Abstract
From the ”glocal” perspective of a large sample of archaeologists conducting fieldwork throughout the world and working on the very sites of interest to looters, this paper explores the question whether and to what extent organized crime is involved in the theft and illicit export of archaeological resources. Two major findings are presented: first, archaeologists tend almost unanimously to consider that organized crime operates within the ‘global’ antiquities market, but when asked about their own personal experiences with looting on the sites where they work, many fewer report observations of organized crime; second, however, it is apparent that respondents’ conceptions of “organized crime” involve media-driven, stereotypical representations of mafia-style structures. Therefore, although in their reporting of observed local activities they do not provide substantial survey evidence of the presence of organized crime so defined, they do report appreciable “organization” among those who have looted their sites—which, again, they have almost unanimously experienced. This paper considers the implications of such findings for both the definitional debate on organized crime and the academic analysis of the trade in looted antiquities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Within art crime, looted antiquities are usually discussed in concert with art theft, which is potentially problematic in that art theft literature often focuses on high-value thefts from museums, galleries, and private property (Tijhuis 2006), such crimes with which looting and archaeological site destruction have little in common.
According to INTERPOL, less than half of member countries regularly report cultural property crimes (2007).
Moreover, accurate estimates of economic losses and commercial gains due to crimes involving antiquities is further complicated by the fact that there exists a legal and thriving international antiquities market. Since both licit and illicit antiquities end up side by side on the legal market, it is often impossible to distinguish which commercial transactions have involved antiquities that are incontrovertibly legal or illegal.
Looting means to remove culturally significant material from archaeological sites for commercial gain, the act of which destroys archaeological context or evidence needed to learn from the site.
While spending the summer of 2007 researching in central Italy, the opportunity to interview several looters working locally came to light for this author. In order to conduct such an interview, the looters required that the author meet up with them alone in the middle of the night in an undisclosed location several hours outside of Rome. Out of concerns for personal safety and IRB restrictions, this author ultimately rejected the opportunity.
Writing that “if one understands Cosa Nostra he understands organized crime in the United States” (p. 21), Cressey’s Theft of the Nation (1969) is among the most influential examples of literature endorsing this Mafioso archetype for all of organized crime. As a result, most people came to understand organized crime to mean a “hierarchical, centrally organized criminal conspiracy,” (Woodiwiss 2006:16), characterized primarily as an Italian-American phenomenon (Lyman and Potter 2006).
Kenney & Finckenauer observe that “The Godfather” had more influence on the public mind and the minds of many public officials than did any library filled with scholarly works that argued for the true nature of organized crime” (1995:246).
Latour (1993:117) asks the question whether a railroad is in fact local or global. Neither, he concludes, arguing that a railroad is in fact “local at all points,” with workers, consumers, and stations situated locally, but global also in the sense that the railroad connects these localities in a broader sense. In a similar vein, the illicit antiquities trade and the potential involvement of organized crime can be situated as simultaneously global and local phenomena; in other words, thoroughly “glocal” (Robertson 1995).
For an excellent example of an ethnographic work tracing the “glocal” realities of licit/illicit market operations, see Nordstrom’s Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World (2007, Berkeley: University of California Press).
The organized criminal dynamics of archaeological site looting and the illicit antiquities trade were but one element of this massive study, which had a broader agenda aimed to elicit archaeologists’ perspectives on four key areas: geographic scope of looting, frequency of looting, personal experiences with looting, and connections between illicit antiquities and other forms of criminal activity.
As noted above, crimes involving plundered archaeological resources are more commonly subsumed under the rubric of cultural property or art crimes with annual estimated losses as high as $6 billion (FBI 2007).
Legislative attempts to curb antiquities trafficking have in general identified the issue as one of theft or illicit export; that is, the enactment of national laws that vest ownership over antiquities to the State, in which case the removal of such objects constitutes theft; or, laws that attempt to prohibit exportation of such objects from national borders (Alder and Polk 2002). The salient difference between these two legislative efforts concerns its enforceability- market nations who top the list of antiquities importers have been reluctant to enforce other nations‘ export laws, and source nations are more successful in pursuing legal recourse when such items are legally construed as stolen (ibid).
Since the ownership of an antiquity is not illicit per se, the legality of an antiquity has primarily to do with the manner in which it has been moved or acquired. Licit antiquities are those which have been acquired through authorized excavations, carefully documented, and turned over to their rightful owner (in many countries, the State) who has then decided what to do with the objects.
