Proposal to Amend ASOR’s Policy on Preservation and Protection of Archaeological Resources

(See Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 309, p. 2)

For Section III thereof, substitute the following:

III. Looting

Looting is a worldwide scourge—in the Near East as elsewhere. ASOR supports all efforts to reduce looting. Archaeologists should take all available steps to reduce, if not eliminate, looting. At the same time, consideration must be given to retrieving from the antiquities market artifacts of exceptional scholarly or artistic significance.

A. ASOR discourages the collecting of antiquities, except as to items that should be rescued and, as it were, ransomed. Such items include artifacts of significant scholarly value (such as the Dead Sea Scrolls) or artistic value (such as a Euphronios vase). Such items should be purchased only with the express aim of making them available for scholarly study and publication and eventual exhibit in a public venue. The failure to rescue such items by purchase may lead to their disappearance forever from the public record. Other than such objects and objects that have a provenance traceable before 1970 (the date of the adoption of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property), collecting antiquities should be condemned.