Mona Chalabi, 'Britain sells off £1.7bn of culturally important artefacts', Guardian Thursday 30 January 2014
New statistics reveal that the UK government has allowed the export of thousands of objects of cultural importance in the space of less than a year - what were they? You can see all the data for yourself here . Here is a histogram of the exported artefacts by number of export licences granted. A staggering 28300 of them were for 'Prehistoric and European' material (archaeological material, Medieval and later antiquities and metal detected finds). These are items leaving the country legally. When you consider that in an average week five thousand British antiquities are on offer on a certain internet auction platform near you, the number raises questions on the number of British-dug items that leaves the country illegally, in unmarked envelopes and packages. Note also that you do not need an export licence for anything dug up outside Britain below a certain threshold value. That is the explanation of the relatively few records of export of oriental, Middle Eastern and Egyptian antiquities. Note the small number of coins and medals declared.
The information missing is where those items came from. Are those ancient objects from exotic countries all pre-1970 imports, or are they freshly-surfaced items being laundered by passing through London's no-questions-asked (and they-can't-touch-you-for-it) market?
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