Events Calendar

Title: License to Sell: The Legal Trade of Antiquities

Time and place: Feb. 16 at 5 p.m. on Zoom https://uiowa.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEqdOGspjstGdNkHpVQ23deRCBZ1rZp5UGF

Lecture abstract:

In 2002, I embarked on a PhD adventure addressing the connection between the looting of sites and the market for antiquities, and whether or not a legalized trade in antiquities reduces the looting of archaeological sites, a remedy long suggested by the dealing and collecting communities. In tracking how artifacts go from the ground to the consumer I became increasingly interested in establishing a connection between demand (the purchase of archaeological artifacts) and the looting of archaeological sites. Moving from the mound to the mantelpiece or museum, objects leave local sites, cross borders, are laundered, ultimately ending up legitimately available for sale. This lecture focuses on the uncomfortable intersection of legal and right. Although it is legal to sell artifacts in licensed antiquities markets such as Israel, is it right to do so when artifacts may have associated misleading origin stories, deceitful market participants, and willfully blind buyers?

Bio: 

Morag Kersel is an Associate Professor and Director of the Museum Studies Minor Program at DePaul University.  One of the foremost authorities on the antiquities market, Professor Kersel received an MA in Historic Preservation from the University of Georgia and a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge. She is co-director of the Galilee Prehistory Project and the Follow the Pots Project, which traces the movement of Early Bronze Age pots from the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan.