The Ancients - Looted Artefacts: Black Market of Archaeology

Episode Date: April 13, 2024

Have you ever wondered about the dark side of archeology? The illegal seizing of ancient artefacts? The looting of goods from age old historical sites and their sale on the black market? Well it is a practice that goes back hundreds of years and today we’re exploring how it works, why it happens and what government bodies are doing to prevent it.In this episode of The Ancients Tristan Hughes is joined by Prof. Valerie Higgins to shine a light on how illicit objects and artefacts have found their way to museums and private houses all too often. This episode was produced by Joseph Knight and edited by Aidan Lonergan.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code ANCIENTS - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's episode, where we're talking about the darker side of archaeology, the illegal seizing of ancient artefacts, this black market of archaeology, a practice that stretches back hundreds of years and to shine a light on it, from the time of colonial empires down to the present day, well I was delighted to interview

Professor Valerie Higgins from the American University of Rome. This was a really eye-opening chat, with Valerie explaining why and how illicit artefacts have all too often made their way to museums and private houses across the world for centuries. But also the great lengths that museums and governmental bodies have gone to crack down on this illegal trade over recent decades. The fightback is on. The huge scale of this problem today is a key reason why we really do need to cover this topic on the ancients. We can't shy away from it. I really do hope you enjoy, and here's Valerie.

Valerie, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast. Well, it's brilliant to be here and talking about one of my favourite topics as well, which is illicit trafficking. Well, I mean, yes, illicit trafficking. This is a darker side of archaeology, but it still is very much a thing even today. Oh, absolutely. It really is. In fact, it seems to be increasing both in scale and in importance as well. So it's a very concerning thing, in fact. I mean, people might think, oh, art trafficking, that's some kind of romantic thing, you know, of art lovers who want to like hoard art. But I'm afraid it isn't. It's actually a pretty dirty trade. And so it's important that we stop it.

Absolutely. And to set the scene, what do we mean when talking about antiquities trafficking? Well, we usually mean material that's been illegally excavated. Sometimes we mean material that's taken from a museum or from a collection. But the good thing if it's taken from a museum or a collection is that we might have a record of it to trace it. But the really disturbing thing about illegal excavation is that, of course, if it's come out of the ground, we don't have any record of it. So we don't know what was there. And of course, from an archaeological viewpoint, the problem is you've destroyed the archaeological context.

Well, we'll definitely get to the present day and some of these excavations nowadays. And we've already kind of highlighted how this isn't a small thing. It's still a massive thing, lots of money in this illegal trade too. But we should go back to almost the origins, shouldn't we? I mean, this stretches back hundreds of years, this illegal trafficking of antiquities. Yes, it does stretch back a long time. It's a little bit difficult to actually say at what point it becomes illegal because, of course, for something to be illegal, it has to break a law. And there weren't always laws about this. So So it began really, well, first of all,

I suppose you could say it began of what was regarded as legitimate looting during war, when it was considered perfectly acceptable to do that. And then it gradually becomes less acceptable. And I think we can really date that from about the 18th century onwards, but it's a very up and down thing, it has to be said. And then laws started to be brought in in the 19th century. And at that point, it really does become illegal in most countries. But of course, it varies from country to country when those laws were brought in. Now, of course, it is important to highlight that variation. But if we go before the 19th century, let's say some of these great museums in Europe, how do they go about obtaining

some of these artefacts from that time that are sometimes so iconic to viewers today? Well, a lot of them came about as a result of tourism to formerly classical countries, to the Mediterranean, to Europe. So, for example, countries like Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and people would go and tour around. We called it the Grand Tour. And they would often collect these as souvenirs to bring back. I mean, often in kind of crate loads going onto ships. So I mean, they could be quite a lot of souvenirs that could be brought back. And at what point it kind of becomes illegal, you know, varies from place to place.

Obviously, gradually, as countries acquire a national identity, they start to bring in laws against this. It was very important for tourists at that time, for the people who went to Europe on the Grand Tour, it was very important for them to have evidence in their stately homes and country houses that we have. They wanted to have evidence that they had been on this great tour and that they were educated in that way. And then over the course of time, what happened was a lot of those collections got donated to museums, sometimes in lieu of tax, some sort of arrangement like that, sometimes as a gift.

