Abstract

Christopher H. Roosevelt and Christa Luke
Mysterious Shepherds and Mysterious Treasures: The Culture of Looting in Lydia, Western Turkey
Journal of Field Archaeology 31 (2006) 185--198

In the 1960s looters plundered a number of lavish burial chambers within tumuli (burial mounds) in Lydia (western Turkey). The material eventually surfaced in 1984 as part of the ÒEast Greek TreasureÓ exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Turkey took action to retrieve the material, and in 1993 the so-called Lydian Hoard was returned. While details of the looting of the tumuli from which the Hoard came have been reported extensively, this paper situates the plunder of the Lydian Hoard in the context of a culture of looting, emphasizing other contemporary accounts of plunder in Lydia. Through a study of museum archives, formal and informal excavation reports, and conversations with local landowners and farmers that occurred during surveys in 2001 and 2005, we explore how and why people have plundered Lydian sites, especially tumuli dating from the 7th to 4th centuries B.C. We focus on the region of Bin TepeÑthe largest tumulus cemetery in western AnatoliaÑwhere an abundance of once rich tumuli inspire enduring hopes of finding treasure. The results of the recent surveys demonstrate that tumulus looting continues in Lydia, and especially in Bin Tepe, despite the fact that most, if not all, such monuments have been plundered since Roman times. In addition to offering details of the development of looting in Lydia, we broach the subject of how archaeological projects and illicit digging interact in causal relationships. Our main question was whether or not archaeological fieldwork unwillingly contributes to plunder. Our research indicates that it does.

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