Antiquities smuggling is growing problem

Looting ancient graves for cash
Adding to the problem, too often people who live in poor areas of Latin America, the Middle East and Africa are willing to loot ancient graves for cash.

"A lot of pieces are disappearing," said Edouard Planche, an assistant program specialist for UNESCO in France. "And these poorer countries have less capacity to control the illegal smuggling."

Many of the smuggled goods are intercepted at U.S. airports and cargo ports.

Sometimes Customs and Border Protection agents find antiquities in suitcases. At other times, agents will get tips about smuggled items from confidential informants or by trolling sites such as eBay.

If agents are suspicious, they call academic experts for help.

Carol Damian, interim director of the Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami, said she's gotten a steady stream of calls in recent years to examine Pre-Colombian artifacts smuggled into South Florida.

Sometimes the goods are fake, but occasionally, the rare treasures are breathtaking.

Once in the late 1990s, she was called to assess 15 crates smuggled from Peru — and they contained mummies, shrunken heads and gold.

"It's the past, it's exotic, it's mysterious," said Damian.

Cases are difficult to prosecute
The cases can be difficult to prosecute.

Federal officials say it's sometimes hard to prove a person or company knew they were smuggling illegal items.

"It's very difficult to prove criminal intent," said Joseph Cangro, a cultural artifact expert at ICE.

Museums and galleries, meanwhile, are trying to slow the tide of cultural artifacts entering the United States.

This summer, the American Association of Museums released guidelines that said institutions should make ownership history records publicly available for all ancient art and archaeological artifacts in their collections and rigorously research new acquisitions. Similar guidelines were published earlier by the Association of Art Museum Directors.

Museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, have agreed in recent years to return artifacts to Italy that its government says were looted or stolen.

"Each piece represents a building or a site or a tomb and the complete destruction of it and all the information it could have given us," said Karen Olsen Bruhns, a professor emeritus in anthropology at San Francisco State University. "It's gone forever."

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