Archeology gets inadvertent help from eBay
Ars Technica reports how eBay has made stealing antiquities less profitable:
By any reasonable analysis, eBay should have been a nightmare for archaeologists, allowing looted goods a new outlet, one that eliminated any cloak-and-dagger aspects of the illicit trade in antiquities by allowing the trade to flourish in plain sight, hidden by the anonymity of users’ accounts and the sheer volume of goods changing hands. But, according to at least one archaeologist who specializes in the civilizations of pre-Columbian South America, that hasn’t been the case at all. Instead, by swamping the market with fakes, eBay has made forgery a far more lucrative business, and destroyed the economics of looting.
Charles Stanish, a professor of anthropology at UCLA, argues that making fakes and selling them on eBay is easier than having to steal the real stuff. He writes
Back in the pre-eBay days, the cost of acquiring and selling an antiquity was high. The actual looter was usually paid little, but various middlemen down the line added huge costs. During my 25 years of working in the Andes, I have often seen this dynamic at work. In years past, transporting an object was a big expense, even for portable artifacts, and the potential for arrest added to the total cost of doing business. In addition, the expense of authentication, conservation, and occasional restoration of the pieces, made buying and selling quality antiquities a wealthy person’s vice.
He goes on to say that what eBay has done is to provide a convenient marketplace for fakes (sold as originals, of course) :
But a very curious thing has happened. It appears that electronic buying and selling has actually hurt the antiquities trade.
How is it possible? The short answer is that many of the primary “producers” of the objects have shifted from looting sites to faking antiquities.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.