Donna Elizabeth Yates | |
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Cambridge Boston University |
Thesis | Archaeological practice and political change : transitions and transformations in the use of the past in nationalist, neoliberal and indigenous Bolivia. (2012) |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Glasgow Maastricht University |
Donna Yates is an archaeologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at Maastricht University. [1] Her research considers transnational illicit trade in cultural objects,art and heritage crime including Looted art and the Antiquities trade,and white collar crime. [1]
Yates holds a Bachelor's degree in Archaeology from Boston University,and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge. [2] Her MPhil thesis documented the sale of looted South American antiquities in auctions in the United States, [3] and her dissertation covered the sociology of archaeology and heritage in Bolivia. [2]
Her interest in illicit antiquities began in 2003,when she saw a Maya civilization archeological site that had been looted. She has been quoted in numerous reports on Cultural heritage issues,including in the New York Times , [4] Washington Post, [5] and The Economist. [6] After earning her doctoral degree,Yates joined the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Glasgow. [2]
From 2012 to 2015,Yates held a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship and a Core Fulbright Award to study the trafficking of Latin American antiquities. [2] Her grant project used fieldwork in Bolivia,Belize,and Mexico to analyze relationships between communities,governments,the law,and transnational criminal organizations to study the effectiveness of regulatory mechanisms for controlling the illicit antiquities trade. [2]
In 2018,Yates was awarded a 5 year,€1.5 million European Research Council grant to study “criminogenic collectables”:objects that seem inspire criminal behavior by those collecting them,specifically,cultural objects,fossils,and collectable rare wildlife. [7] She moved to Maastricht University where she was made Associate Professor of Archaeology.
Her more recent book,with Cara Tremain,is an edited collection of essays:The Market for Mesoamerica:Reflections on the Sale of Pre-Columbian Antiquities. Gainesville:University Press of Florida (2019). [8]
Yates has created a number of digital projects related to the illicit traffic in cultural goods:
Looting is the act of stealing, or the taking of goods by force, typically in the midst of a military, political, or other social crisis, such as war, natural disasters, or rioting. The proceeds of all these activities can be described as booty, loot, plunder, spoils, or pillage.
Archaeological ethics refers to the moral issues raised through the study of the material past. It is a branch of the philosophy of archaeology. This article will touch on human remains, the preservation and laws protecting remains and cultural items, issues around the globe, as well as preservation and ethnoarchaeolog.
Repatriation is the return of the cultural property, often referring to ancient or looted art, to their country of origin or former owners.
Archaeological looting in Iraq took place since at least the late 19th century. The chaos following war provided the opportunity to pillage everything that was not nailed down. There were also attempts to protect the sites such as the period between April 9, 2003, when the staff vacated the Iraq Museum and April 15, 2003, when US forces arrived in sufficient numbers to "restore some semblance of order." Some 15,000 cultural artifacts disappeared in that time. Over the years approximately 14,800 were recovered from within and outside Iraq and taken under the protection of the Iraqi government.
La Corona is the name given by archaeologists to an ancient Maya court residence in Guatemala's Petén department that was discovered in 1996, and later identified as the long-sought "Site Q", the source of a long series of unprovenanced limestone reliefs of exceptional artistic quality. The site's Classical name appears to have been Sak-Nikte' ('White-Flower').
Looted art has been a consequence of looting during war, natural disaster and riot for centuries. Looting of art, archaeology and other cultural property may be an opportunistic criminal act or may be a more organized case of unlawful or unethical pillage by the victor of a conflict. The term "looted art" reflects bias, and whether particular art has been taken legally or illegally is often the subject of conflicting laws and subjective interpretations of governments and people; use of the term "looted art" in reference to a particular art object implies that the art was taken illegally.
Marion True was the former curator of antiquities for the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. True was indicted on April 1, 2005, by an Italian court, on criminal charges accusing her of participating in a conspiracy that laundered stolen artifacts through private collections and creating a fake paper trail; the Greeks later followed suit. The trial brought to light many questions about museum administration, repatriation, and ethics.
Las Bocas is a minor archaeological site in the Mexican state of Puebla, whose name has become attached, often erroneously, to a wide-ranging type of Olmec-style figurines and pottery.
