Archaeological Collecting in Cultural Context: A Localized Study of Looting and the News

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Many field archaeologists have firsthand experience encountering locals who practice site looting and artifact collection. These globally widespread problems are addressed in professional ethics statements and legislature at international, federal, state, and local levels. Publications in archaeological journals and heritage-related news sources have documented the connectedness of looting, collection, and treasure hunting; but few have evaluated the impact of such scholarship on the public. This paper treats societal complicity with looting as a communications problem on a local scale. Focus groups and surveys conducted in the Greater Pittsburgh Region of Southwestern Pennsylvania point to trends in public perceptions of archaeology, looting, treasure-hunting, collecting, and associated news and legislation. Subsequent research on audience demographics for local news outlets identified key sources of message distribution and possibilities for archaeologists to offer ethics articles and programming in the future.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26276