The bibliography on looting in Greece has grown significantly over the last two decades (Chippindale and Gill 2000; Brodie 2014). The exposure of the international criminal network trading in looted antiquities, following the accidental death of Christos Michailidis in 1999 and the prosecution of his partner, Robin Symes, led to a more systematic understanding of this complex phenomenon. This has shed light on the convoluted processes of illicit smuggling, storing, selling, buying, and collecting ancient materials (Apostolides 2006; Watson and Todeschini 2007).
Despite these developments offering insights into international trafficking and the role of auction houses and museums, they have done little to uncover the local dynamics of looting or its impact on communities in the Aegean. Even the term “looting” (αρχαιοκαπηλία in Greek) frames the issue from a legal perspective, overlooking the rich cultural values tied to the discovery, excavation, sale, mediation, or even forgery of antiquities (Lekakis 2006; Antoniadou 2014; Tsirogiannis 2022).
Fig. 1. Postcard sent by Foteini Zapheiropoulou, while excavating in Naxos in the 1960s. In a remarkable shift in meaning, she notes how locals referred to “archaeologists” as “looters,” while calling actual looters the “state archaeologists” (Lekakis 2013, p. 267–69).
This post focuses on these often overlooked aspects of the looting phenomenon, particularly the role of finders and local mediators of Cycladic figurines. These prehistoric curiosities feature since long in a number of European museums, but were initially excluded from the canon of Western Hellenicity, because they were seen as ‘ugly’ and ‘barbaric,’ until primitivism elevated them to the status of masterpieces after WWII. The newfound appreciation fueled a collecting boom and created a substantial commercial market in the 1960s, leading to the looting of an estimated 12,000 Early Cycladic graves. Significant loss of data ensued, making it challenging to understand the figurines’ chronology, significance, or use, as well as the sites from which they originated. (Gill & Chippindale 1993, p. 602).
Fig. 2. Cycladic figurines on a Greek passport—an ironic symbol for one of the most ‘well-traveled’ antiquities from Greece.
On the Cycladic islands, the discovery of marble figurines, known locally as koukloi (κούκλοι) or kouklakia (κουκλάκια)(dolls), has been documented since at least the 18th century (Lekakis 2013, p. 267). Initially, finders, unaware of their economic value, gave the figurines to children as toys or sold them to interested travelers. By the 1960s, however, this casual exchange gave way to more systematic looting, particularly on Naxos and other Cycladic islands, driven by their newfound appeal to modern art. The figurines were hailed for their minimalistic lines and clear forms – especially since artists could only distinguish the elegance of form and not the exuberant painted details commonly washed off after been buried for centuries (Doumas 2002).
Christos Doumas, then the deputy Ephor for Naxos, recounted the sophisticated looting practices centered around Early Cycladic antiquities (Doumas 2013). The village of Apeiranthos, in particular, became notorious for organized looting and trading of Protocycladic marble artifacts, from Naxos and the surrounding islands, especially Paros, Keros, Koufonissia, Amorgos, Schoinoussa, Irakleia, Ios, Sikinos and Folegandros. The –at least two– gangs of looters operated in full moon, conducting illicit excavations primarily after autumn rains, when the soil was easier to dig. Sometimes the dig would reach the depth of one meter, making the field appear well tended and ready to be planted. For that reason, Doumas mentions that such illicit excavations were funded by agricultural loans, provided to favourites by officials. The only proof would be the broken cover of the Early Cycladic graves that were afterwards build on the drystone walls of the fields. If caught, looters would turn to their governmental affiliations for pardon.
However, apart from the organised gangs, other locals occasionally recovered antiquities and Cycladic figurines during agricultural work. In such cases, ‘findings’ qualified as ‘vresimata’ (βρεσιμάτα), a word equivalent to treasure – without always the monetary aspects of it. Findings are commonly understood as the product of one’s interaction with the natural landscape, a comparable but more valuable fruit of labour to a sack of potatoes. They can be randomly encountered or even emerge from the landscape on their own volition. In all cases, the landscape is animated, enchanted and has a potent agency (Stewart 2001). It reveals and it conceals, and it can also be evoked through intricate processes of what can be described as ‘occult archaeology’ –involving dreaming, story-telling and rituals– an uncanny, pre-modern archaeology that can grant access to the resources. These processes feature heavily in oral history and folk tales in the Aegean, involving multiple ways of dealing with landscape creatures associated with ‘vresimata’ to tame, trick or give back to and finally manage to keep the ‘vresimo’ for oneself.
Once the antiquity would have been secured, i.e. retrieved from the landscape domain, by an individual or sometimes the contribution of various people or the whole of the village, the ‘crop’ notion settled. The antiquity was owned, as a crop would be, and could be used. In some cases, figurines retained their magic force, as elements from another time and space and had otherworldly or more than human power to protect against things that could not be rationalised. They would be placed above the house entrance, as apotropaic symbols, to avert the evil eye, as in a case from the settlement of Grotta, Naxos (Gill & Chippindale 1993, p. 647).
