While the Antiquities Act has proven to be a means of monitoring and coordinating educational and scientific archaeological research on federal and Native American lands, it has not effectively prevented or prevented the deliberate and criminal looting of archaeological sites on those lands. This situation, which had been problematic for many years, became critical in the 1970s, when several attempts by state government agencies and prosecutors in the Southwest to convict looters using the Antiquities Act led to disastrous court decisions. In two cases, judges ruled that the provisions of the Act were unconstitutionally vague and therefore unenforceable (Collins and Michel, 1985). This situation has led to a concerted effort by archaeologists and curators, their allies in the law enforcement community, and several key supporters in Congress to strengthen the legal protection of archaeological resources. The end result was a new law, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, not an amendment to the Antiquities Act. the study of ruins, the excavation of archaeological sites or the collection of objects from antiquity… on land administered by the Ministries of the Interior, Agriculture or War may be carried out only after the secretary of the ministry responsible for the country concerned has issued a corresponding permit. Permits should only be granted to institutions.” duly qualified to carry out such investigations, searches or meetings … “In addition, the purpose of these permitted activities was.” for the benefit of museums, universities, colleges or other scientific or educational institutions renowned for expanding knowledge about these objects. Finally, Article 3 required that collections of documents from these studies be kept in public museums for conservation and public use. The art trade reflects the modern use of the term; Christie`s “Department of Antiquities” includes objects “from the early civilization to the Middle Ages, from Western Europe to the Caspian Sea, and includes the cultures of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Middle East.” [2] Bonhams uses a similar definition: “. 4000 BC J.-C.

in the 12th century A.D. Geographically, they come from Egypt, the Middle East and Europe… [3] Official deadlines are often later, as they do not care about the exact subdivisions of art history and use the term for all the historical periods they want to protect: in Jordan it is 1750,[4] in Hong Kong 1800 and so on. The export of antiquities is now heavily controlled by law in almost all countries and by the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property[11], but a significant and growing trade in illegal antiquities continues. The crater Euphronios is an obvious example that has been unearthed. [12] Another example is the ambiguous legal case surrounding the Getty Museum`s “Bronze Statue of Victorious Youth.” [13] The estate was further complicated by the trade in archaeological counterfeits such as the Terracotta Etruscan warriors, the Persian princess[14] and the Getty Kouros. Antiquities are objects of antiquity, especially the civilizations of the Mediterranean: the classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, ancient Egypt and other ancient Eastern cultures. Artifacts from earlier periods such as the Mesolithic and other civilizations in Asia and elsewhere may also fall under the term. The phenomenon of attaching great value to ancient artifacts is found in other cultures, especially in China, where Chinese ritual bronzes, three to two thousand years old, were collected and imitated eagerly for centuries, and in the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica, where in particular artifacts of the first Olmec civilization were buried in important places of later cultures until the Spanish conquest. [1] The definition of the term is not always precise, and institutional definitions such as the “Departments of Antiquities” museums often cover later periods, but in everyday language, Gothic objects, for example, would not now be called antiquities, although they may well have been in 1700, as the deadline for antiquities has tended to decrease since the first discovery of the word in English in 1513. Non-artistic artifacts are less often called antiquities today than in earlier periods. Francis Bacon wrote in 1605: “Antiquities are a disfigured history or vestiges of history that have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.” The Antiquities Act (16 U.S.C. 431-433) was the first law in the United States to provide general protection for any type of cultural or natural resource.

He established the first national monument protection policy for the United States (Lee 1970: 1 ff.) Article 2 of the Statute confers on the President the power to “. historic monuments, historical and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historical or scientific interest located on lands owned or controlled by the United States Government. These protected areas were later designated as “national monuments,” and the federal agencies responsible for monitoring them had to afford proper care and management of resources. This section of the law provided progressive politicians and their supporters with an additional tool to determine the use of public lands and resources in the rational and conservation-oriented manner they favored (see Rothman 1989:52-71). Prior to the Antiquities Act, some areas had been designated as national parks or preserves, such as Yellowstone National Park (1872) and the Ruin of Casa Grande in Arizona (1892).