Collector as Looter (and not just by analogy!)

This story is over a year old but I just ran across it and thought it worth sharing, since it is rare that a wealthy collector even admits to buying looted artifacts, much less to having looted them himself, and from a World Heritage site to boot:

In an interview with German magazine Welt-online prominent Austrian-German media manager Helmut Thoma admitted the looting of a grave in Syrian UNESCO world heritage site of Palmyra 30 years ago.

Thoma tells how a dealer in Damaskus took him to a grave chamber in Palmyra and invited him to crawl inside. "It was dark and there were snakes..." Thoma says. But his inner Indiana Jones was stronger than his worries. After a small entrance there were several graves, decorated with frescoes. "I've chosen these ones here in my living room." Afterwards these antiques were smuggled through the customs at Frankfurt. Today this piece – probably the closing stone of a hypogaeum – is presented in Thoma’s living room among other objects. “Most more recently acquired pieces”, Thoma said, he had bought from art dealers.

German and Austrian archaeologists protest against this crime against international law and demand that the objects have to be brought back to Syria.

CNN Report on Pompeii: $ Going to Digging and Large Events Instead of Conservation

CNN reports on the problems at Pompeii. One major cause is a dramatic reduction in the Ministry of Culture's budget for conservation, cut in half between 2000 and 2008. The money seems instead to have gone to produce and promote theatre and shows at Pompeii, which is unconscionable by any standard, but also to archaeological excavations:

 “The financial resources available for restoration and conservation have always been negligible. Instead it is preferred to dig, rather than preserve what has already been discovered,” explained former superintendant of the ancient city, Pietro Giovanni Guzzo.

The archaeological community faces a serious ethical problem here, as in Iraq and elsewhere, when limited resources are being misallocated in ways that support archaeological discovery but at the cost of leaving sites to the mercy of nature, looters, and tourists. Would a boycott on digging by archaeologists until and unless adequate funding for site conservation and protection is put in place do any good?