ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we examine how object recovery actions are used as a restorative but also possibly deterrent response to the antiquities trade. We also consider the application of normative or ethical derivatives of legal controls through self-regulation. But we continue to recognise that within the wider regulatory context, law plays only one part in controlling the illicit antiquities trade. Thus we combine our reflections on white-collar crime in Chapter 5 with the core imperatives of our discussion of the economic and social modes of crime prevention in Chapter 3, to present in the second half of this chapter a discussion of what an ethical consumption market might look like for the antiquities trade, and how it might be encouraged and enforced. In so doing, we move beyond a strict prescriptive view of what regulation might entail, and introduce ideas of how negotiation and compromise might encourage voluntary participation in a demonstrably licit antiquities market—one that might discourage and even actively work against illicit trade. Our proposition in this regard takes forward our prior discussion of information in the market, suggesting how market transparency might be improved without encroaching upon the personal and commercial confidentiality of legitimate market actors.
