The looting of archaeological sites in Greece, Italy and Türkiye has provided material that has been acquired by museums and private collections in North America, Europe and Asia. Over 1,200 items have been returned to Italy alone over the last twenty years, many from institutions like New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. While we may decry the damage sustained by the archaeological record, the introduction of objects to the corpus of knowledge has the potential to distort the way that classical culture is interpreted and presented to the public.

Professor David Gill (A 74) is Honorary Professor in the Centre for Heritage at the University of Kent, and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of History at the University of East Anglia. He is a recipient of the Archaeological Institute of America’s Outstanding Public Service Award for his research on cultural property.

His most recent book is Artwashing the Past: Context Matters (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024).