Two important terms warrant introduction and distinction here: provenience and provenance. Provenance refers to the previous ownership history of an object. The term is most frequently used in the art community to refer, in other words, to what has happened to an antiquity since it came out of the ground. Among archaeologists, on the other hand, provenience refers not to past ownership history but information regarding the original findspot of the object (Coggins 1998); where and how, in other words, the antiquity came out of the ground. The majority of antiquities that make their way to the legal market are unprovenienced and have no accompanying information regarding the original location of an item and the context in which it was initially found (Brodie 2006; Cook 1991).
Some interviewees viewed the market as a provider of international cultural education while others viewed the antiquities market as a means by which to protect cultural heritage and chance archaeological finds. Additionally, some interviewees felt that the antiquities market in general provides an important economic resource for impoverished local peoples. As Brodie, Doole, & Watson note, however, very little profit filters down from the middlemen to the original digger (2000). The trifling reward a looter receives for his find may be immediately significant, but it is a short-term economic gain. When the antiquity becomes a tradable commodity on the international market and acquires monetary value through circulation, both original diggers and the country of origin are deprived of long range economic gain, and original diggers are ultimately twice-swindled: “first out of the initial monetary value of their find, and then out of its long-term economic potential” (Brodie 1998: 15).
For a more detailed discussion of current regulatory practices on the illicit antiquities market, particularly from the perspective of the United Kingdom, see Mackenzie & Green’s chapter in Criminology and Archaeology: Studies in Looted Antiquities (2009, Oxford: Hart Publishing).
Overall, the purpose of the present study was to provide an improved assessment of the global looting phenomenon in an effort to lay a firmer theoretical, methodological, and empirical foundation for further criminological research on the antiquities trade. Specifically, the study examines the problem of theft from archaeological sites from the perspective of archaeologists.
Archaeological fieldwork is at the core of archaeology’s disciplinary identity as well as its authenticity from both within and without (Holtorf 2005; DeBoer 1999). Fieldwork has always been an essential component in archaeology’s disciplinary independence and, in the explanation of what being an archaeologist means, “the ability to do fieldwork has always been central” (Moser 2007: 245). It is therefore safe to assume that most, if not all, practicing archaeologists have firsthand experience with archaeological fieldwork of some type and can therefore speak authoritatively on the experience of fieldwork. If looting is a dynamic of that fieldwork experience, and fieldwork is an essential component of archaeology, then archaeologists are in a good position to experience looting firsthand and as such represent an important resource for the study of looting, archaeological site destruction, and the trade in illicitly-obtained antiquities.
I am not suggesting here that cultural heritage policy be solely and wholly based on archaeologists‘ perceptions. As Rossi, Simpson, & Miller note, “public opinion is not the sole and supreme master of the criminal justice system, but only one of the more important ones….” (1985: 60). Indeed, archaeologists are but one group with vested interests in the looting problem, and their input is but one dynamic of importance whose perceptions can both influence and be influenced by policy.
Respondents and their confidential feedback are thus identified only by token number and location of archaeological fieldwork.
A recent meta-analysis conducted by Sheehan (2001) indicated that the average online survey response rate is generally declining. Staff at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln‘s Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR), which regularly administers web surveys and research and facilitated this study, suggested an expected response rate of only 2–4% (BOSR, personal communication, 17 July 2007). Without an advance email notification, telephone solicitation, financial incentives or mailed survey instructions, the current study still yielded an impressive response rate of over 16% (N = 2,358).
Personal experience with looting means to observe firsthand on one or more archaeological sites looting or physical evidence of looting activity, such as holes, pits, missing objects, or other damage to the site not part of systematic archaeological excavations.
Following the definition put forth in the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2000), organized criminal group means a “structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences… in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit” (Article 2, para. 1).
Despite an N of 14,429, the sample population is limited in a number of respects. First, for a number of the organizations, contact information was only included for members who had participated recently in an annual meeting or Congress; clearly, this is not representative of all their members. Second, the search was limited to what web-based information was available. Many universities in the developing world, for example, simply do not have websites much less online departmental member directories. For some universities, their preliminary websites were available one day and simply vanished the next; for others, contact information was outdated and faculty members had come and gone with no current contact information available. Third, hundreds of individuals whose contact information was located through ancillary searches were already listed elsewhere as associated with an organization, university, research institution, or other entity. Those individuals were only included once in the sample population. Fourth, there was no guarantee that each individual included in the population was in fact a practicing archaeologist since many organizations are in fact also open to the public; in the survey, respondents who were not in fact practicing archaeologists were not allowed to proceed through the online questionnaire. Lastly, due to language limitations of the researcher, only web information available in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, or Romanian were searched; in an effort to make up for this, additional Internet searches were performed and translation assistance was solicited.
