Modernity and antiquity are coming together on eBay…or are they? Whereas archeologists assumed that eBay would make the illicit trade of antiquities that much easier to perpetrate, it turns out that it has had quite a different affect—and the objects are not really all that antiquated.
In an article from the journal of the Archaeological Institute of America , a professor of anthropology at UCLA, Charles Stanish, writes, “How is it possible? The short answer is that many of the primary ‘producers’ of the objects have shifted from looting sites to faking antiquities.”
It’s all based on economics, you see. Before the internet, the people who actually dug up the finds made very little money. It was the people who restored them, found the buyers, forged the papers and got the items past customs officials who made the big bucks. But now the people who might have done the digging in the past can much more easily turn a profit by returning to the crafts of their ancestors and just creating reproductions. “Using local materials and drawing on their cultural knowledge, small manufacturers can produce pieces that are, in some cases, remarkably accurate reproductions of actual artifacts,” Stanish explains. “The really smart ones create an ever-so-slightly modified version that have the look and feel of an authentic ancient object.”
Transportation is also much easier now, since fake artifacts aren’t breaking any laws they can use mainstream shipping channels. “One vendor on eBay advertises a Greek marble head dated to around 300 B.C. For this ‘rare artifact,’ the shipping costs from Cyprus are a whopping $35 to anywhere in the United States.”
Though you may or may not be getting ancient artifacts with modern internet speed, Stanish says, “the Web has forever distorted the antiquities trafficking market in a positive way.”