Looting the Past

Is looting sites wrong? If so, for whom? Does it hinder gaining knowledge of the past?

It is my opinion that looting is wrong. It is of course stealing. But how can you steal when you don't know who the objects belong to? Do they belong to the state? Do they belong to community? Do they belong to the person who owns that particular piece of land? Or do they belong to absolutly no one?

One of the greatest examples is the Maya people who still live in rural regions of Mexico. They are the descendents of the great Mayan Empire of the Mesoamerican Classical period, however they are not the "owners" of their own past. Archaeologists study the temples and take artefacts to museums, and sites are regulated by tourist boards of Mexico.

Try explaining to a descendent of the Maya that cultural heritage belongs to everyone. I don't think it will go over very well, especially when they are trying to own the very history that was raped and torn away from them during conquest and colonisation. If a Maya uncovers an artefact, it is my opinion that they can do what they want with it. If they want to keep it, fine. If they want to sell it to a museum or a collector, fine. If they want to keep it in the ground, fine. While I am very interested in Central and South American history, I do not have any claim to any indigenous artefacts. Have they not put up with enough over the centuries? And even now, they have to deal with tourisms and UNESCO telling them what they can and cannot do with their own history.

Looting can offer poor communities with a chance for monetary gain, however not being able to study the artefacts, these communities lose a sense of their past; the past of their ancestors.

However, without some cases of looting, authorities and archaeologists wouldn't be alerted to sites they would have otherwise not known about.

Indigenous peoples of the New World, including Australia, New Zealand, North America and South America do not believe that their past should be studied. Many indigenous groups feel that burial sites are still scared ground and their religious beliefs trump any archaeological investigations.

The Salt Lake Tribune recently posted an article about a man from Colorado pleading not guilty to smuggling illegal artefacts from state to state. Now, the article is very small and I wish more attention was paid to the defendents reasoning for having the artefacts in the first place. Depending on where the artefacts came from, the indigenous group is probably still a tribe and their invidual culture is still practiced. These artefacts were not only stolen from academics, archaeologists and historians but also from specific tribes who are desperately trying to cling onto their past.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13455117#



---

UNESCO tries to prohibit the purchase of illicitly and illegally but with all do respect, the UN can barely do anything. Let me take to extremes: they couldn't even prevent the gruesome genocide in Rwanda. Maybe governments should create their own laws, work with the people in the region positively. Guarantee compensation for artefacts found their provienance recorded.