Blogs and Stories
The Tomb Robbers
Silver’s book humanizes Italy’s tomb raiders. He describes sitting in the kitchen of Francesco Bartocci, the last living tombarolo from the glory days before museums cared about provenance, listening to details of the very dig that turned up the two Euphronios chalices. Bartocci, who made just under $9,000 on the find, even takes Silver to the site in Greppe Sant’Angelo in Cerveteri. He has no regrets about the theft, and tells Silver “it doesn’t bother me that we didn’t make a lot of money. We made a great discovery.”
Without the tombaroli, many of these artifacts would never been found at all. But digging them up for the black market destroys their archeological context, without which any artifact’s story is incomplete. “Many people share the blame, from the tomb robbers to the smugglers and dealers to the museum directors who spend tax-exempt dollars on art whose discovery has led to the loss of knowledge about our past,” Silver writes. Now, at least for one lost chalice, part of that history has been told.
Barbie Nadeau has reported from Italy for Newsweek Magazine since 1997. She also writes for CNN Traveller, Budget Travel Magazine and Frommer's.
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