Looting Forum

The following letter by Archaeology Odyssey editor Hershel Shanks is part of a continuing dialogue with the distinguished British archaeologist Lord Colin Renfrew of Cambridge University that began in our July/August 2002 issue and has alternated in issues thereafter.

Dear Lord Renfrew,

“J’accuse, Mr. Shanks, Je vous accuse.” So you write in your latest public missive to me on the problem of looting (Looting Forum, sidebar to The Forum, AO 06:02). Accusing me in French, you invoke the famous letter “J’accuse” written by the novelist Emile Zola in defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had been convicted of treason by an in camera military court and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in a blatant act of anti-Semitism.

In short, my position regarding looting is, you suggest, immoral to the point of justifying a comparison to anti-Semitism.

We began this exchange of correspondence when I wrote an open letter to you saying that I disagreed with your published position, but that “you sound like a very reasonable fellow, although quite impassioned … I thought we might engage in a reasoned, if perhaps impassioned, exchange” (Editors’ Page, AO 05:04). At first, the editors characterized your response as “a model of respect and thoughtful ideas” (The Forum, AO 05:06).