The Quimbaya (/kɪmbaɪa/) were a small indigenous group in present-day Colombia noted for their gold work characterized by technical accuracy and detailed designs. The majority of the gold work is made in tumbaga alloy, with 30% copper, which colours the pieces.
The antiquities trade is the exchange of antiquities and archaeological artifacts from around the world. This trade may be illicit or completely legal. The legal antiquities trade abides by national regulations, allowing for extraction of artifacts for scientific study whilst maintaining archaeological and anthropological context. The illicit antiquities trade involves non-scientific extraction that ignores the archaeological and anthropological context from the artifacts.
ARCA's Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection is a multidisciplinary postgraduate certificate program that specializes in the study of art crime and cultural property protection. The course programming consists of 10–11 weeks of academic instruction at the postgraduate level and is hosted in Amelia, Italy. The instruction covers a wide variety of theoretical and practical elements of art and heritage crime and examines art crime's interconnected world of art criminals, investigators, lawyers and art historians. The courses include comprehensive lectures and discussions exploring art crime, its nature and impact, as well as what is currently being done to mitigate it.
The Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) is a nongovernmental civil society organisation (CSO) that conducts scholarly research and training within the discipline of combatting cultural property crime. Established in 2009 with the aim of exploring the gaps in the international legal framework which addresses art and antiquities crimes. ARCA was founded by Dr. Noah Charney, an art and art crime historian, as well as a published author.
Quimbaya artifacts refer to a range of primarily ceramic and gold objects surviving from the Quimbaya civilisation, one of many pre-Columbian cultures of Colombia inhabiting the Middle Cauca River valley and southern Antioquian region of modern-day Colombia. The artifacts are believed to have originated during the Classical Quimbaya period 500 BC–600 AD.
Geneva Freeport is a warehouse complex in Geneva, Switzerland, for the storage of art and other valuables and collectibles. It is the oldest and largest freeport facility, and the one with the most artworks, with 40% of its collection being art with an estimated value of US$100 billion.
The Antiquities Coalition(AC) is a non-governmental organization working to stop the looting and trafficking of antiquities. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C.
Archaeological looting is the illicit removal of artifacts from an archaeological site. Such looting is the major source of artifacts for the antiquities market. Looting typically involves either the illegal exportation of artifacts from their country of origin or the domestic distribution of looted goods. Looting has been linked to the economic and political stability of the possessing nation, with levels of looting increasing during times of crisis, but it has been known to occur during peacetimes and some looters take part in the practice as a means of income, referred to as subsistence looting. However, looting is also endemic in so-called "archaeological countries" like Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and other areas of the Mediterranean Basin, as well as many areas of Africa, South East Asia and Central and South America, which have a rich heritage of archaeological sites, a large proportion of which are still unknown to formal archaeological science. Many countries have antique looting laws which state that the removal of the cultural object without formal permission is illegal and considered theft. Looting is not only illegal; the practice may also threaten access to cultural heritage. Cultural heritage is knowledge about a heritage that is passed down from generation to generation.
The coffin of Nedjemankh is a gilded ancient Egyptian coffin from the late Ptolemaic Period. It once encased the mummy of Nedjemankh, a priest of the ram-god Heryshaf. The coffin was purchased by the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art in July 2017 to be the centerpiece of an exhibition entitled "Nedjemankh and His Gilded Coffin." The Metropolitan Museum of Art repatriated Nedjemankh and his coffin to Egypt in 2019, before the scheduled closure of the exhibition.
Blood antiquities are archaeological artefacts that have been plundered during conflicts and have been used to fund these wars. The looting of archaeological sites and the illicit trafficking of cultural property is, and has been, a common practice for terrorist groups in war zones. The pieces mostly end up on the black market, art galleries and antique shops in Europe and North America, or in millionaire private collections. The looting of blood antiquities especially affects the Middle East, because it is a very conflictive area and at the same time with a great density of archaeological sites.
Operation Antiquity is one of a series of operations by U.S. federal law enforcement agencies to investigate the smuggling of ancient artifacts from Thailand to the United States since 2002. After several years of secrecy, the case was uncovered on January 24, 2008 by federal law enforcement officers who raided multiple museums, shops, warehouses, and the homes of private art collectors and made headlines in several international media at the time. news.
Apsara Iyer is an American art crime investigator and the 137th president of the Harvard Law Review. She is the first Indian American woman to be elected to that position.