The Forum

Sell the Dump

Most people are not aware that shards (broken pottery pieces)—once registered in logs, photographed or drawn in notebooks—are usually put into a discard pile (dump) at excavations. How much better to label these pieces and sell them to tourists, collectors, museums and universities to help fund the digs. Locals could be employed, thereby giving them work and perhaps a sense of pride in their nation’s past—and making them less likely to loot.

Criminalizing Curiosity

Much of Professor Colin Renfrew’s most recent letter in the Looting Forum (sidebar to The Forum, AO 06:02) is convincing, but there are certain troubling loose ends.