Antiquities
Antiquities are ancient art and artifacts from the civilizations of the past like Egyptian and Mediterranean, Greek and Roman cultures. Artifacts from periods like the Mesolithic and other eastern and Asian civilizations also come under the term. Irish-born figurative painter Francis Bacon said antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
In the modern world, antiquities are non-artistic artifacts, objects which are covered from the dawn of a civilization to the Dark Ages, ranging from Western Europe to the Caspian Sea, taking on the cultures of Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Near East. The term is no longer used in formal academic discussions.
The export of antiquities is banned by the UNESCO convention of 1970 on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property and by law in almost all countries but illicit and illegal trade still goes on. A lot of antiquities that are unearthed during archeological digs are transported internationally through a middleman and to often unsuspecting collectors, museums, antique dealers, and auction houses for billions of US dollars. The legal antiquities trade abides by national regulations, which now universally provides for extraction that allows for the scientific study of the artifacts in order to study the archaeological and anthropological context.
There has been a large push to repatriate artifacts illegally extracted and traded in the international grey market. Many of these artifacts are also held by reputed museums like the Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Laws in trading antiquities legally are also well in process in various countries. These laws establish how the antiquities should be extracted from the ground and the legal process in which artifacts may leave the country.
In the United States, the Antiquities Act of 1906 was passed by the US Congress and signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt giving the US President Authority to, by executive order restrict the use of particular public land owned by the federal government. The Act has been used over a hundred times since its passage but has stirred quite a controversy every time. Protection of mostly pre-historic Indian ruins and artifacts on the federal lands in the West like the Chaco Canyon in New Mexico had become a serious problem in 19th century. Removal of artifacts by private land collectors was the main reason behind the passage of the legislation.