[AlotOfReading]

Any implication that archaeologists are remotely interested in gold or that there's monetary profit to be had from excavations is almost always destructive to the cause of heritage programs.

I've done anti-looting programs in various places around the world as part of excavations. The belief that gold and other precious artifacts will be found is one of the most common causes/justifications for looting. Moreover, the belief that archaeologists are motivated or will in any way help to find precious metals is utterly corrosive to our ability to work with local authorities because it reduces trust and incentivises preemptive looting whenever we show up, among other things.

Let me emphasize this: finding precious metals sucks. It means you have a lot more paperwork, it means you get a lot more looting, it means a lot of government interest, it means treasure hoard laws apply, future excavation decisions become far more political, etc. It's a massive pain in the butt all around.

[lazyasciiart]

> I've done anti-looting programs in various places around the world as part of excavations.

This sounds fascinating, do you know of anywhere I can read about this kind of work?

[AlotOfReading]

It's way more boring than you're thinking. The goal is to reduce looting by

1) educating people about the harm it does

2) convince the audience that whatever goals might be sought in looting are unlikely to be met (profit, cool-stuff-factor, "helping archaeologists", etc)

3) Ensuring site security and getting legal frameworks in place to monitor/enforce heritage preservation.

The first is usually pretty easy. The NPS used to have this video called "Assault on Time" that they show to people. People who don't want to fill out requisition forms from the government usually just show pictures of looted sites. I had a professor who liked to use pictures of Mimbres sites in New Mexico. I prefer to use Ai-Khanoum because the before [0] and after [1] is so stark.

For the second, usually this takes the form of inviting locals out to see what you're excavating and showing them any finds. This will usually be rocks, charcoal, lithics, and other profoundly unprofitable things. It also humanizes the historical people to help locals build personal connections with the sites. In a lot of cases you'll also be hiring locals to help with the excavations, so they know there's nothing hidden because they're present for everything.

This usually isn't effective on the "collectors" and "metal detectorists" (see e.g. Coping with Site Looting [2]), so other things are necessary. That tends to be site monitoring and heritage protection laws, which depend on the country and situation. Sometimes it's best to just invite local officials to the site. Meeting with important officials can be very inconvenient though. Ever tried getting wrinkles out of a suit in a field site 2 days from the nearest city? Those clothes did not survive the expedition.

That's just the lowest level of cooperation that has to happen as well. The key is having embedded experts making connections with the people who can implement those laws and fines, then enforce them. This is also the level most affected by the budgetary constraints of heritage programs globally. Last I checked, there were fewer than 100 positions for this sort of work available in the US every year. Some countries may have less than a dozen people total.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ai_Khanoum_landscape_phot...

[1] https://m.psecn.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000lqdxnldw3QE/s/...

[2] http://npshistory.com/series/archeology/seac/rapp/1.pdf