News

The Trafficking Culture Society is pleased to announce it’s Fall 2015 seminar series, which will explore how students and researchers from art history, museum studies, archaeology, criminology, and law, both at Glasgow and within the wider world, are affected by issues of looting, trafficking, collection, and exhibition of illicit cultural and art objects. How do these issues affect you and...

The members of the Trafficking Culture project will be presenting a number of papers at the European Association of Archaeologists Meeting in Glasgow on 3 Sept.

Annemiek Rhebergen, Emily Bushhold, and Matiana Gallegos will be presenting their research at Histories of Archaeology Research Network (HARN) conference in Glasgow on 1 September. Annemiek’s paper is entitled: “And they never came back” – Historical practices and current local views on archaeological work in Northwest Argentina Emily and Matiana, both current criminology...

The event, hosted by Kathmandu Metropolitan City and ImPACT! Productions, will take place at the Nepal Tourism board at 10:30 until noon. The talk is entitled: Stolen Gods: Criminological Approaches to the Illicit Trade in Antiquities from the Trafficking Culture Project Donna will present an overview of international illicit trade in antiquities from source to market. Using case studies from...

Jessica Dietzler was invited by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies to participate as a roundtable discussant in ‘Fighting Terrorist financing: the threat from Cultural Destruction and ISIS’. Discussion focussed on the need for new security strategies and international action to prevent extremism and its funding through the...

Project researcher Donna Yates will be in Kathmandu from 9 until 19 July to observe heritage site security measures following the country’s April earthquake.Yates will be learning from stakeholders, officials, and NGOs about their work on heritage protection. This is part of her greater focus on the theft, trafficking, and sale of Sacred Art. Donna welcomes contact from anyone in Nepal who...

Members of the Trafficking Culture Team will be attending The Association for Research into Crimes against Art  (ARCA) Interdisciplinary Art Crime Conference from 27 until 29 June in Amelia Italy. Their presentations are titled: “Perspectives on Crime and Crime Control Policy from the Trafficking Culture Project” Neil Brodie, Simon Mackenzie, and Donna Yates “Discovering and...

Neil Brodie, Donna Yates, and Emiline Smith will be presenting at the Art & Law: Art in Peril Interdisciplinary Conference being held at Pembroke College, Cambridge, on 22 and 23 June. They will be speaking in the “Lines that Divide” session. Emiline’s paper is entitled Cross-Border Cultural Property Crime in Hong Kong. Neil and Donna’s paper is entitled Cultural...

Neil Brodie and Donna Yates will be attending the 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in San Francisco from 15 until 19 April. We will be chairing a multidisciplinary session from 8am to 10:15am on Saturday, 18 April in room “Golden Gate 4”. All conference attendees are invited and we look forward to an interesting discussion. Investigating the trafficking of...

Trafficking Culture is pleased to announce a new section of our website. Tracking Illicit Antiquities will present brief case studies of the identification and return of illicit cultural objects identified in the seized photographic archives of convicted antiquities smugglers and dealers. Stemming from the work of our research Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis, this evidence is offered here to assist...

Emiline Smith will present ‘Cross-Border Cultural Property Trade in Hong Kong’

Neil Brodie will be delivering the keynote lecture at a conference entitled Archaeological Looting: Realities and Possibilities for New Policy Approaches to be held at the University of Chicago. Dr. Brodie will be speaking on Cultural Property Protection Policy Failure in Syria. The conference will be held on Friday, February 27 and Saturday, February 28 at the Regenstein Library, Room 122, 1100...

Neil Brodie will be speaking alongside a panel of experts on the antiquities trafficking and protection situation in Syria in an free and public event put on by the Council for British Research in the Levant. The event is free but attendees must register here: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/syrian-heritage-in-crisis-tickets-14895445679 Time: Friday, 16 January 2015 from 13:30 to 17:00...

Neil Brodie will be presenting at the international conference ‘Unmasking Ideology: the Vocabulary and Symbols of Colonial Archaeology’. The paper will be entitled ‘Cultural Internationalism or Cultural Colonialism? The Case of the Benin Bronzes and Ivories’ and will be given at the Harn Museum of Art Classroom at 14:00. The conference will take place from 8 until 11 January 2015.

Following the identification and withdrawal of the rare Sardinian idol in Christie’s, Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis, Research Assistant in Trafficking Culture, identified from convicted dealers’ photographic archives three more antiquities in Christie’s and one in Sotheby’s due to be auctioned in New York. In Christie’s, an Egyptian alabaster figural jug (lot 51), estimated at $150,000...

Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis, Research Assistant in Trafficking Culture, on Friday 21 November identified in the photograph archive of a dealer in illicit antiquities a rare marble Sardinian idol, due to be auctioned by Christie’s as lot 85 in their antiquities auction in New York on 11 December. The idol was the most expensive object in the auction, estimated at $800,000-1,200,000 and is part...

Neil Brodie will be giving the evening lecture at the international conference ‘Cultural Heritage in Danger: Illicit excavations and trade‘. The lecture will be entitled “Transnational Organised Crime and the Antiquities Trade” and will be given in the Rotunda of the Altes Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The conference will take place in Berlin, on 11 and 12 December...

We are pleased to announce the publication of a Special Issue of the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research edited by Simon Mackenzie and Neil Brodie: EJCPR: Special Issue on Trafficking Cultural Objects Volume 20, Issue 4, December 2014 Trafficking Cultural Objects: Introduction By Neil Brodie and Simon Mackenzie Provenance and Price: Autoregulation of the Antiquities Market? By Neil...

Simon Mackenzie and Donna Yates will be in San Francisco this week to present at the American Society of Criminology meeting. On Thursday 20 Nov, Simon and Donna will present papers in a session entitled “Art and Antiquities Trafficking“. Simon’s paper, written with Tess Davis and Blythe Bowman, is called “The Global Illicit Antiquities Trade as Economic Crime”.

Neil Brodie will be presenting and Donna Yates will serve as a discussant at “To publish or not to publish? A multidisciplinary approach to the politics, ethics and economics of ancient artefacts“