Website Yields Unexpected Results in the Business of Artifacts

"Antiquities" on eBay lead to less archaeological looting, and more fakes

By Jeremy Hsu Posted 05.06.2009 at 4:34 pm 14 Comments

Ebay Logo Image courtesy of liewcf via Flickr.com

eBay may turn household junk into online treasure, but archaeologists held their breaths in horrified anticipation when the site first launched over a decade ago thinking that the illegal artifacts market would surely explode in a frenzy of looting.

Now the same archaeologists conclude that the online auction site has had a very different impact on their field. Looting ancient sites turns out to be less profitable than just churning out the fakes and hawking them on eBay.

"For most of us, the Web has forever distorted the antiquities trafficking market in a positive way," said Charles "Chip" Stanish, an archaeologist at UCLA and an international expert on Andean archaeology.

If that didn't quite compute, consider the numbers. Stanish first found about a 50-50 ratio of real artifacts to fakes when he began tracking eBay's stock of antiquities related to his field. The fake relics jumped to 95 percent of the online inventory just five years later – and now their quality has improved so much that even Stanish has a hard time telling them apart from the real goods.

It sounds like a pain, but archaeologists consider it a blessing. Whole villages in certain parts of the world have gone from treasure hunting to manufacturing knockoffs. The resulting flood of copies has actually increased risks of buying genuine artifacts and lowered overall prices, further discouraging the casual looter.

Stanish visited workshops in Peru and Bolivia to talk with artisans about how they reproduce pottery, and also tracked eBay listings of antiquities originating from a variety of other places.

"Chinese, Bulgarian, Egyptian, Peruvian and Mexican workshops are now producing fakes at a frenetic pace," Stanish wrote in a paper that's detailed in the May/June issue of Archaeology.

Two issues hover on the horizon. First, fakes have become so technologically sophisticated that authentication has become a minefield, even for experts.

Stanish suspects that thirty percent of eBay's "antiquities" are obvious fakes, and a mere five percent are genuine. That leaves the rest in the ‘ambiguous’ category, where even Stanish admits to being duped on occasion in shops that sell both looted and fake items.
Second, authentication technology will eventually catch up, just as it has helped protect real currency and identify art forgeries. That could leave prospective artifact collectors very unhappy to discover that their purportedly genuine pieces are less-than-historical – which leads to the dampening of buyer enthusiasm.

As Stanish asked, "Who wants to spend $50,000 on an object 'guaranteed' to be ancient by today's standards, when someone can come along in five years with a new technology that definitively proves it to be a fake?"

Previous Article: The John, 2.0

Next Article: Just Press "Save"

Want to learn more about breakthroughs in electronics, medicine, nanotech, and more?
Subscribe to Popular Science today, for less than $1 per issue!

14 Comments

Link to this comment

jackiboa

06/18/09 at 5:02 am

Exactly, its a very different impact on their field. Looting ancient sites turns out to be less profitable than just churning out the fakes and hawking them on eBay.

Nation High School
http://www.nationhighschool.com/

Link to this comment

jameandrew

09/04/09 at 2:23 am

i agree website has a definite impact on the artifacts business.i am running this business for last 4 years now and website has shownn a real impact on my business
Regards
jame
Tulsa oklahoma

Link to this comment

Magicdinner

09/27/09 at 4:24 pm

It's good to hear that it turns more efficinet to produce fake items instead of exploiting and making archaeologic treasures become too rare.
Good article

Zauberer München (Munich)
www.zauberer-muenchen-entertainer.de

Link to this comment

JamesAllisson

10/23/09 at 7:33 am

But how should normal peaple distinguish real ancient things from fakes. Even for experts its hard to see, which things are original. I won't buy anything any more, after reading this article. Thanks a lot.

Regards from an magician

www.zauberkuenstler-comedy-zauberer.de

Link to this comment

zongorazik

10/28/09 at 2:48 am

Actually it's pretty depressing if you think about it. Fakes vs the real thing and people go for it. Indeed, how would you know now what is the real deal and what is some pathetic fake that has no real value whatsoever. What a sad thing our society got to...
Zongorazik

Link to this comment

zongorazik

10/28/09 at 2:49 am

Oh well, I guess I'll stop buying ancient things at Ebay then...
www.yeastinfectionbase.com/candida-cures.php

Link to this comment

asil

01/26/10 at 2:20 pm

Come to me to be sold to private persons of the ancient works odd or interesting. I think you should buy those regions with their own local budgets. an interesting approach, but this is my idea.
www.sirketekle.net

Link to this comment

JamaEssays

01/29/10 at 2:19 am

I think that their needs to be a technology that can check if the artifact is indeed a fake or not. In that way buyers can be protected.

Link to this comment

zauberer-1

02/17/10 at 4:51 pm

I agree with the thoughts of the previous speakers. It`s very hard to see the difference between a fake and the original
De Pasco - www.ballonkuenstler.biz

Link to this comment

JamaEssays

03/17/10 at 2:21 am

It is important that we protect the buyer's interest in making sure that the artifact they are purchasing are indeed original and that they are not fake.
__________________

Link to this comment

MBALady

08/11/10 at 11:09 am

I don't think it's a good idea to buy antique products if you can't distinguish whether they are real or not. There is no sense and no need to buy them on Ebay for significant price.
MBA student, www.lsbf.org.uk

Link to this comment

cosmeticdentist

08/18/10 at 3:19 am

Thanks for you post

studiocitycosmeticdentist.com

Link to this comment

cadee

08/22/10 at 12:13 pm

We don't expect this from ebay. they must tell very clearly to the customers about the authenticity or antique value the goods. this would certainly add to their credibility.
Indian Patent Lawyers

Link to this comment

ramonacole

11/18/10 at 6:30 am

That was low to do for Ebay. I can't distinguish fakes and genuines by myself!

Science

+ More Photo Galleries

July 2013: The Future Of Flight

The incredible innovations, like drone swarms and perpetual flight, bringing aviation into the world of tomorrow. Plus: today's greatest sci-fi writers predict the future, the science behind the summer's biggest blockbusters, a Doctor Who-themed DIY 'bot, the organs you can do without, and much more.