While there are countless publications on both popular and academic archaeology, aside from dealer and auction catalogues, informed publications on the antiquities trade are rather rare.
I hope this introduction to sources will allow the reader to develop their knowledge at their own pace without losing sight of what is currently important.
We have already mentioned Charles Ede: Guide to Collecting Antiquities published by Hollington Books of London is the only general guide to antiquities so far produced.
Dr Jerome Eisenberg of Royal Athena planned an Encyclopedia of Egyptian Antiquities but so far I have not been able to ascertain whether it was ever produced or not.
We have also mentioned MINERVA magazine as the main trade publication, details available at http://www.minervamagazine.com/
Auction and dealer catalogues are the best sources for information on the current market and I will come on to these when recommending Web sources.
The current situation in Iraq has led to a heightened awareness of looting and the best book at the moment is "Who Owns Antiquity?" by James Cuno, published by Princeton University Press.
Lord Renfrew is the leading academic opponent of the ancient art trade and Duckworth published the script of an influential lecture he gave on the subject as "Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership". (Irony is, if you want to be taken sserously as an academic it more difficult when your title is "Disney Professor" at the "Mcdonald Institute"!) Trust me he si very passionate about his belief in the harm the antiquities trade causes to archaeology.
What no one has questioned so far is the right of archaeologists to determine the fate of our shared cultural heritage. After all, arhcaeology is by nature a destructive process and the value of academic publication is highly subjective.
The dark underbelly of the trade is exposed in the works of Peter Watson and others. The main books to read (in order, to follow the thread) are "Sotheby's Inside Story" (Bloomsbury), "Stealing History: The Illicit Trade in Cultural Material" (With Doole and Brodie - available as free download at IARC website http://www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/projects/iarc/research/publications.htm#Stealing_History)
and "The Medici Conspiracy" (with Cecilia Todischini).
To date, Jonathan Tokeley's "Rescuing the Past: the Cultural Heritage Crusade" (Imprint Academic) is the only book written by an individual involved in the illicit trade and is a fantastic, insightful and thought provoking read.
We would also recommend you read S.R.M. McKenzie's "Going Going Gone, Regulating the Market in Illcit Antiquities" (Leicester: IAL), Patrick O'Keefe's "Trade in Antiquities: Reducing Destruction and Theft" (Archetype) and Kathryn Walker Tubb (ed.) "Antiquities: Trade or Betrayed?" (Archetype). Tubb also has an up to date article in Vol 18 of the Proceedings of the Institute of Archaeology (2007), available direct from the institute www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology
There are several other publications and fuller lists are available at the IARC and SAFE websites.
To finish, if you want a taster of the current debate before delving into these texts I found this link to a radio interview on the Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) website.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7710000/7710388.stm I think you will find this interesting.
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