What can be done to encourage protection of archaeological sites?
Looting of archaeological sites is the worst in countries that have unfair laws that treat all ancient objects as the sole property of the state. Such laws only discourage otherwise law abiding citizens from reporting their finds and encourage public corruption—often at the highest levels. In such countries, there is little incentive for finders of ancient artifacts to report their finds to the authorities; they will not receive fair compensation, and in fact they may instead receive unwelcome attention from abusive government authorities. Rather than face such ill treatment, impoverished villagers with deep distrust in their own governments will instead sell what they find secretly to middlemen, who often are working under the protection of corrupt government officials. In contrast, in countries with fair laws and transparent government procedures, like Great Britain, finders must report most ancient finds, but can expect to receive fair compensation for whatever important items gover
