- MIAMI -- More than a half million packages and boxes are shipped through
Miami International Airport every year and U.S. Customs inspectors can
search only a small fraction of them. But there was something about the
572-pound wooden crate marked "Peruvian handicrafts" being shipped
to Zurich, Switzerland.
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- On a hunch, the inspectors opened the
box.
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- What they found inside were Peruvian
handicrafts, sure enough. But some of these handicrafts had been fashioned
more than 100 years before the birth of Jesus. Ancient metalwork, gold
necklaces, feathered capes, woven cloth, clay pottery, and even two mummified
human heads were found among 150 items in the crate.
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- The alert Customs inspectors had just
broken up one of the most widespread and lucrative forms of smuggling in
the world - the illicit trade in antiquities.
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- Experts say profits from the looting
and sale of ancient artifacts rank second only to those of drug trafficking.
But the cost of this illegal activity can't be measured in dollars, they
say. When ancient graves are robbed and historic monuments stripped of
treasures, scientists lose the ability to study the sites before they're
destroyed. Knowledge of ancient cultures is often lost forever.
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- "The problem is vast and extremely
serious," says Claire Lyons of the Archaeological Institute of America.
"The looting of archaeological sites and monuments is going on in
almost all countries in which there is a past to be plundered," she
says.
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- The sad fact, experts say, is that seizures
like the one in Miami are almost as rare as the artifacts. Some archaeologists
lament that at the current pace of looting there will soon be no intact
sites left - all plundered by grave robbers supported by a world network
of dealers, collectors, and museum curators who are more interested in
acquiring rare pieces of antiquity than in advancing mankind's knowledge
of world history.
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- "The damage they do is just irreparable,"
says Walter Alva, the archaeologist who battled grave robbers to find the
tomb of the Lord of Sipan in Peru in 1987.
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- "They could destroy several sites
and eliminate the archaeological value of the sites for just one artifact,"
Alva says. "To the looters and exporters the value is just to find
some object for cash. But they are really destroying our world heritage."
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- For archaeologists and historians, the
surroundings where relics are discovered and the origins of those relics
can be even more important source than the relics themselves.
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- "It's a combination of knowing where
an object was made and where it was found - those are the building blocks
of history," says Dorie Reents Budet, an archaeologist who also works
with the Smithsonian Material Science Lab. "Artifacts are wonderful,
and you can get a lot of information from studying them, but that's only
about 5 percent of the information," she says. "It is the context
that is important."
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- Grave robbers, however, care only about
one thing - money.
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- Shipping documents for the crate in Miami
declared the value of the "Peruvian handicrafts" at about $2,200,
Customs officials say. In reality, the 150 artifacts would likely have
brought in several million dollars, experts say.
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- Some items in the Miami crate were from
the same ancient mud-brick pyramid at Sipan that Alva made famous. His
discovery of an intact royal burial chamber was a major breakthrough that
has been called the Western Hemisphere's equivalent of the 1922 discovery
of King Tutankhamen's tomb in Egypt.
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- But grave robbers almost beat him to
the site. He began digging only after locals plundered a smaller chamber
in the same pyramid. They reportedly carried away sacks filled with gold
jewelry. Only part of it was recovered. Most is believed to have been smuggled
onto the world market.
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- In 1994, some of the pieces showed up
in a Sotheby's auction catalog. They were valued at $4,000 to $7,000 each.
But before any bidding took place, U.S. authorities seized the jewelry
and returned it to Peru. The officials cited a treaty between Peru and
the United States that outlaws any trade in pre-Columbian Peruvian artifacts
without Peru's approval.
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- The same treaty is now being cited to
authorize the return of the artifacts seized in 1995 in Miami. U.S. officials
expect that because no one has claimed the antiquities, they will soon
be returned to Peru. Such treaties are seen as one means to fight the illicit
trade in artifacts. But experts say any attempt to stop the flow of this
contraband must also address economic needs of locals who see antiquities
as a means to feed their families.
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- The demand for artifacts must also be
attacked by encouraging collectors, auction houses, and museums to refuse
to buy antiquities they suspect were looted.
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- The problem is that historically even
the world's major museums built their collections by buying pillaged relics.
By one estimate 90 percent of all ancient artifacts in the most prestigious
American and European museums were stolen.
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- But now some museums and professional
groups are adopting tougher ethical standards to help stem the flow of
pillaged artifacts. The Archaeological Institute of America in Boston asks
that collectors, curators, and auction houses demand proof that items were
legally excavated and exported or solid evidence that the objects were
owned prior to 1970 when the United Nations enacted a ban on illicit artifact
trade.
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