The variable, location of fieldwork, was aggregated since the reported 118 country responses were far too many for any form of regression analysis. As Hill and Lewicki (2007) note, too many predictor variables in a model is problematic, and most statisticians recommend that “one should have at least 10 to 20 times as many observations (cases, respondents) as one has variables; otherwise the estimates of the regression line are probably very unstable and unlikely to replicate if one were to do the study over” (sec. 12). As a general rule of thumb, then, “the fewer the predictor variables, in other words, the better” (Field 2005: 162). After some experimentation with varying levels of aggregation, respondents were ultimately collapsed into continent/geographic regions as defined by the CIA World Factbook (updated regularly and available online at: http://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook), which yielded a manageable 10 categories: 1 = North America; 2 = Central America & Caribbean; 3 = South America; 4 = Western, Central Europe & United Kingdom; 5 = Eastern, Southeastern Europe & Eurasia; 6 = Asia, Southeast Asia, & Southern Asia; 7 = Oceania; 8 = Africa; 9 = Middle East; and 10 = Other/NA. By means of the “Fixed Factor” feature in SPSS, eight dummy variables were created from these regions, with North America serving as the reference category since it is recommended that the group with the largest number of responses serve as such (Field 2005). Having had to aggregate the 118 country responses into broader geographic regions for regression analysis, in concern for the loss of specificity in information, countries were left disaggregated elsewhere for discussion and analysis where possible.
It should be noted that the CIA World Factbook provides but one means by which to conceptualize and define regions of the world. In other classification schemes, for example, countries included in “Eurasia” may be referred to elsewhere as “Central Asia” (c.f., for example, http://www.worldbank.org) or “Western Asia” (c.f., for example http://www.un.org).
Participation in archaeological fieldwork included such activities as excavation, survey, study season, conservation, site preservation, cultural resource management, or other archaeological activity.
Descriptive statistics for these variables are presented in Appendix Table 6.
This respondent profile is likely a result of sampling procedures and limitations as discussed earlier in the paper.
C.f., for example, the United Nations’ 2002 “Pilot Survey of 40 Selected Organized Criminal Groups in 16 Countries,” available online at: http://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/publications/Pilot_survey.pdf
Indeed, coverage of crime issues in the news is not congruent with official assessments of crime. On the disconnect between public perceptions of and realities of crime, and the role that the media plays in such discrepancies, see for example Kitzinger and Skidmore, 1995; Lowry et al 2003; Coleman and Thorson 2002; Chiricos et al 2000; Howitt 1998; Sheley and Ashkins 1981.
Famous dialogue from Mario Puzo’s Oscar-winning screenplay, The Godfather (1972).
Von Lampe (2006) suggests that, coupled with its socially constructed nature, definitional confusions result because the study of organized crime is largely multidisciplinary, leaving the study of organized crime a conceptual and theoretical “patchwork” (p. 77).
Presentation at the annual ISPAC-UNODC conference on “Organised Crime in Art and Antiquities,” Courmayeur, Italy.
References
Alder C, Chappell D, Polk K (2009) Perspectives on the organisation and control of the illicit traffic in antiquities in South East Asia. In (Ed. S. Manacorda), Organised Crime in Art and Antiquities (pp. 95–108). Milan, Italy: International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the United nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme.
Alder C, Polk K (2002) Stopping this awful business: the illicit traffic in antiquities examined as a criminal market. Art Antiq Law 7(1):35–53
Alder C, Polk K (2005) The illicit traffic in plundered antiquities. In: Reichel P (ed) Handbook of Transnational Crime and Justice. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks
Babbie E (2002) The Basics of Social Research, 2nd edn. Wadsworth, Belmont
Bator, P. (1982). An essay on the international trade in art. Stanford Law Review 34(2).
