Archaeologica.org

The 1970s saw the continuing pillage of archaeological sites in Italy and elsewhere, as well as an increasingly organized movement to halt the trade in illegally unearthed artifacts. In 1970, UNESCO had passed its landmark cultural property convention, which bound member nations to fight the "illicit import, export, and transfer of ownership of cultural property." Italy ratified the convention in 1978, effective the following year, and the United States followed suit in 1983. In the late 1970s, a handful of American museums adopted acquisition policies to discourage the collecting of looted antiquities; the University of Pennsylvania Museum's 1978 policy, for example, states that the museum will not acquire "any materials known or suspected to be illegally exported from their country of origin." Around the same time, an American court ruled in United States v. McClain that antiquities dealers could be subject to criminal prosecution under the National Stolen Property Act for knowingly trafficking in artifacts from countries (like Italy) whose laws claim national ownership of cultural patrimony. But many museums and private collectors continued to buy, relying on dealers to provide enough of a paper trail so that they could claim to have acted in good faith, and counting on the fact that with multiple possible countries of origin for many kinds of artifacts, it would be difficult for any one country to lay a legally persuasive claim to any particular piece.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Two men who stole Native American rock carvings from a Nevada mountainside dodged punishment when a U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday prosecutors did not properly document the value of the carvings.

Minimalist wrote:
You don't always get the best and the brightest working in the DA's office.