collective responsibility and align the resources, people, and institutions to get the work done. Congress has signaled bipartisan support for a stronger cultural policy framework. In an era of little bipartisan support for anything, we have a rare opportunity to work across political differences and find a comprehensive solution to the global trade in looted antiquities.
Dr. Fiona Rose-Greenland is an archaeologist and sociologist at the University of Chicago. She serves as Principal Investigator of the MANTIS project (Modeling the Antiquities Trade in Iraq and Syria) and is Research Director of the Past for Sale project at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society.