In other more practical cases, they would be used to complement the house income by selling it to a gang associate or to a local mediator. In a case near Agiassos Bay, this was the local baker known to collect, transport inside loafs of bread, and then distribute profits ‘by the centimetre’ of the find (‘με τον πόντο’).
Fig. 3. Display of Cycladic objects at Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe (2007) (author’s photograph).
As mentioned, crop mentality was prevalent in Cyclades, so material found their ways to various museums of Europe. Instead of hiring more archaeologists or embark on a public awareness campaign for the material and intellectual consequences of illicit digging, the Greek state urged affluent shipowners to buy so to prevent antiquities bleeding abroad. People of Naxos still remember the yacht of Goulandris to Spedos Bay buying looted figurines from the locals, ‘by the centimetre’.
Fig. 4. Display of Cycladic objects at Altes Museum, Berlin (2007) (author’s photograph)
Even though, ineffective state policies for culture and the public could be the theme for another (rather long) piece, one cannot fail to mention the recent, contested legitimisation of the Stern collection by the Greek Ministry of Culture. In an act considered as a policy backslide in the expressed target to fight the illicit trade, the ministry accepted the return of 161 Cycladic antiquities from the American collector Leonard Stern (Homecoming was the name of the related exhibition organised in 2023 by the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens), comprised of numerous figurines of unregistered origin but also numerous fakes, tacitly legitimizing their illicit provenance. By recognizing Stern as a ‘donor’ rather than reclaiming the artifacts as looted heritage, the Ministry weakened Greece’s stance against antiquities trafficking, setting a problematic precedent for future restitutions (YPPO 2024).
Funerary items, fertility goddesses, symbols of modernity but also crops and apotropaic symbols to avert otherworldly forces, Early Cycladic figurines still enchant and remind us how meaning can be lost if communities are not involved in its production.
Stelios Lekakis
References
Ioanna Antoniadou, “Looting deconstructed: a study of non-professional engagements with the material past in Kozani, Greece.” PhD diss., University of Southampton, 2014.
Andreas Apostolides, Αρχαιοκαπηλία και εμπόριο αρχαιοτήτων: μουσεία, έμποροι τέχνης, οίκοι δημοπρασιών, ιδιωτικές συλλογές [Looting and the antiquities market: museums, art dealers, auction houses, private collections]. Εκδόσεις Άγρα, 2006.
Neil Brodie, “The antiquities market: It’s all in a price.” Heritage & Society 7, no. 1, 2014, p. 32-46.
Christopher Chippindale and David W J Gill. “Material consequences of contemporary classical collecting.” American journal of archaeology 104, no. 3, 2000, p. 463-511.
Christos Doumas, Joan R. Mertens, and S. Alexander. Silent witnesses: early Cycladic art of the third millennium BC, New York : Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, 2002.
Christos Doumas, “Πρόσωπα, πράγματα και συμπεριφορές στη Νάξο των αρχών της δεκαετίας του 1960 [People, things, and behaviors in Naxos in the early 1960s]”. Αληθινά Παραμύθια της Νάξου, 2013, p. 9-22.
David WJ Gill and Christopher Chippindale. “Material and intellectual consequences of esteem for Cycladic figures.” American journal of archaeology 97, no. 4, 1993, p. 601-659.
Stelios Lekakis, “Αρχαιοκαπηλία και τοπικές κοινωνίες. Η περίπτωση των Κυκλάδων το 18ο και 19ο αιώνα.[ Looting and local communities. The case of Cyclades in the 18th and 19th centuries],” Ναξιακά 20, no. 58, 2006, p. 7-19.
Stelios Lekakis, “Κοινωνικές και οικονομικές οπτικές της πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς: η διαχείριση σε τοπικό επίπεδο: η περίπτωση του Αιγαίου και της νήσου Νάξου. [Social and economic perspectives on cultural heritage: local–level management – the case of the Aegean and the island of Naxos]” PhD diss., Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών (ΕΚΠΑ). Σχολή Φιλοσοφική. Τμήμα Ιστορίας και Αρχαιολογίας, 2013.
Stelios Lekakis and Mina Dragouni, “Heritage in the making: Rural heritage and its mnemeiosis at Naxos island, Greece.” Journal of Rural Studies 77, 2020, p. 84-92.
Marisa Marthari, “Altering information from the past: illegal excavations in Greece and the case of the Early Bronze Age Cyclades,” In Neil Brodie et al., Trade in illicit antiquities: the destruction of the world’s archaeological heritage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 161-172.
Charles Stewart, Demons and the devil: moral imagination in modern Greek culture. Vol. 8. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
YPPO ,“ΥΠΠΟ: Η συλλογή Στέρν εκτίθεται ως δάνειο της Ελλάδας στο Μητροπολιτικό Μουσείο της Νέας Υόρκης” [Ministry of Culture : the Stern collection exhibited as loan of Greece to the MET in New York], 2024
Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini, The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities-From Italy’s Tomb Raiders to the World’s Greatest Museum. New York: Public Affairs, 2007.