
The Ethical Minefield of Studying Ancient Civilizations - anarbadalov
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kgxjp/ebay-organized-crime-and-evangelical-christians-the-ethical-minefield-of-studying-ancient-civilizations-hobby-lobby-irisagrig-iraq
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LoSboccacc
> debating the ethical cost of studying antiquities that were almost certainly
> stolen

what we do here is whatever we can find illegally traded gets expropriated,
verified and if it turns out it's real documented and returned where it
belonged.

not really an ethical conundrum doing so because there's no incentive for
looters, as the artifacts are not bought.

i.e.
[http://bari.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/10/06/news/foggia_rec...](http://bari.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/10/06/news/foggia_recuperati_reperti_archeologici_ritrovata_anche_la_reliqua_di_un_beato-177509149/)

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Manu1987
> not really an ethical conundrum doing so because there's no incentive for
> looters, as the artifacts are not bought.

''A cultural property expert warned Hobby Lobby’s in-house counsel about the
artifacts, saying they may have been looted from archaeological sites in Iraq.
Still, Hobby Lobby signed a purchase agreement for $1.6 million in December
2010, wiring the money to seven different bank accounts. ''

~~~
icebraining
I think LoSboccacc is saying is that the way _they_ (by which I assume is
meant Italians, as per the link) deal with it doesn't have ethical problems.

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Shivetya
some additional thoughts, I am not well versed enough in the Hobby Lobby story
to have a good opinion on it.

What is not stolen today can be considered stolen tomorrow with changes in
governments on either side. Then there are those lost to conquest.

There were recent stories about Ethiopia demanding back items lost in war [1].
The concerns must be, are they better back where they came from and are they
even owned by who is now in power? the other concern is how are they protected
by changes in who controls a region? We already witnessed what groups like
ISIS are willing to do.

so my real questions are.

How recent must a change in possession occur for it to have relevance on who
owns something? Does the means of how possession was done account for
anything?

[1]
[http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201804300156-0025631](http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201804300156-0025631)

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Ours90
I hope these international conventions at least partly answer your questions:

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO_Convention_on_the_Means...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO_Convention_on_the_Means_of_Prohibiting_and_Preventing_the_Illicit_Import,_Export_and_Transfer_of_Ownership_of_Cultural_Property)

\- [https://www.unidroit.org/instruments/cultural-
property/1995-...](https://www.unidroit.org/instruments/cultural-
property/1995-convention)

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Ours90
> Texts from Irisagrig were scattered everywhere, some popping up on eBay and
> at auction sites, and as far and wide as Australia and South America.

This makes me so sad. With all those looting going on, whether in Iraq, Syria
or Egypt, we lose our history. With all those artifacts scattered all over the
world, the scientists straggle to reconstruct the history because of the lost
context.

I understand, this all comes down to money at the end of the day, but on at
least ethical grounds (not to mention the legal ones) Ebay and other auction
houses bear the responsibility for looting practices, encouraging the looters.
They have to work on some mechanism to make it stop, like a strict provenance
control policy before the objects are listed for sale.

~~~
icebraining
_They have to work on some mechanism to make it stop, like a strict provenance
control policy before the objects are listed for sale._

This is the obvious response to these kinds of situations, but is it actually
a good solution? What if the visibility provided by having them on eBay is
more helpful in tracking these items down, compared to having these deal
happen on more "underground" markets?

~~~
PeterisP
We don't particularly care _who_ has these items, but we want to remove
incentives for randomly digging them up. The archeological value of
documenting the context of an item is larger than any analysis of item itself,
and once an item is removed to be sold, that contextual value is permanently
destroyed.

Gaining an ability to track and possibly recover existing artifacts is nice to
have, but it's actually harmful if it means creating a financial motivation
for removing new artifacts and thus destroying the context for them; ideally,
we want to create a situation where they get left in the ground because it's
not worth for the looters to spend effort digging them up.

~~~
adrianN
Maybe we should create incentives for people to sell items with their context.

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monet90
Then most of them will have to admit the object was looted.The items that are
legally acquired are always losted with their provenance.

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dhelm
First, this story was reported in 2015 already
([https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-feds-investigate-
hob...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-feds-investigate-hob...)) and
the 1992 novel Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson had a plotline very similar to
this, where a Christian evangelical is smuggling in Sumerian artifacts to try
to find an ancient code to unlock the brainstem and encode his 'program' \--
Hobby Lobby's CEO David Green ~= Snowcrash's L. Bob Rife

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CaffeineSqurr
P

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vinceguidry
I have no ethical problems with compensating people for getting priceless
cultural artifacts outside of war zones. I similarly have no problems with
evangelical Christians paying for archaeological research that no one else
seems to be bothered to do.

There are worse places for these artifacts to be.

Yes, I'm aware this is a business model for ISIL. I wish them as much success
in this endeavor as they can achieve. Please nobody tell them that they're
never going to be able to outspend the US Government. We wouldn't want them to
stop.

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beloch
Context is king in archaeology. The precise location of an artifact in
relation to other artifacts and features around it tells us far more than just
examining the artifacts on their own. ISIL is not conducting rigorous digs,
recording context, and publishing data. They're just digging stuff up and
selling it.

Every dollar paid to ISIL for what they dig up directly funds the destruction
of history. It would actually be a lesser crime to pay them to leave stuff in
the ground.

Studying these artifacts now is damage control. We could have learned more
from them if we knew their context, but we never will. However, there's no
reason not to confiscate and study them. I sincerely hope Lobby Hobby is
prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. People need to understand that
what they did _destroys_ history rather than preserves it.

~~~
vinceguidry
Are they really digging this stuff up? Sounds like a lot of work. I was under
the impression that they were taking it from existing museums and private
collections.

~~~
Manu1987
Here's some good article about their vandalism:
[https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/stealing-from-
histor...](https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/stealing-from-history-the-
looting-and-destruction-of-iraqi-and-syrian-heritage-concern-us-all-1.308011)

