Criminalising the Market in Illicit Antiquities: an Evaluation of the Dealing in Cultural Objects

Mackenzie, S. and Green, P. (2009), ‘Criminalising the Market in Illicit Antiquities: an Evaluation of the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003 in England and Wales’, in S. Mackenzie and P. Green (eds.), Criminology and Archaeology: Studies in Looted Antiquities (Oxford: Hart).

As our editorial introduction to this volume suggests, source country legal controls have only been proven of significant value in relation to their place in an international network of control, and it has gradually become apparent to commentators on the illicit market in antiquities that there are other points in such an international network of control where intervention may be more effective than at source (O’Keefe, 1997; Polk, 2000). Strategies of regulation at the demand end of the chain of supply have been thought potentially capable of achieving a sanitising effect on the market, and it is under this broad philosophy of demandreduction as applied to illicit antiquities that the 2003 Act appears.

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