Museums themselves began to collect on a big scale as well. They would pay people to go out and find treasures for them. And then later on in the 19th century, when archaeology becomes a sort of something that is done on a big scale, archaeological excavations from different countries also sponsored by museums and go out and collect, they excavate and collect artifacts for the museums. So we're thinking in names perhaps like Giovanni Belzoni, are we, in Egypt in the Valley of the Kings. It was interesting that you mentioned the Grand Tour there because earlier this summer I did a small documentary on William John Banks and of course, the Fili obelisk. And that's really interesting because

for him to bring that obelisk to Kingston Lacey, he obtained the permission of the Ottoman Pasha in Egypt at that time. However, of course, he wasn't an Egyptian ruler, he was an Ottoman ruler. So, sometimes we see imperial powers, they have very much a big influence on these objects coming to European countries before, let's say, the 19th century? Oh, very much so, very much so. And particularly in the lands that were part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans were, in one sense, a little bit laid back about their imperial possessions in that they were quite willing to to engage in giving permission for things like excavation or removal of antiquities from the lands that they officially were ruling. As long as those lands were paying taxes to the emperor, they didn't have the kind of control over them that I think people often imagine is part of imperial power. When we think

of how the British ruled their empire, how the French ruled their empire, they had a lot more sort of tighter control. The Ottomans were quite amenable often to allowing other countries in to excavate or to remove antiquities, as long as they were paid for it, obviously. I'd like to ask about one particular case from this, because it does come up in the news again and again over the years. And it is linked to this topic. It's the story of the Benin artefacts. Now, what's this particular story? Why is it so controversial? And we see it coming up again and again. Benin, they're often called the Benin Bronzes. And I think the reason they are so controversial is because it really is a horrible tale. And it's not one that's got any really mitigating

circumstances for it, shall we say. Benin is part of what is now Nigeria. In the 19th century, it was a separate kingdom with a separate ruler, and it found itself caught up in battle for essentially colonial trading rights in that part of the world. There was quite a competition at that time in that area between France and Britain. As a result of this trade dispute, the British in 1897 carried out what was called a punitive expedition, where they went to Benin City and burnt down the city. They killed a lot of people. They took the bronzes, which were part of the regalia, but also part of the status, really, of the king of Benin. So, removing them was also a way to diminish him in the sight of his people. And they were really given to the troops who had carried out this raid,

who brought them back to Britain, and many of them were sold on to some went to the British Museum. But in fact, there's a huge number of museums and private collectors that have got some bits from this. So there's not really a lot of kind of justification for it, really. And I think that's why it's a case that's been so shocking and that people have found very difficult to justify. There's actually a really very good book written by Dan Hicks called The Brutish Museums, which goes into the background to the whole event in great detail. And so Benin has been asking for them back. There's always been a slight difficulty in that, of course, Benin is not itself a separate country anymore. It's part of Nigeria. And so that sort of complicated things

a little bit. But there has more recently been more convergence on the idea of sending them back, but also building a museum for them, because that would be essential to protect them. And a group of museums that have been in bronzes formed a committee called the Benin Dialogue Committee and came up with a proposal for a museum and a proposal for sending them back. But it's quite interesting to note that there has also recently been some opposition to this. And the opposition has actually come from, in particular, groups of people who are descended from slaves. There's one called the African Restitution Project. And they are objecting to them being sent back because they say that they are the descendants of people who were enslaved and were traded, and that the Benin kingdom was complicit in doing this.

And therefore, they feel that they should not be sent back to the people who were involved in the enslavement of their ancestors. And they want them to stay in museums in America and also the UK, so the descendants of the people who were enslaved can enjoy them. So it gets to be a very controversial topic. These are all very controversial topics, very prickly topics, but it's important we at least talk about them and highlight to people the context behind them. But it is interesting, why I want to know about that case is, as we're talking about the time of imperial powers like

Britain and France, and we'll get to America a bit later, how their obtaining of artefacts before these export rules really become prominent is that there are various ways in which they're obtained. As you say, there are ways where they get permission, but there are also ways where it is at the end of a colony, officially, often, you know, the metropole, that is Britain in the case of the British Empire or France in the case of the French Empire, often the metropole had the right to, legally speaking, I mean, not a moral or ethical right, but legally speaking, had a right to send them back. So that gets complicated. speaking, had a right to send them back. So that gets complicated. But even if there was, for example, a sale or there was some agreement that objects could be taken,

there's a question mark over how freely this could be given by people who were themselves under imperial power. So maybe even if they say that there was consent, you have to question how freely those people were able to give consent. And that in particular has been an issue with things that were, in inverted commas, gifted, because it's often felt that they were gifted by people who were oppressed in order to alleviate their situation in some way. And therefore, it's not a real gift in a sense. It's also really interesting to understand that context of how archaeological excavations at that time, they become part of colonial expansion. I sometimes liken it to the way that sport and the Olympic Games during the Cold War became somehow seen as reflecting the power of either the communist bloc or the western bloc.

