Word: mayan
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...large, the poorer and more primitive the country, the worse the thievery. Says Clemency Coggins, an authority on pre-Columbian art and archaeology: "Not since the 16th century has Latin America been so ruthlessly plundered." Teams descend (sometimes literally, from helicopters) on any of the hundreds of Mayan ceremonial sites that lie scattered throughout Mexico and Guatemala...
...carvings are ripped away with carbide-toothed power saws; cruder thieves use hammers, wedges or fire to split the irreplaceable sculptures into fragments for easy transport. In March 1971, Archaeologist Ian Graham, a research fellow in Middle American archaeology at Harvard's Peabody Museum, entered La Naya, a Mayan site in Guatemala; looters opened fire, killing his guide Pedro Sierra. In Costa Rica, says Dr. Dwight Heath of Brown University, who spent a Fulbright year there in 1968-69, "One percent of the labor force was involved in illicit traffic in antiquities-which means there are more bootleggers...
...import of pre-Columbian monumental sculpture and murals without the approval of the country of origin. This is a start, but not an end; it does not apply to smaller pieces like pottery and goldwork, and thieves in Latin America will destroy a whole site to find one Mayan gold ornament. One thing is clear: as long as astronomical prices are offered by rich countries, no local laws will keep robbers from plundering...
Robbers. Offered in 1973, such reasoning drives archaeologists to near frenzy. Said Nicholas Hellmuth, who headed a 1970 dig in the ancient Mayan city of Yaxja in Guatemala and saw tombs laid waste by robbers: "I'd like to take the next museum art director I see and dip him in honey and tie him up near an anthill." The big collections, say Curators Bennet Bronson and Donald Collier of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, are supporting an entire underworld. Collectors usually deal only with the last-and most gentlemanly-middlemen. In an atmosphere of genteel...
Sabloff maintains that the new information regarding the trade patterns--indicating the presence of foreign influences--will supplement previous studies which dealt only with Mayan religious and political structures, and the environment in which they lived...