The Antiquities Market Today: Looting and Faking

Melissa Gronlund, 'As looting slows, counterfeit antiquities are on the rise', The National May 6, 2020. Melissa's found a way to earn some money just regurgitating what she's heard somewhere else. Or actually NOT listening:

"A recent seizure of fake ancient artefacts suggests that counterfeit antiquities are on the rise, says St John Simpson, a curator at the British Museum. Last summer two lorries of figurines, seals and tablets purported to be from the first century BC were seized by British Customs officials.

 A very derivative account. Trunkloads not truckloads.  They were not fakes of "first century BC" antiquities. The only reason looting might be slowing is when all the more accessible lootable sites in a region have been exhausted. Certainly worldwide collection driven exploitation of archaeological record has not slowed, but thrives in all sorts of places.

Counterfeit antiquities have been predominant in a large section of the antiquities market from the end of the 1990s (and in the opinion of some are not so uncommon in the other bits), and looting certainly has not "slowed" since then.