in times of war, which led to The Hague Convention of 1954 and, two years later, to a number of recommendations âon international principles applicable to archaeological excavations.â This specifically proposed that the art trade should do nothing to âencourage smuggling of archaeological material.â In the 1960s, as a result of initiatives by Peru and Mexico, UNESCO adopted stronger recommendations âto improve the international moral climate in this respectâ and this led, in 1964, to a Committee of Experts being set up, from some thirty countries, whose task it was to prepare a draft convention. This body eventually produced, in 1970, UNESCOâs âConvention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property,â adopted on November 14 that year, by the general conference of UNESCO at its sixteenth session. This is not the only law or regulation governing these issues; there are also a number of trade agreements relating to the import and export of cultural material. But the 1970 convention has generally been taken as a watershed in this field. Although many archaeologists are against the international traffic in all archaeological material, period, most now take what they see as a more practical, pragmatic approachâthat one shouldnât deal in, or have anything to do with, antiquities that have no provenance and first came to light since 1970 , the date of the UNESCO convention. Objects in collections formed before 1970, and which have no provenance, may have been illicitly excavated, but the main priority is to stop the looting now, and for this the 1970 date is sufficiently modern.
Not all states ratified the convention with equal enthusiasm. Here are the ratification dates for a variety of states, from which a pattern will be evident: Cyprus, 1980; Egypt, 1973; France 1997; Greece, 1981; Italy, 1979; Jordan, 1974; Peru, 1980; Turkey, 1981; United Kingdom, 2003; United States, 1983. Denmark, Holland, and Germany have still to ratify the 1970
convention. Switzerland did so in 2004. In other words, there is still a reluctance to do so on the part of most market states.
This is despite evidence that the worldâs archaeological heritageâthe material remains of past human activitiesâis being destroyed at an undiminished pace. In 1983, one study showed that 58.6 percent of all Mayan sites in Belize had been damaged by looters. Between 1989 and 1991, a regional survey in Mali registered 830 archaeological sites, of which 45 percent had already been damaged, 17 percent badly. In 1996, a sample of eighty were revisited and the incidence of looting had increased by 20 percent. A survey in a district of northern Pakistan showed that nearly half the Buddhist shrines, stupas, and monasteries had been badly damaged or destroyed by illegal excavation. In Andalusia, Spain, 14 percent of known archaeological sites have been damaged by illicit excavation. Between 1940 and 1968, it is estimated that something like 100,000 holes were dug in the Peruvian site of Batan Grande and that in 1965 the looting of a single tomb produced something like ninety pounds of gold jewelry, which accounts for about 90 percent of the Peruvian gold now found in collections around the world. In 1997, in the Qinghai Province of China, the ancient tombs at Reshui, one of the countryâs âTen Most Famous Archaeological Sites,â were looted by more than 1,000 local people, âwho âexcavatedâ the tombs with high explosives and bulldozers.â In Inner Mongolia the government estimates that between 4,000 and 15,000 tombs have been looted, and overall, the Chinese authorities estimate that between 5,000 and 12,000 looted objects reach the market every year. He Shuzhong, of the National Administration on Cultural Heritage in Beijing, who provided these figures, told us that one Chinese tourist company even runs a