ABSTRACT
The recent restitution of antiquities from several major American museums and the trial in Italy of former Getty antiquities curator Marion True and art dealer Robert Hecht have focused public attention on the illegal trade in looted antiquities to an extent rarely seen in the past. 1 The looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad in April 2003 and the even more disastrous large-scale looting of archaeological sites in southern Iraq since the beginning of the current Gulf War have brought the devastating effects of the international market in looted antiquities into even starker relief. 2 The looting of archaeological sites and the dismemberment of ancient monuments are problems that afflict countries as wealthy as the United States and the United Kingdom and as poor as Mali and Bolivia. Recent revelations concerning the functioning of the art market and the acquisition of antiquities with unknown origins now demonstrate that the looting of archaeological sites is a well-organized big business motivated primarily by profit.
