The market in ancient human artifacts has always had a supply problem. Apart from the resale of objects in the possession of collectors---objects, that is, already in slow circulation---maintaining a profitable market tempo has left dealers with two major options. One possibility is to attempt to create new categories of objects deemed worthy of sale, purchase, and collection; this obviously involves the manipulation of tastes and perceptions so as to imbue previously disdained or ignored objects with new value. The other possibility is far more notorious: the encouragement of continued mining of known sources for objects of established saleability. The connection, overt or covert, between dealers and those non-archaeologists who dig for artifacts is well known.
Far less understood are the diggers themselves. These people, usually called looters, are strangely anonymous in the literature on the illicit market in antiquities. Their names are not known, or, if known, not published. Usually only the empty trenches and gaping holes they leave behind are all that is left to mark their progress. For the most part, discussions of why the past is put up for sale conclude (without more than cursory investigation) that the economic straits in which these suppliers find themselves are so dire that looting is an attractive solution.
The following article by David P. Staley seeks to develop a better understanding of the market's supply side through a look at the lives of a group of Bering Sea natives who engage in what Staley calls ``subsistence digging.''Certain inhabitants of St. Lawrence Island spend some time every year excavating and selling ancient ivory and other artifacts, an activity which brings them some profit. These objects command high prices when they reach the centers of the art market. Recently, a New York dealer was asking $17,500 for an ivory anthropomorphic drum handle, with inlaid metal eyes, said to date to A.C. 600 and to have been excavated on St. Lawrence Island. The dealer, Jeffrey R. Myers, apparently makes a point of spending a part of his summers on St. Lawrence, which is when subsistence digging is done.
Staley's article will also be of interest to those who enjoy the ethical dilemma of who owns the past. Since St. Lawrence is owned by its natives, their excavations are not illegal. Since they are unearthing the possessions of their own ancestors, can any outsider object? Main Author Listing