Most of this edition of "The Antiquities Market" focuses on legal issues: legislation, interpretation, and enforcement. These topics have in fact filled most of the space of this section over the years and will undoubtedly continue to receive much of our attention. Nevertheless, as chronicled in these pages, the record of substantive accomplishment using legalistic approaches has been poor.
Thus, this time, order of precedence goes to two important achievements in the field of ethics. Real progress in diminishing the illicit traffic in antiquities and the looting of archaeological sites, I suggest, will ultimately come not through law enforcement, but through such ethical codes and the influence they exert on societal norms as a whole.
Included in this edition of "The Antiquities Market" is a section entitled
Several conferences and meetings over the past year have focused attention on legal approaches to the control of the illicit traffic in antiquities and works of art. In view of the difficulties being encountered in the application of the Cultural Property Implementation Act, as discussed in the previous article, such scrutiny is a welcome development. The realization that the CCPIA has not solved the entire problem, combined with better understanding of the full legal background of the issue, may well lead to fresh and constructive new initiatives. Reports on three of these events follow.
The final two articles in this section deal with practical enforcement of laws protecting antiquities. They vividly demonstrate the range of efforts---from the most local to the vastly international---that are being made.