Somehow, and if you stop and think about it, it seems a little bit crazy, really, that in some way we think that because you've won more gold medals, that kind of makes your political system more justified. But in a strange way, that was exactly what happened with archaeological excavations as well. quite unpleasant, I think, when you go into details of the thinking behind this, because there definitely was a racist element to it, an element of thinking that some civilizations were superior to others, and that this superiority gave them the right to go and investigate other cultures and remove their artifacts, that this was part of some sort of higher value system of education, and not really appreciating that they had different values for those people, and were important to them in all kinds of ways that we wouldn't necessarily recognise immediately. What attitude does this develop in museums as they're growing their collections

at this time? This seems important even down to, it almost has a hangover effect down into almost the 20th century. Oh, absolutely. It did become quite competitive. In this regard, European museums, of course, had a massive advantage because they had a head start over American museums of about a century. So a lot of their collections developed when there weren't very tight controls over what could be tight controls over what could be exported and often not so much interest on the side of officials that would prevent works of art being taken out from a country. So it was a very different landscape to when American museums began to develop, which was the middle to the end of the 19th century. And that, of course, is exactly the time when the nation states in Europe are being formalized, and they're starting to set up the kinds of boundaries that we might recognize today.

that we might recognize today. And they start to bring in antiquities laws. And the reason they bring them in is because it's very connected to nationalism. A lot of countries, I mean, you could say, well, they are modern, inverted commas, creations. Most of them are kind of created in about the 19th century or so. But of course, they're claiming an antiquity. They're claiming that, okay, maybe the name is modern, maybe the boundary is modern, but we have always been here. We are the people of this land. And the way that you demonstrate that is through archaeology, you know, by've got them, in order to demonstrate their antiquity and therefore their legitimacy to be in that place and claim that land. So if this is the context around when these new American museums are starting to emerge in the

19th century, how does this go hand in hand with the uncomfortable fact that American museums become more likely to acquire very clearly stolen objects? American museums, as they say, start later when a lot of laws have come in. So they're a bit unlucky in that regard. But to counterbalance that, they've got a lot more money than European museums have got. So, you know, from the 19th into the 20th century, of course, the big industrial machine that is, you know, American commerce begins. And one of the ways that, you know, you buy status as a kind of someone who's newly acquired wealth is you invest in art and culture and you become a donor and a philanthropist. So, of course, it's a kind of easy equation to make in a sense. You've got people who would like to build up collections and they've got the money

to do it. And even if there were laws brought in in these countries, it's not always possible. Even today, it's very hard to regulate this trade. Imagine going back to the 19th century or the early 20th century, how difficult it would be to regulate the trade, even if there's a legal framework for it. And to a certain extent, the reason that maybe European museums don't get caught out quite so often in this way, is that by this time, they don't have the money to buy in the same way that American museums have. And when they are buying these artefacts, why are certain countries like Lebanon and Switzerland often highlighted as these places from where the artefacts are obtained?

Two different reasons there, but they're both to do with what we call false provenance. we call false provenance. When a museum is buying an object, or indeed anyone is buying an object, you need to do what's called provenance research. Provenance research means ensuring that the item that you are buying is legal, that it's been legally acquired. One of the ways around this is to forge the provenance and to have a false provenance. So you have papers, but they're actually being invented. They're not correct. And one of the reasons that you can do that, or you could do that in Lebanon, is because there was a long civil war in Lebanon from, I think, about 1975 through most of the 1980s. It lasted some 15 years. So, of course, if you're in a war zone, you can always say, well, so sorry, we don't have the records of this anymore. People don't necessarily expect you to have complete records in a war zone.

So of course, that's certainly one reason why Lebanon became famous in that way, because there were a number of dealers there who knew how to exploit this. Switzerland was different. Switzerland for a long time had a reputation of being a place where you could hide money. I mean, it used to be famous to sort of say, you know, someone had a Swiss bank account, meaning it was a bank account that nobody knew about and that you couldn't get access to and authorities couldn't find out about. And that was true up until about 2014, when due to international pressure, they changed the laws in Switzerland. And I believe now, in fact, next year, they're bringing out even more stringent laws to stop money laundering,

to stop hiding money and this kind of thing. But up until 2014, it was extremely difficult for any kind of authorities to get official information on accounts and banking practices and things. And so it became a place where you could hide things. And one of the sort of places of choice for hiding illicit artefacts was the Geneva Freeport, which became a place where a great many works of art and antiquities were hidden inside and were effectively out of reach of authorities. thought was his. When we go back to the 20th century and it's more difficult to kind of find out where certain artifacts came from. I appreciate this might be a really difficult question to answer. But do we know how often, let's say, these people obtaining artefacts, let's say, in America, you've got lots of money in the early 20th century,

how much they knew about where this artefact came from and whether it was an illegally obtained one or whether they didn't really know that at all? That is very hard to know, really. There have been a couple of cases recently in America where two quite prominent donors have had their houses raided and a huge amount of stolen artifacts have been found there. One is a hedge fund owner called Michael Steinhardt, who has now been officially banned from collecting antiquities. The other is a woman called Shelby White, who has been a long standing donor of the arts in New York. And they certainly claim that they did not know this and that they collected in good faith. Some people are sceptical about this and say that even if officially they didn't know,

they've been engaged in this world long enough to know that you should check. So, you know, it's a very debatable point. But I think maybe one factor that is similar for Michael Steinhardt and Shelby White and some other people who've collected is they're now quite elderly. And so they began collecting in a time when it was, in fact, not normal to do such vigorous investigation. Because for a long time, trafficking in antiquities was, even if people knew it was not legal, they didn't actually think it was serious. And I think there was a pattern of behavior that became ingrained at that time. A former curator at the New York Met, Gisela Richter, she actually wrote about this in her memoirs. And in it,

she wrote about Greek statue, a kouros, that had been acquired, and that looked like it had been stolen. And she records verbatim a conversation she had with Greek officials, a conversation she had with Greek officials who said to her, well, you know, if the New York Met hadn't acquired it, someone else would. So, you know, they were like passing it off really as not being a hugely important thing. So, and I think that was extremely typical of the time. And I think there was a big difference in attitude between, for example, not just Americans, but museum officials also in Europe and especially in Northern Europe, who really felt that they were the appropriate stewards of this art, that this art is something they were looking after for humanity, shall we say. A lot of them saw themselves in that way. That was an attitude that officials in countries like Italy and Greece

found really offensive, the idea that they weren't capable of looking after their own works of art. And I think that was really a lot of what was at the base of bringing in the UNESCO convention and of trying to stop this. It was really an anger, almost, I think, from some officials that these museum curators really felt they could come in and take things back and that they were the people who should be looking after them. Well, Valerie, take it away. I mean, let's focus on this UNESCO convention. When and what are we talking about with this? Because it is very important in the story. It is, though it didn't seem so at the time, I think we would have to say. In 1970, to say. In 1970, UNESCO proposed this convention to try and stop the illicit trafficking of art and antiquities. And I think the important thing to say, because it's often misinterpreted,

is that UNESCO convention is not a law. It can't be enforced as a law. Sometimes people talk about it as if it is, but it isn't. It only becomes a law if a country takes it and makes it a law in their own country. UNESCO is not in a position to impose a law on anyone. I mean, it's up to the country itself to do that. But what it was trying to do as an international organization, it almost was like drawing a line in the sand and saying, OK, from this point on, 1970 that is, you need to ensure that everything you are buying is legal. And it wanted to get all states parties to sign up for this. Italy was obviously very behind this and in fact had actually set up an entire squad of the Carabinieri police, the Arts and Antiquities squad, to deal with this. And they are still the best trained force in the world in this particular speciality. But it has to be said, it took a long time for everybody to sign up to this because,

as I say, it doesn't actually have any impact until people have made it a law. Nowadays, people are always referring to the 1970 convention, but it definitely took a bit of time for it to get going and for people to really appreciate that this was a real problem. Because a good case study in kind of highlighting that point, isn't it, is the story of the Euphronius Vars case. Now, what is this case? was only two years after the convention was passed. So it was almost like flaunting, if you like, their disdain for the convention. The New York Met bought a vase or crater, we would really call it, strictly speaking, a Greek crater dated to about the 6th century BCE. And they bought it for the New York Met for $1 million, which was extraordinary at the time to pay that amount of money for a Greek crater. And it was stolen. It was stolen from Cerveteri, which is a site just north of Rome. And really, it was kind of an open secret that it was stolen.

