Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World by Roger Atwood tells the story of how looters dig up graves and destroy cultural history.
Started: September 15, 2010
Completed: December 10, 2010
Recommendation: Ehhhh
Recommended By: Picked this up at Vertigo Books as it was closing.
Words I looked up:
deracinate -- Displacement; to move something from its natural environment
sclerotic -- Hardened, not fleshy or soft
Review:
There is no question that bad things are happening at sites of archaeological value all over the world. This book documents the concept and does a decent job of describing a very serious destruction of an archaeological site by looters. This book documents this and what is happening in the world is staggering. Unfortunately, the book is a very difficult read. Nothing seems to flow well and it took forever to fight through it. I felt it was worth reading, but it was very hard and I wonder how much extra information I got from the last half of the book. I think this book is rather repetitive and builds the case strongly about half-way through then never really goes any farther to establish that looting is bad, both museums and collectors are complicit, and that changes in the US are making a dent, but no where near solving the problem.
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