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The Antiquities Licit-Illicit Interface

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The Palgrave Handbook on Art Crime

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Abstract

The international trade in antiquities represents a unique form of a modern transnational market in that it presents both licit and illicit elements. As such, it is most accurately characterized as a “gray” market in that the demand for antiquities is legal, but the means by which antiquities are most often supplied to the market is through illegal excavations at archaeological sites. This chapter provides a brief overview of how these licit and illicit dynamics meet and illustrates various ways in which these elements overlap, turning the antiquities trade from a black-and-white matter to one of an ambiguous shade of gray.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Krater was subsequently sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it remained in the museum’s collection of Classical Antiquities from 1972–2008; the Krater was returned to Italy in 2008 when sufficient evidence was gathered in Italian investigations to show that it had in fact been illegally excavated and smuggled out of Italy by way of Switzerland (Brodie 2012).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Blythe Alison Bowman Balestrieri

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  1. Blythe Alison Bowman Balestrieri
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Correspondence to Blythe Alison Bowman Balestrieri .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    Saskia Hufnagel

  2. University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Duncan Chappell

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Bowman Balestrieri, B.A. (2019). The Antiquities Licit-Illicit Interface. In: Hufnagel, S., Chappell, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook on Art Crime. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54405-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54405-6_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-54404-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-54405-6

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