Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World [Hardcover]

Roger Atwood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 18, 2004

Roger Atwood knows more about the market for ancient objects than almost anyone. He knows where priceless antiquities are buried, who is digging them up, and who is fencing and buying them. In this fascinating book, Atwood takes readers on a journey through Iraq, Peru, Hong Kong, and across America, showing how the worldwide antiquities trade is destroying what's left of the ancient sites before archaeologists can reach them, and thus erasing their historical significance. And it is getting worse. The discovery of the legendary Royal Tombs of Sipan in Peru started an epidemic. Grave robbers scouring the courntryside for tombs--and finding them. Atwood recounts the incredible story of the biggest piece of gold ever found in the Americas, a 2,000-year-old, three-pound masterpiece that cost one looter his life, sent two smugglers to jail, and wrecked lives from Panama to Pennsylvainia. Packed with true stories, this book not only reveals what has been found, but at what cost to both human life and history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As the destruction from the war in Iraq has demonstrated most recently, a country's antiquities are never safe from marauding looters and greedy collectors who trawl the black market. In a study that is part detective story and part history lesson, Atwood, an expert on the antiquities market who writes for ARTnews and Archaeology, focuses on one incident as a case study of the insidious effects of the illicit antiquities trade. In 1987, a group of grave robbers working at a burial mound near the village of Sipán in northern Peru uncovered a mausoleum of Moche rulers (the Moche were an innovative indigenous tribe) with a rich cache of gold and silver artifacts. Word soon spread to international buyers, who responded favorably, and prolonged looting began. By the time the Peruvian police intervened three weeks later, much damage had already been done. Walter Alva, a native Peruvian and the site's chief archeologist, uncovered many more undamaged tombs and worked tirelessly to preserve this ancient legacy, bravely confronting looters and endeavoring to establish laws to prevent museums form accepting stolen goods. The case raised international awareness of the illegal antiquities trade. Atwood's ability to bring a story dramatically to life and his keen interest in stemming the illegal antiquities trade makes this an important book for anyone interested in archeology, preservation or the potentially tangled provenance of works they love. B&w illus., one map.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Writing for magazines such as ARTnews, Atwood is an expert on the global traffic in stolen archaeological objects. His meticulous book tracks his investigation of one such object, a gold ornament cast by the Moche culture of pre-Columbian Peru. But in a prelude, Atwood recounts the night he accompanied, with their permission, Peruvian grave robbers at work. Although sympathetic to their destitution, Atwood is appalled at their obliteration of a site's archaeological value. Of course, the demand for these objects emanates from the acquisitive appetites of museums and wealthy collectors, who appear in the course of Atwood's account of the Moche "backflap." Plundered by grave robbers in 1987, it was smuggled into the U.S. by a corrupt Panamanian diplomat and seized in an FBI sting in 1997. Atwood's high-velocity, true-crime narrative immediately hooks readers while also informing them about the international antiquities business. A case study of the sordid trade, Atwood's stern admonition to the art world to reform, before archaeological knowledge becomes irretrievable forever, deserves a hearing. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (November 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312324065
• ISBN-13: 978-0312324063
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #562,214 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MISLEADING TITLE, July 2, 2005

By 

I. W. Gittleman (Long Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World (Hardcover)

There is nothing to add to the detailed analyses of this book previously detailed, except:
Know what you are buying: This book is 95% about the author
's experiences excavating at Sipan; as well as some discussion regarding other sites in northern Peru.
If this is what you want, it is an excellent book; however, it, in no way. is a more general discussion of its title and subtitle.
I was really hoping for a more extensive discussion regarding the many other sites around the world. So, in this difference, I would only give it one star.
Just know what you are buying.
I am keeping the book; however it's lack of what the title promised, and the many other sources that are available regarding
Peruvian (and particularly Sipan) resulted in my being very disappointed in its restricted coverage in contrast to its title.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Written and Exciting, December 9, 2004

By 

fred "fred" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World (Hardcover)

Stealing History takes an important subject and makes it interesting and readable. Atwood writes the book like an Indiana Jones novel mixed with a true crime story in the context of a history tome. He follows the path of an ancient golden artifact which is the largest ever found in the Americas from the looted tomb in Peru to the New Jersey Turnpike(!) in the US. Atwood writes in a compelling fashion which makes it hard to put the book down. Highly recommended!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tomb Raiders, Smugglers and the Looting of the Ancient World, January 7, 2005

By 

E. M. Dawson (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World (Hardcover)

Not quite Laura Croft or Indiana Jones, this book follows the fate of several Peruvian sites and the artifacts taken from them. The focus is as much on the conflicts between the commercial antiquities trade and the archaeologists who wish to study the sites intact (taken to the extreme in actually reburrying sites as to not attract the attention of looters). Not so surprisingly the Museums operate somewhere between - benefiting from the scholarship of the archelogists and also from the tomb raiders who supply them with items for their collections (not directly of course). Well told tales of FBI stings, government policies based more on diplomatic pressures than the "saving" of cultural records and in infighting between the Peruvian archeologist Walter Alva and what seems like the world. On the most basic level, this is about the destruction and loss of history in the quest of money. The book ends with a list of suggestions for what can be done to save these sites from destruction, but I still was left with questions. Some of the measures taken by the government seems a little broad and sweeping. It left me with many questions if government intervention is the best way to stop the flow of illegal artifacts. Although the author seems to show some preference to the side of Alva and the archelogists, he does speak and interview people from all parts of the community, from the actual people who rob the graves and archelogical sites to the people who buy these artifacts either for profit or art. The introduction wrote about Iraq right after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The looting of museums and archelogical sites was immediate. I appreciated the detail of the rest of the book and its covering of covering one subject (Peru and more specifically Sipan) when it would have been very easy to make this a survey and less personal. You get a great sense of the individual personalities involved.