Operation Antiquity: Smuggled Southeast Asian Artifacts and Archeological Damage Talk
November 12 @ 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Event Background
Operation Antiquity was a criminal investigation by U.S. federal law enforcement agencies to investigate the smuggling of ancient artifacts from Southeast Asia, the majority coming from Thailand and many from Ban Chiang culture sites. The investigation began in 2002 and concluded officially in 2014. After several years of quiet development and undercover work, the case was made public on January 24, 2008 when 500 federal law enforcement officers raided several museums and antiquities dealers in California and one in Illinois. Joyce White was the expert witness for the case and authenticated tens of thousands of seized objects.
The case examined coordinated efforts from individuals who smuggled artifacts from Southeast Asia to the United States, the collectors who purchased them, as well as several museums that accessioned donations of suspect origination often for tax write-offs for the donors. The case later facilitated the repatriation of some artifacts to Thailand and led to higher standards of US museum acquisitions with regard to ancient cultural property.
For the first time, a quantification of the archaeological damage caused by the case is being released in an article by White and colleagues in the Journal of the Siam Society this month. On 12 November at 5.30 PM at SEA Junction, White will recount her experiences working with law enforcement and explain the quantification methods stipulated by US culture property law to estimate the massive damage to the Thai archaeological record in monetary terms. The quantification calculated “archaeological values” in terms of what knowledge and information scientific archaeology would have yielded had excavations had been undertaken at the scale indicated by the seized materials. The scientific excavations at Ban Chiang by the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the Fine Arts Department of Thailand provided the key data for calculating the archaeological values.
Speaker Bio
Joyce White is currently a Consulting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology (ISEAA). She has had several previous positions at the Penn Museum and has been an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the University. White is the series editor of the museum’s Thai Archaeology Monograph Series, and has recently published with colleagues a four-volume monograph suite on the ancient metallurgy of Ban Chiang and related sites. White’s fieldwork in Thailand and now Laos has included several modalities, including ethnoecology, lake coring, regional survey using mobile GIS, and cave excavations. Since 2001, her field program has focused on Luang Prabang Laos where she established the Middle Mekong Archaeological Project in collaboration with the Lao Department of Heritage and Fine Arts.
For more information, please email: info@seajunction.org or phone/wa: +66970024140
NB: The event is free, donations are welcome to support SEA Junction activities.
Organizer
SEA Junction, established under the Thai non-profit organization Foundation for Southeast Asia Studies (ForSEA), aims to foster understanding and appreciation of Southeast Asia in all its socio-cultural dimensions, from arts and lifestyles to economy and development. Conveniently located at Room 407-8 of the Bangkok Arts and Culture Center or BACC (across MBK, BTS National Stadium), SEA Junction facilitates public access to knowledge resources and exchanges among students, practitioners and Southeast Asia lovers. More information at http://seajunction.org/.
The JFK Foundation in Thailand was founded by H.E. Dr. Thanat Khoman, the former Ambassador to the United States, with the purpose of commemorating President Kennedy’s principles through education, public service, and good governance that benefits mankind in Thailand, the United States, and ASEAN, now and in the future. For more information, please visit https://jfkth-foundation.com/index.php/en/
