LOS ANGELES — Despite increased awareness and global attempts at enforcement, the illicit antiquities trade has grown into a $4-billion market that has left behind a wide swath of economic, environmental and cultural degradation.
To slow the growth of this black market, financial incentives can be created that will promote legal discovery and conservation while mitigating the effects of looting, according to a new report from the Milken Institute.
The report, Financial Innovations for Developing Archaeological Discovery and Conservation, is the result of meeting at the Institute earlier this year with a diverse group of players in the antiquities trade, including economists, museum representatives, attorneys, collectors, antiquities dealers and members of the archaeology community.
Participants examined how market-based financial innovations could help stem the black market on antiquities by changing incentives that would create cultural and economic value to all stakeholders.
"An open, more efficient market can help address many of the problems that plague the antiquities trade, including poverty, corruption and environmental and cultural degradation," said Glenn Yago, Director of Capital Markets at the Milken Institute. "The whole chain of events, from country of origin to museum or personal collector, needs a new set of legal market-based rewards."
The report offers three possible solutions:
- long-term leases for museums and exhibitions
- museum/collector partnership-sponsored digs
- the design and development of archaeological development bonds
As stated in the report, the legal market needs to provide incentives and rewards along each step in the series of activities from discovery to display. The process of selling and transporting antiquity, made easier by advances in online trading platforms and ease of transport, slides back and forth between legal and illegal paths many times before the antiquity reaches its final destination, making this market hard to regulate and enforce.
"Unfortunately, countries that are rich with antiquities and archaeology are often economically underdeveloped," said Larry Rothfield, co-founder and research affiliate of the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago, which assisted in organizing the Lab. "Many of them lack the resources to enforce basic anti-looting laws, let alone implement best practices or establish a legal industry in support of cultural heritage."
The report proposes a variety of innovations as well as best practices. They focus on providing more capital to countries of origin to develop and enforce protections and increasing the cultural experience and understanding of collectors and appreciators.
The report gives in depth explanations of each of the proposed solutions, which are summarized here:
Long-term exhibit leases — Lending is a common practice among museums. Building on the existing practices, the process could be enhanced to increase revenue for countries of origin. This might include longer leasing periods, lease renewal options and auction of leasing rights. This increased funding could support legal excavation and restoration in the country of origin.
Develop museum/collector partnerships to sponsor archaeological digs — As the report notes, there is an existing bias against including collectors in museum and country of origin-sponsored excavations. However, collectors represent the majority of the demand in the illicit trade and designing schemes that include the collectors in financial support and leasing options, while respecting patrimony laws, could redirect billions of dollars away from the black market and into the regulated market.
Introduce archaeological development bonds — Just as governments, nonprofit organizations and regional authorities issue bonds to finance a variety of projects and services, governments and private-public partnerships could design and issue a long-term, interest-bearing debt instrument to create capital for discovery and conservation.
The full report can be found here.
Financial Innovations Labs are part of the Milken Institute′s continuing leadership in promoting financial innovations to help solve ongoing social, economic and environmental challenges.