Looted antiquities are in the spotlight in new digital museum | Science | AAAS
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Looted antiquities are in the spotlight in new digital museum
Team behind the Museum of Looted Antiquities talks to Science about tracking repatriated artifacts and why you don’t need to step foot in a museum to learn about the antiquities black market
26 JUN 2024 5:00 PM ET - BY VIVIAN LA
Containing an excerpt from one of the world’s oldest works of literature, the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet was repatriated from the United States to Iraq in 2021.KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS
Browse through the collection of the new Museum of Looted Antiquities and you’ll find notable relics with long histories of being moved between countries, such as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet. The clay tablet dates back 3500 years and preserves cuneiform text referring to the world’s oldest piece of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh. It was looted from an Iraqi museum during the 1991 Gulf War and displayed in the Museum of the Bible until 2021, when the tablet went back to Iraq after a legal dispute.
The tablet’s journey is front and center at the new Museum of Looted Antiquities, which charts the travels and repatriation of some of the world’s most iconic artifacts. Rather than walking through exhibit halls, however, visitors click through digital collections to learn how looted artifacts are returned to their original country or other rightful owner.
Launched in early June, the digital museum tracks repatriated artifacts to better understand the black market of the antiquities trade, which the museum team estimates to be worth $2.5 billion, calculated from values listed in court documents, auction records, and other such sources. Demands for the repatriation of stolen artifacts have increased worldwide as formerly colonized countries confront former colonizers over past actions, and interest from law enforcement in illegal trading grows.
The museum includes display pages on 100 artifacts, chosen for their extensive online records and diverse backgrounds. But the real focus is the data attached to more than 800 repatriation cases involving nearly 1 million items, including data on active trafficking networks, looting details, and alleged smuggler names. Researchers can contribute artifact images and information, which then get reviewed by museum staff. The idea is for the museum to double as a collaborative research project, says museum co-founder Jason Felch, a former investigative journalist who reported on the antiquities market for the Los Angeles Times for a decade. Felch and a nonprofit he co-founded, the Achilles Research Group, are funding the effort. Scholars and graduate students in law, art, and heritage research have expressed interest in the data, says team member Katherine Davidson, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Carleton University. As a heritage researcher, Davidson looks at how loss of culture—such as looting during colonialism—impacts affected communities.
Science spoke with Davidson and Felch about the museum’s potential for research on the antiquities trade. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: Why is this museum necessary and what’s its scientific value?
Jason Felch: We’re trying to build the first reliable data source about the illicit antiquities trade. It’s really important to know the basic parameters of that black market in order to inform policy decisions and understand what we’re reckoning with.
To my knowledge, nobody has collected trafficking data from around the globe or focused on the issue as a global phenomenon. Most experts focus on trafficking [data] in specific regions.
Many times, when museums return looted antiquity, they delete that information from their website, and data about that [object’s journey] disappears. Our goal is to collect this data and preserve it in a way that will allow us to do some novel analysis of these cases. People who have been following this issue recognize the need to keep track of these repatriations.
Katherine Davidson: These data are useful for archaeologists and anthropologists like myself to understand the different ways in which heritage crime has an impact on descendant communities. This case about the Tlingit Totem Pole is a good example. It was taken [from the Teikweidi clan in Alaska] and returned a century later when the community asked for it back. [It’s] an example of heritage crime disrupting the relationship between the community and this totem pole, which is an important part of northwest Indigenous traditions. These totem poles are considered relatives and so for these important heritage objects to be returned is a very special moment.
Q: Why look at only repatriated artifacts?
J.F.: Each [repatriated item] is an adjudicated case. The facts are broadly agreed upon and in the public record and are based on open-source information.
[Also,] there’s been a sharp increase in repatriations within the last 20 years. Every day there are news reports about objects being sent back from museums and seized from dealers and auction houses.
Q: What is the biggest takeaway from the data you have so far?
J.F.: The most important data that we have is estimates of the market. A paper last year [showed] that existing estimates for the size of the illicit antiquities trade are largely made up. What we’ve done is create the first estimates of the size of the black market.
We can measure the value of more than half of the repatriations in our data set. And from that, come up with a solid [total value] of repatriated objects that we have [financial] records for. If you extrapolate the [average] value per object to the rest of the objects, the total value of the illicit trade for which we have records is about $2.5 billion.
Q: How can scholars get involved, and what is the review process for case summaries like?
J.F.: Our goal is to use this collaborative process to bring people in, share aspects of the data that are not public, and allow people to use this data to do novel research. There’s lots of sophisticated analyses that we’re going to be able to do on some of the financial and economic trends in the illicit antiquities trade.
K.D.: We work directly with authors to send versions [of cases] back and forth. A museum team member reviews the record for accuracy. Because it’s open source, data sources need to be provided and we go over the sources and verify them for accuracy.
Q: How does this project challenge the way researchers think about museums?
K.D.: Museums are sometimes seen as these mausoleums of history, of information. But a digital museum is the kind of thing I think heritage researchers really need—a global collaborative. That has a lot of promise for being able to level up our research and [for] identifying networks and solutions to help to combat heritage crime.
J.F.: The study of how objects got to museums is a relatively young field, and one that is really increasing as people become more aware of colonial-era decisions made to build these collections, often [through violence]. There’s a hunger for more information.