David Gill Honored

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Congratulations to David Gill who is the recipient of the AIA's 2012 Outstanding Public Service Award, as it says on Facebook where it was first announced, it is for:

his work on http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/. Looting Matters is a wonderful resource and breaks new ground in bringing the issue of undocumented antiquities to the attention of world-wide audiences.

I am particularly happy that David has received this acknowledgement since - despite ever being the gentleman in what he writes - over the past few years he has been the object of a number of rather unpleasant attacks from the US dealers' lobbyists.

So this is brilliant news which shows that the grassroots work of raising public awareness of the issues surrounding looting and the illicit trade is considered important for archaeology, at least over the ocean. I expect if British archaeologists were giving such things out, they'd all go to metal detectorists.