US looted treasures unit faces accusations over credit

Dalya Alberge, '‘Enough is enough’: US looted treasures unit faces accusations over credit', The Guardian Tue 26 Sep 2023.

Since 2017, when the Manhattan district attorney’s office announced the formation of its first antiquities trafficking unit, it has recovered nearly 4,500 artefacts stolen from 29 countries, with a combined value of more than $375m (£307m).
It is an impressive track record, made possible by specialists such as the Cambridge-based Greek archaeologist Christos Tsirogiannis, a leading expert in looted antiquities and trafficking networks.
In the past five years, Tsirogiannis has helped the unit recover and repatriate ancient treasures to their respective countries of origin, providing crucial evidence obtained through his own extensive research.
But in an extraordinary breach, Tsirogiannis has accused the unit of abusing his intellectual property by ignoring or downplaying his requests to be credited in official announcements.
“They are taking my work and presenting it as theirs,” Tsirogiannis said. “They are showing off with my academic work and not giving me the credit. It is an abuse of my intellectual property. But now, enough is enough.”
Tsirogiannis said he was interested only in an acknowledgement of his research, and never requested payment. He said he had lost patience after discovering that his original research was used in the district attorney’s latest case, without any credit, even though he had made it clear to the antiquities unit that the research came from his 2012 PhD thesis.