Nobody believed the provenance papers that they came up with, particularly as that area is in fact famous for having looted artefacts. It's famous for illegal excavations. So it almost seemed like they were deliberately saying that they didn't care about international opinion. It took a long time, but ultimately it was demonstrated that, in fact, it was stolen. And the New York Met were required to restitute it back to Italy. to restitute it back to Italy. So they lost their $1 million. And it came back to Italy in, I think it was 2006, something like that, and came back to be in Rome. And then it was finally taken back ultimately to Cerveteri, which was where it came from, to a museum there. But they wanted, I mean, it became like a sort of celebrity. It was kind of on the front

of the newspapers. They appeared on the Barbara Walters show, you know, saying how wonderful that they'd, you know, got this vase. So it really did seem like they were almost laughing in a sense. I mean, Italy really suffered from those stolen artifacts, didn't it? Now we're looking at the 20th century, but probably before then too. And then you highlighted the Carabinieri, this part of the Carabinieri that are specially trained now at tackling this. They then come down hard, don't they? They now show, no, you can't do this anymore. And then you have this figure of Marion True almost gets off the airplane and straight away, the carbon area there. What is this? That was later. I mean, as I say, it did take quite a bit of time, in fact, for this to be

enacted. But it was in the 21st century, I think it was something like 2005, she was indicted. And again, that was really due to the frustration that the Italians felt at being ignored in this way, which they were. And so, they decided to go after the people, which no one had ever done before. They'd never actually held a curator responsible before. And they said, well, no, you're not an art lover who's saving the world. You're handling stolen goods. And so they arrested her for handling stolen goods. Sorry, just to clarify. So Marion, she was a curator at? The Getty. Okay, gotcha.

At the Getty. Yeah, she was a curator at the Getty. But she knew the whole kind of field, shall we say, which was very connected. So, you know, the big museums are all operating in the same area. And there's a good book that was done by a couple of journalists from the Los Angeles Times called Chasing Aphrodite, in which they go into some length in this and they interview the police officers who were involved. And they actually make it clear that they, in fact, were not really intending to send her to prison. They wanted to get the network.

And they wanted her to spill the beans. Because the important thing to remember about all this looting is that there are a lot of people involved. The people at the bottom, the people who are actually digging out of the ground, by and large, they don't get very much money at all. It's the people at the end who get the money. So, you don't really want to waste too many resources on the intermediaries. You really want to get the people at the end. And I think they recognized that Marion True, she was definitely not worse than most curators. And in fact, perhaps rather ironically, she had certain reputation for trying to fight against illicit trafficking. She had undertaken

various initiatives to try and stop it. So, you know, she certainly wasn't some sort of unusual mastermind who was behind it all. She was engaged in practices that were very widespread, shall we say. But she was their entry point into this network. Before we kind of go to the conclusion of that, I mean, that is something I'd also really like to highlight quickly is that I know we've focused on these more infamous cases, but if we're now getting towards the modern day, I feel we should also highlight, and it's important that many of these big museums now, whether it's the Met, the Getty, or the British Museum, or Louvre, they are now, lots of their creators, they're doing a lot of work in trying to now identify stolen artefacts and working with border guards and so on to stop those artefacts coming into the country. So this is something also important to highlight now. Oh, absolutely.

Of course, you know, we're globalised now and so it's a very much bigger task than it used to be. And that's also because the field has grown. So whereas previously probably museums would have focused almost exclusively on the Mediterranean, Egypt, the ancient Near East, nowadays also there's a huge number of looted antiquities coming in from Asia. India, also countries like Cambodia, are suffering hugely with a loss of their cultural heritage. And that's a very big market indeed. And then, of course, African art is also, and South American art is also becoming much more widely collected.

