Our universal museums, in turn, collect, study, and display both works of art and antiquities, including antiquities that were excavated, generally displaying the latter as if they were works of art. So, for example, while we do at least sometimes distinguish “antiquities” from “antiques” in everyday speech, we very seldom distinguish “archaeological materials” from either, and under “antiquities” we include all sorts of ancient artifacts and artworks that were never buried, forgotten, and subsequently excavated. The underlying assumption, that archaeological materials and artworks are the same kind of things, is deeply embedded in our language and our cultural institutions.
As the title of this volume indicates, the topic of archaeological looting is usually thought of as a subset of the larger category of art crime, analyzable using the same general approaches as those used to describe and model the theft of artworks.
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