Etruscan tombrobbers

[Sauron]

For liv.

Tale of Glorious Art and Not So Glorious Thieves
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

PERUGIA, Italy — As tomb heists go, it was an odd job.

The robbers were not professional tombaroli, the looters of ancient sites who have over the centuries despoiled countless graves in Italy. They were people, the authorities said, who had stumbled onto a trove of important Etruscan artifacts a decade ago while digging to build a garage in a villa just outside the city center here.

Rather than notify authorities, investigators say the looters divided up the stash and looked around for years before trying to cash in on their good fortune.

But two years ago, when the police were searching a home in Rome, they turned up a photograph of what appeared to be an illicit artifact. That investigation eventually led them to Perugia, and when the looters appeared ready to sell the artifacts this year, members of the police art theft squad moved quickly.

“We didn’t want to risk losing track of them” because “very important pieces like this would likely have ended up abroad because they are difficult to sell in Italy,” said Maj. Antonio Coppola, one of the investigators.

In a news conference on June 27 announcing the confiscations, Italian authorities described the seized objects — 21 delicately carved travertine marble urns dating to the Hellenistic period — as one of the “major finds” of recent history. Under Italian law, they are now property of the state and will eventually be installed in Perugia’s archaeological museum.

But archaeologists bemoan that they still lost something precious: the context the artifacts were found in.

In covering their tracks, the looters effectively wiped out the sort of information — the size of the tomb, the number of rooms, how the various urns and other artifacts were arranged — that scholars scour for information to reconstruct ancient civilizations.

“And we still don’t know where the tomb was — we think they built over it,” said Luana Cenciaioli, a local official with the cultural heritage authority, which has begun an exploratory dig in the area where it believes the tomb was located.

Though experts have found pieces of a sarcophagus, which was probably in the same room as the urns, they say it will be difficult to find the original tomb.

[livius drusus]

liv sees all.

[BrotherMan]

[But]

If someone finds something under his own garage, that person has the right to keep it or sell it. Delicately carved mumble urns, skulls of dinosaurs, trilobites, whatever. Oh woe is me, those precious works of art from Ancient Bumfuckistan. Who cares? Those are objects, idiots, Objects. Get it?

Nice photo. An illegally excavated antiquity guarded by someone who looks like Mussolini and has an Adolf Hitler moustache on his chinbone.

Well done, continent of Romulus and Remus, high-heeled appendix of Germany.

[livius drusus]

Even if you think it's morally correct to break the law and sell ancient artifacts found under your garage, the property owner right's were not a consideration here. His contractor made the find, looted the artifacts (sloppily) and sold them without the owner's knowledge.

[Watser?]

Okay, that's kinda what I figured. Contractors are so far beyond scum on average that this merely makes me think they are not all as dumb as I thought

[But]

I didn't read the article. Laws are chains of symbols written on something. Ever heard about plate tectonics? Who owns subterranean pieces of trash? It's morally correct to disregard strings of letters, yes. Next post is in Latinum.

[livius drusus]

Property ownership is established by nothing more than strings of letters.

[Angakuk]

Damn Etruscans, they are the reason we can't have nice things. I wish someone would do something about them.