Gentleman smugglers: towards a new history of ancient West Asian archaeology

Instances of modern, large-scale looting and smuggling of antiquities in West Asia are usually treated as ordinary chapters in millennia-long object biographies, or as extraordinary acts carried out by impoverished local populations. Yet the establishment of systems of large-scale looting and smuggling is a specific historical development that can be traced back to nineteenth-century colonialism and the onset of European excavations in the region. This is when the age-old habits of reusing and repurposing ancient objects were drastically transformed into transactional practices for monetary gain. Moreover, these latter practices were often initiated, committed, encouraged and sustained not by impoverished local populations but by the ostensibly most upstanding of citizens: diplomats, military officers, engineers, archaeologists, curators, museum directors, collectors, representatives of auction houses, university presidents and professors. Once we begin to regard looting and smuggling not as a side note but an integral part of our own disciplinary history, we will notice that our experience and understanding of ancient West Asian art, as scholars, students and members of the public, has fundamentally been shaped by these troubled histories. By integrating local sources into an analysis of three well-known yet surprisingly understudied cases featuring Luigi Palma di Cesnola, Wallis Budge and Edgar James Banks, this article argues for a new history of ancient West Asian archaeology – a history that does not solely enumerate celebrated excavation campaigns but critically engages with the historical intertwinement of the discipline with large-scale looting and smuggling of antiquities.