Bowman B (2008) Transnational crimes against culture: looting at archaeological sites and the “grey” market in antiquities. J Contemp Crim Justice 24(3):225–42
Brathwaite J (1993) Business Regulation and Australia’s Future. Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra
Brathwaite J (1989) Crime, Shame, and Reinegration. Cambridge University Press, New York
Brathwaite J (1985) To Punish or Persuade: Enforcement of Coal Mine Safety. State University of New York Press, Albany
Brodie N (2006) An archaeologist‘s view of the trade in unprovenanced antiquities. In: Hoffman B (ed) Art & Cultural Heritage: Law, Policy, & Practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Brodie N (1998) Pity the poor middlemen. Culture Without Context 3 (Autumn): 7–9. Retrieved December 21, 2007 from http://www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/projects/iarc/culturewithoutcontext/issue3/brodie.htm
Brodie N, Doole J, Watson P (2000) Stealing History: The Illicit Trade in Cultural Material. The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge
Bullock K, Chowdhury R, Hollings P (2009) Public concerns about organised crime. Home Office Research Report 16. Retrieved March 1, 2010 online at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/horr16c.pdf
Cannon-Brookes P (1994) Antiquities in the market-place: placing a price on documentation. Antiquity 68(295):349–50
Chiricos T, Padgett K, Gertz M (2000) Fear, TV news, and the reality of crime. Criminology 38(3):755–86
Coggins C (1998) United States cultural property legislation: observations of a combatant. Int J Cult Prop 7(1):52–68
Coleman R, Thorson E (2002) The effects of news stories that put crime and violence into context: Testing the public health model of reporting. J Health Commun 7:401–425
Conklin J (1994) Art Crime. Praeger, Westport
Cook B (1991) The archaeologist and the art market: politics and practice. Antiquity 65:533–37
DeBoer W (1999) Metaphors we dig by. Anthropol News 40(7):7–8
Edwards A, Gill P (2002) Crime as enterprise? The case of “transnational organised crime. Crime Law Soc Change 37(3):203–23
Edwards A, Levi M (2008a) The organization of serious crimes: developments in research and theory. Criminol Crim Justice 8(4):359–61
Edwards A, Levi M (2008b) Researching the organization of serious crimes. Criminolo Crim Justice 8(4):363–88
Federal Bureau of Investigation (2007) Art Theft Program. Retrieved 12/20/07 at: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/arttheft/arttheft.htm
Fidler S (2003) A black art: how the trade in stolen artifacts aids money laundering, organized crime, and terrorism. Financial Times. Retrieved February 1, 2008 from http://search.ft.com/ftArticle?queryText=fidler+a+black+art&aje=true&id=030523006091&ct=0&nclick_check=1
Field A (2005) Discovering Statistics Using SPSS, 2nd edn. Sage Publications, London
Finckenauer J (2005) Problems of definition: what is organized crime? Trends Organize Crime 8(3):63–83
Flaherty T et al (1998) Exploring text-based electronic mail surveys as means of primary data collection. The 1998 Academy of Marketing Science National Conference Proceedings, 260-4
Gill D, Chippindale C (1993) Material and intellectual consequences of esteem for Cycladic figures American. J Archaeol 97(3):602–673
Golash D, Lynch J (1995) Public opinion, crime seriousness, and sentencing policy. 22 American Journal of Criminal Law 703
Guo Z, Zhu J, Chen H (2001) Mediated reality bites: comparing direct and indirect experience as sources of perceptions across two communities in China. Int J Public Opin Res 13(4):398–418
Hagan F (1983) The organized crime continuum: a further specification of a new conceptual model. Crim Justice Rev 8(2):52–7
Hill T, Lewicki P (2007) Statistics: Methods & Applications. Tulsa, OK: Statsoft, Inc. Retrieved May 18, 2008 from http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stmulreg.html
Hobbs D (1998) Going down the glocal: the local context of organized crime. Howard J 37(4):407–22
Holtorf C (2005) From Stonehenge to Las Vegas: Archaeology as Popular Culture. Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, Lanham
Howitt D (1998) Crime, the media and the law. Wiley, West Sussex
INTERPOL (2007) Stolen works of art: frequently asked questions. Retrieved December 20,2007 from http://www.interpol.int/Public/WorkOfArt/woafaq.asp
Kenney D, Finckenauer J (1995) Organized Crime in America. Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont
Kitzinger J, Skidmore P (1995) Playing safe: Media coverage of child sexual abuse prevention strategies. Child Abuse Rev 4:47–56
Latour B (1993) We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Liddick D (1999) An Empirical, Theoretical, and Historical Overview of Organized Crime. Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston
Lowry D, Nio T, Leitner D (2003) Setting the public fear agenda: A longitudinal analysis of network tv crime reporting, public perceptions of crime, and FBI crime statistics. Journal of Communications, March, pp 61–73
Lyman M, Potter G (2006) Organized Crime, 4th edn. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River
Mackenzie S (2009) Identifying and preventing opportunities for organized crime in the international antiquities market. In (Ed. S. Manacorda), Organised Crime in Art and Antiquities (pp. 95–108). Milan, Italy: International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme.
