They include a Zapotec urn from between A.D. 600 and 900 A.D. and a column fragment from a Campeche archaeological site [...]Meanwhile [because of greedy dealers and collectors], there are at least 9000 holes dug in the archaeological layers of unknown numbers of unknown sites that will prevent them being used to tell the full (or any) story they could have. Let's talk about that also.
The problem with "antiquities" issues today really is that the field, from its beginnings (Clemancy Coggins, Richard Elia and others), has been dominated by US thought patterns. And there, the whole issue is intimately connected with the exertion of state power, and the use of antiquities issues predominantly in soft-power tactics (see the CCPIA). This means the whole discussion is skewed towards the model of the (magnaminious) "us" (graciously) agreeing to "protect" the heritage of a (should-be-grateful) "them" who are deprived of agency, and sometimes "our" state graciously acting to return things taken to their state (hooray, de-rigeur big press event with pre-prepared script) to remind everyone who's boss and what great-hearted folks we are.
Yet, surely, for those recipient nations, the fact that this or that gee-gaw is on display as a loose and eye-catching exhibit in a museum in their country instead of another is just one issue. It is secondary to the main issue that in hoiking it out of an archaeological context in an archaeological site (somewhere, nobody even knows which one, let alone from where on that site) the site itself is trashed. Looting of objects for collection or sale prevents the use of the archaeological context from which they came to tell its part of the history of the region. A loose object in a case alone only tells a part of any story of which, as archaeological evidence, it would have much more to say if it had been preserved in situ. This is why collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record is damaging.
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