So it really is huge now. Yes. is huge now. Yes. Do you think we have seen a turning point with all the stories that are coming out now where museums are returning artefacts that were stolen as a result? Yes, I think there's a definite tipping point in terms of public opinion. You can have huge reputational damage to your museum if you are found to have stolen and looted items. To the extent, in fact, that various conferences I've been hearing recently, this is causing a bit of a problem in the other direction because, of course, many collections don't really know where they came from. I mean, they were collected a long time ago they were donated to the museum people didn't always keep records in those days and now some museums are very reluctant to have them and they're like trying to get rid of them because

they don't want reputational damage if it turns out that they were collected in an unethical way and so we get what are sometimes called orphan collections that people don't want and are trying to get rid of. So it can be a real problem. We hear a lot about the other side of it, big museums like the British Museum that want to hang on to their collections no matter what. But there's another side to it as well, which is often smaller museums

that maybe don't have the resources of big museum, that have a lot of items that maybe are not fully catalogued and they don't know what they've got. And then they're concerned about what risks this might be to them in the future. So it is causing a lot of concern, but that undoubtedly is due to a tipping point in public opinion on this. It does beg the question that now with all of these museums really aware, trying to stop these stolen artefacts coming into their possession, and as you highlighted there, museums trying to

give away objects which have that kind of... The backstory is less clear and potentially damaging for them. Why, therefore, is the trade of illicit, illegal artifacts still so big today when there are now these active forces trying to stop it? I mean, in one sense, it's a kind of easy item to traffic, if you like. You can pick up items that are very small. I mean, you might be able to put them in your pocket. So that makes them easy as something to trade, as something to traffic. They've become also enmeshed in all sorts of other crimes. I mean, this is something that we now recognize that people who traffic antiquities and art, they traffic all sorts of other things as well. But they can be used in different ways. First of all, even if you get

caught with something that is illegal, usually the consequences are not that great for you. So it makes it a kind of good object to use. And we know that it's sometimes used as collateral against other types of trafficking. So I think there are ways in which it's very useful, shall we say, in a sort of criminological sense. But I think another way, and this is much harder to quantify or to track, is that there is such a widespread interest in the past at the moment. And also, there's a widespread interest in material objects that carry important markers of identity, shall we say. People want to find their own history. They want something tangible of their own history. And so as well as sort of famous collectors and big items and the big spectacular things. There's also a real market on eBay and on other more informal ways of selling just for more ordinary everyday items. And of course, people can go out,

ordinary people can go out and dig and find them. I mean, it's not legal, but they can do it and it's not that difficult. And even if you get caught, the penalty won't necessarily be that great, shall we say. The case that immediately comes to mind for me is I remember doing an interview some time ago about Ihanum and that area of the world and how there are all of these pits in the area. And it's like this is not the area. This isn't from conflict, this is just people going and digging up antiquities from Ihanoum and then going across the border to Pakistan or wherever. It's one of those things how conflict zones today can be where people go, dig up sites, and as you say, very hard to track. The risks seem quite low for

those people who go and do it in those areas of the world. Valerie, this has been really, really interesting. I mean, is there anything else you'd like to quickly mention before we completely wrap up? One thing I would just like to say is that we do know that it's important and we do know that it's on a scale, but we actually don't have any good numbers about that scale. And that is quite surprising. But I think this is the direction we have to go in, in order to understand how to tackle this. There's a lot of really basic information we don't know. We have to do a lot of legwork, I think, in order to get a handle on this. We are not understanding it at the moment, I think, because we don't have detailed information. I think we all need to be more inquiring about things. We need to be a little bit more sceptical. skeptical and for example if people are on holiday and they go and they see sort of in maybe a local

market they see what look like tourist trinkets that look like their antiquities well you know maybe don't buy them because they probably are you know illegally, illegally excavated. And you might think, oh, I'm not really doing anything wrong. But, you know, it's part of a very much larger problem that we, at the moment, are just not understanding the scale of it at all, I think. And so we all need to like, do our part in helping to get more informed on this. Well, Valerie, it just goes for me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Well, it was my pleasure and thank you very much for shedding a light on what I think is a very, very important topic. Well, there you go. There was Professorerie higgins talking all things illicit artifacts the black market of

archaeology and why this is still such a problem down to the present day arguably a bigger problem now than it has ever been i hope you enjoyed today's episode and opened your eyes onto this more infamous part of the story of archaeology and ancient history. Last thing from me, wherever you're listening to the podcast, whether that be on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or elsewhere, make sure that you are subscribed, that you are following The Ancient, so that you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week. But that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.