"The world's archaeological heritage is under threat as never before, and the ultimate culprits are those very parties who claim to value the past: the museum and the private collector. In this account, Colin Renfrew illustrates how the most precious product of archaeology is the information that controlled and well-published excavations can give us about our shared human past. Clandestine and unpublished digging of archaeological sites for gain - i.e. looting - destroys the context and all hope of providing such information. It is the source of most of the antiquities that appear on the art market today." "Professor Renfrew reviews some prominent recent scandals: the Lydian Treasure, returned to Turkey by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Getty Kouros; the Wearly Herakles, which the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston still refuses to return to its country of origin; the Salisbury Hoard; the Sevso Treasure." The illicit antiquities trade has turned London along with other international centres into a 'thieves' kitchen' where greed triumphs over serious appreciation of the past. Unless a solution is found to this ethical crisis in archaeology, our record of the past will be vastly diminished. This book lays bare the misunderstanding and hypocrisy that underlie that crisis.