Mackenzie S (2005) Going, Going, Gone: Regulating the Market in Illicit Antiquities. Institute of Art and Law, Leicester
Mackenzie S, Green P (2009) Criminalising the market in illicit antiquities: an evaluation of the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offenses) Act 2003 in England and Wales. In: Mackenzie S, Green P (eds) Criminology and Archaeology: Studies in Looted Antiquities. Hart Publishing, Oxford
Macleod M (2002) Archaeology is new target for Ukraine's mafia gangs. Scotland on Sunday (Edinburgh, Scotland). Retrieved 10 March 2010 online from, http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/world/Archaeology-is-new-target-for.2368939.jp
Maxfield M, Babbie E (2005) Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology. Wadsworth Thomson Learning, Belmont
McCalister A (2005) Organized crime and the theft of Iraqi antiquities. Trends Organize Crime 9(1):24–37
McCorkle R, Miethe T (2002) Panic: The social construction of the street gang problem. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River
Meyer K (1973) The Plundered Past. Atheneum, New York
Moser S (2007) On disciplinary culture: archaeology as fieldwork and its gendered associations. J Archaeol Meth Theory 14:235–63
Mutz D (1998) Impersonal Influence: How Perceptions of Mass Collectives Affect Political Attitudes. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Neuendorf K (2002) The content analysis guidebook. Sage, Thousand Oaks
Nistri G (2009) The experience of the Italian Cultural Heritage Protection Unit. In (Ed. S. Manacorda), Organised Crime in Art and Antiquities (pp. 95–108). Milan, Italy: International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme.
Paoli L (2002) The paradoxes of organized crime. Crime Law Soc Change 37(1):51–97
Paolo T et al (2000) Response rate comparisons of e-mail and mail distributed student evaluations. Teach Learn Med 12(2):81–4
Passas N (2003) Cross-border crime and the interface between legal & illegal actors. Secur J 16(1):19–38
Passas N (1999) Globalization, criminogenic asymmetries and economic crime. Eur J Law Reform 1(4):399–423
Raffles H (2005) Towards a critical natural history. Antipode 37(2): 374–8. Retrieved 11 August 2010 from, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0066-4812.2005.00501.x/pdf
Reuter P (1985) Organization of Markets: An Economic Analysis. National Institute of Justice, Washington DC
Robertson R (1995) Glocalisation: time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity, pp. 25–44. In: Featherstone M, Lash S, Robertson R (eds) Global Modernities. Sage Publications, London
Rossi P, Simpson J, Miller J (1985) Beyond crime seriousness: fitting the punishment to the crime. J Quant Criminol 1(1):59–90
Salant P, Dillman D (1994) How to Conduct Your Own Survey. Wiley, New York
Sheehan K (2001) E-mail survey response rates: a review. Journal of Computer- Mediated Communication 6(2). Retrieved 20 July 2007 at: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol6/issue2/sheehan.html
Sheehan K, McMillan S (1999) Response variation in e-mail surveys: An exploration. J Advert Res 39(4):45–54
Sheley JF, Ashkins CD (1981) Crime, crime news, and crime views. Public Opin Q 45:492–506
Tijhuis E (2006) Transnational Crime and the Interface between Legal and Illegal Factors: The Case of the Illicit Art and Antiquities Trade. Wolf Legal Publishers, Nijmegen
Tyler T (1984) Assessing the risk of crime victimization: the integration of personal victimization experience and socially transmitted information. J Soc Issues 40:27–38
Tyler T (1980) Impact of directly and indirectly experienced events: the origins of crime-related judgments and behaviors. J Pers Soc Psychol 39:13–28
United Nations (2000) United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime. Retrieved October 17, 2006 from, http://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNTOC/Publications/TOC%20Convention/TOCebook-e.pdf
van Duyne P (1996) The phantom and threat of organized crime. Crime Law Soc Change 24:341–77
von Lampe K (2006) The interdisciplinary dimensions of the study of organized crime. Trends Organize Crime 9(3):77–95
Williams P (1998) Organizing transnational crime: networks, markets, hierarchies. Transnat Organize Crime 4(3 & 4):57–87
Woodiwiss M (2006) Transnational organized crime: the global reach of an American concept. In: Edwards A, Gill P (eds) Transnational Organised Crime: Perspectives on Global Security. Routledge, London
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix
Appendix
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Proulx, B.B. Organized criminal involvement in the illicit antiquities trade. Trends Organ Crim 14, 1–29 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-010-9115-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-010-9115-8