Reliable statistics about the size of the trade in antiquities and the seriousness of the associated damage are notoriously elusive. This is because the trade is clandestine and there are no organizations charged with gathering relevant information about damaged archaeological sites and monuments. Nevertheless, some quantitative information about destruction ‘on the ground’ has been provided by archaeological surveys of regions and individual sites. In 1983, one study showed that 59% of all Mayan sites in Belize had been damaged by looters. Between 1989 and 1991, a regional survey in Mali discovered 830 archaeological sites, but 45% had already been damaged, 17% badly. In 1996, a sample of 80 was revisited and the incidence of looting had increased by 20%. A survey in a district of northern Pakistan showed that nearly half the Buddhist shrines, stupas, and monasteries had been badly damaged or destroyed by illegal excavations. In 2001, it was reported that 14% of known archaeological sites in Andalusia, Spain, had been damaged by illicit excavation. Between 1940 and 1968, it is estimated that 100 000 holes were dug into the Peruvian site of Batan Grande, and that in 1965 the looting of a single tomb produced something like 40 kg of gold jewelry, which accounts for about 90% of the Peruvian gold now found in collections around the world. In 2001, an archaeological survey of the area of ancient Lydia in western Turkey discovered 397 Iron Age tumuli. Ninety percent showed signs of looting and 52 tumuli had been completely destroyed. A survey of the Lower Uliia Valley in Honduras found that 60% of the 507 sites discovered had been damaged by looting and that 15% had been totally destroyed.
World History
