13th April 2010, 11:07 AM
Dinosaur Wrote:At the risk of abuse from all directions, there's always the (rather thorny) option of selling off less academically interesting finds to finance future work? Maybe done by a central body with the money used to subsidise research excavations etc? -
If the items don't add to the general knowledge, and have been photographed, documented and the information is stored in a digitally accessible form, then perhaps this approach would help curb the incentive for illegal sales of artifacts. I'd love to own a few beads, and I know that I'm not alone in wanting to hold a bit of history, but I won't buy because there's no way to tell where the items came from, or what they could have told us if they had been properly excavated.
I don't view all artifacts as sacred, but it would be a far better approach to have some sort of information from them before they're disbursed through underground (no pun intended, honest!) channels to people who not only have the interest in artifacts but also the money to buy what they want, including the ability to purchase without any concerns about legalities.
Surely, it would make some of the items seen up for sale elsewhere less attractive, if there were a system put in place to give some certification to the items.