Countering

St John Simpson
witnessed large-scale daylight looting in progress during the 1970s (Fig. 2). Moreover, on
the basis of personal observations, he surmised that these looted burials belonged to the
same types as he had excavated shortly before at Dashly and Farukhabad. Unfortunately,
the fact they were in brick-lined pits facilitated their discovery as he reported that ‘such
graves are easily discovered by looters who scrape and bang their shovels to detect the
hollow pits’ (cf. Kohl 1984: 160-169). Large quantities of objects from these cemeteries
soon began to appear in the shops and pavement stalls of petty dealers in the bazaars of
Balkh, Mazar-i Sharif and Kabul, along with medieval pottery, ethnographic items and
beads (Fig. 3). As many as 332 items spanning most of the typical classes of metalwork
and stone objects circulating through the Kabul bazaar during the winter of 1978-1979
were recorded by Marie-Hélène Pottier (1984), and a selection of these was later acquired
by the Musée du Louvre (Amiet 1988a: p. 159). Other types, including decorated silver
and gold vessels, appeared on the Kabul art market in 1975 (Deshayes 1977, Figs. 7-8).
When I arrived in Afghanistan in summer 1975 and expressed an interest in its Bronze Age, I was
told to visit the Kabul bazaar to learn what was known. It made sense to inspect and familiarize
myself with the clandestinely excavated vessels, seals, metal and stone tools and weapons, and
precious jewelry before they were shipped to the West (Kohl 2005: 65).
As this archaeologist implies, these classes of object soon began to pass onto the
international market via neighbouring countries, and this pattern of circulation has
continued up until the present day. As the first discoveries coincided with similar finds
being reported from commercial and archaeological investigations at Shahdad in the
Kerman region of South East Iran, the objects also began to be bought up by Tehran
dealers and entered the Iranian, as well as international, art market where they were
consequently catalogued as ‘Elamite’ and commanded higher prices.
Amiet (1988b: 135) has explicitly stated that Iranian dealers were buying up material
on the Afghan market and ‘it would thus appear that most of the items which the dealers
attributed to the province of Kerman actually came from Bactria’. The mixed date-range
of pieces offered in Kabul doubtless meant that later (including Islamic) objects entered
these interwoven markets at the same time, and Dupree (2002: 8) has remarked on how
‘even Islamic gravestones were not spared, as they find a ready market in Iran’. Moreover,
given the large-scale flow of opium and heroin from Afghanistan into Russia via the
intervening countries, it is likely that other antiquities passed north, particularly through
the railway system. Lee (2000) has commented on how items from Bactria have been
sent in recent years via Uzbekistan into Russia, and others were driven over the border
into Iran. Moreover, during the mid-1990s, the author saw medieval metalwork on open
sale in the Sunday bazaar in Ashgabat: the objects were said to come from Merv but were
certainly not from that site as there were no traces of illegal digging there or indeed other
sites visited in the area, and it is more likely that they derived from Afghanistan.
This period of the 1990s coincides with the civil war in Afghanistan, when looting
reached its highest levels and museums as well as sites were targeted. Large sites were
a particular focus of attention, and the scale of destruction well documented at Ai
Khanum (Bernard 2001, Figs. 7, 9, 18, 22) and Tepe Zargaran, where looters’ pits and
tunnels penetrated up to five metres below the surface and the fine stonework which
characterised the earliest levels had been especially sought after (Bernard, Besenval &
Marquis 2006: 1178 and 1188, Figs. 2-3; Bernard, Jarrige & Besenval 2002: 1403-408;
Tarzi & Feroozi 2004: 4-5, Figs. 8-10).
The causes of looting of museums and stores are multiple and include opportunism,
182