Archaeological looting

Archaeological looting is the illicit removal of artifacts from an archaeological site. Such looting is the major source of artifacts for the antiquities market. Looting typically involves either the illegal exportation of artifacts from their country of origin or the domestic distribution of looted goods.

Quotes

• While I have seen few museum pieces for sale in Pakistan, there are a number of artifacts on the market that have recently been dug up in Afghanistan. Mujahideen commanders in all parts of the country are involved in this illicit activity, most notably in the east near the Hadda museum. An important Buddhist pilgrimage site in the second through seventh centuries, Hadda has been totally stripped of its exquisite clay sculptures in the Gandhara syle, which combines Bactrian, Greco-Roman, and Indian elements. Looted artifacts from Faryab and Balkh provinces in the north allegedly include jewel-encrusted golden crowns and statues, orbs (locally described as "soccer balls") studded with emeralds and all manner of exotic ephemera, as well as fluted marble columns similar to those found at Ai Khanoum in the northeastern province of Takhar. These are being carted away to embellish the houses of the newly powerful, according to witnesses.
  • Nancy Dupree, "Museum Under Siege", Archaeology (20 April 1998), Online

• You have to remember that the items that have been stolen from the Museum or have been plundered, are not owned by only one person and usually not only by Afghans. It is usually one or two Afghans with five or six Pakistani partners. And the underground stolen art business in Pakistan is just as well organised and it is just as dangerous as the drug business. In fact, I have heard some people say that as far as the end-result is concerned, it’s even more profitable than drugs.
  • Nancy Dupree (2000), on the stolen art market in Pakistan, as quoted in Dilip K. Chakrabarti, Archaeology in the Third World: A History of Indian Archaeology since 1947 (2003)