Grave robbery
Grave robbery, tomb robbing, or tomb raiding is the act of uncovering a grave, tomb or crypt to steal commodities; the term looting is also used. It is usually perpetrated to take and profit from valuable artefacts or personal property. A related act is body snatching, a term denoting the contested or unlawful taking of a body, which can be extended to the unlawful taking of organs alone.
Grave robbing has caused great difficulty to the studies of archaeology, art history, and history. Countless precious grave sites and tombs have been robbed before scholars were able to examine them. In any way, the archaeological context and the historical and anthropological information are destroyed:
Grave robbers who are not caught usually sell relatively modern items anonymously and artifacts on the black market. Those intercepted, in a public justice domain, are inclined to deny their guilt. Though some artifacts may make their way to museums or scholars, the majority end up in private collections.
Effects on archaeology around the world
China
Grave robbing in China is a practice stretching back to antiquity; the classic Chinese text Lüshi Chunqiu, dating to the 2nd century BCE, advised readers to plan simple burials to discourage looting. The presence of jade burial suits and other valuables in tombs were powerful temptations to rob graves.In modern China, grave robbing has been perpetrated by both amateurs and by professional thieves associated with transnational criminal networks. The practice reached epidemic proportions in the 1980s, as the development and construction boom following the reform and opening up led to many archaeological sites being revealed. Other peaks of tomb robbing occurred in the early 2000s and in the 2010s, when the plunder of graves was on the upswing due to an increase in global and domestic demand for Chinese antiquities. The provinces of Henan, Shaanxi, and Shanxi were particularly affected by tomb robbing.
Egypt
ian tombs are one of the most common examples of tomb or grave robbery. Most of the tombs in Egypt's Valley of the Kings were robbed within one hundred years of their sealing. As most of the artifacts in these ancient burial sites have been discovered, it is through the conditions of the tombs and presumed articles that are missing in which historians and archaeologists are able to determine whether the tomb has been robbed. Egyptian pharaohs often kept records of the precious items in their tombs, so an inventory check is presumed for archaeologists. Oftentimes, warnings would be left by the Pharaohs in the tombs of calamities and curses that would be laid upon any who touched the treasure, or the bodies, which did little to deter grave robbers. There are many examples of grave robbing in the Ancient World outside of Egypt.Classical Antiquity
The Romans also suffered decades of theft and destruction of tombs, crypts, and graves.Europe
In parts of Europe, graves are robbed on an accelerating and alarming scale. Many grave robbers work with metal detectors and some of the groups are organised criminals, feeding the black market with highly prized archaeological artifacts.Merovingian graves in France and Germany and Anglo-Saxon graves in England contain many metal grave goods, mostly of iron. Grave robbers often leave them, being only interested in gold and silver. Grave contexts, ceramics, iron weapons and skeletons are typically destroyed in the process.
In Eastern Europe, including Southeast Europe and the European part of Russia, grave robbers target all kinds of historically important graves, from prehistoric tombs to World War II graves.
North America
Modern grave robbing in North America also involves long-abandoned or forgotten private Antebellum Period to pre-Great Depression era grave sites. These sites are often desecrated by grave robbers in search of old and valuable jewellery. Affected sites are typically in rural, forested areas where once-prominent, wealthy landowners and their families were interred. The remote and often undocumented locations of defunct private cemeteries make them particularly susceptible to grave robbery. The practice may be encouraged by default upon the discovery of a previously unknown family cemetery by a new landowner.One notable historical incident occurred during the evening of November 7, 1876, when a group of counterfeiters attempted to steal Abraham Lincoln's body from his grave in Springfield, Illinois, in an attempt to secure the release of their imprisoned leader, counterfeit engraver Benjamin Boyd. However, a Secret Service agent was present and had notified the police beforehand, so the grave robbers only succeeded in dislodging the lid of his coffin. As a consequence, when Lincoln was reburied, additional security measures were implemented to prevent further grave robbery attempts.
Central America
Grave robbers often sold stolen Aztec or Mayan goods on the black market for an extremely high price. The buyers didn't often suffer the repercussions of being in possession of stolen goods; the blame were placed upon the lower-class grave robbers. Today's antiquities trade has become a streamlined industry, the speed at which these artifacts enter the market has grown exponentially. Laws to prevent grave robbing have been enacted in these regions, but due to extreme poverty, these grave robberies continue to grow each year.Minorities
African Americans
During the 1800s, African Americans in the United States would often be compelled to bury their dead in a potter's field, not having the access or money for a proper funeral. When buried in potter's fields, the dead were not normally buried very deeply. A grave robber could wait discreetly in the distance until nobody else was in sight, then quickly and easily disinter the body from its shallow resting place.Once the railroad was invented and tracks laid, the sale of the bodies of African American slaves from the South for dissection began in earnest. The bodies were robbed from graves by night doctors and shipped to medical schools in the northern part of the United States. One New England anatomy professor reported that, in the 1880s and 1890s, he entered into an arrangement in which he received, twice each semester, a shipment of 12 bodies of southern African Americans. "They came in barrels labeled turpentine and were shipped to a local hardware store that dealt in painting materials".
State laws in Mississippi and North Carolina were passed in the 19th century which allowed medical schools to use the remains of those at the bottom of society's hierarchy—the unclaimed bodies of poor persons and residents of almshouses, and those buried in potter's fields for anatomical study. The option to dissect Confederate soldiers was also available, as Mississippi and North Carolina legally released those bodies to the families of the deceased. The North Carolina law also provided that the bodies of whites never be sent to an African American medical college. These African American medical schools typically obtained unclaimed Black ‘‘potter’s field bodies’’.
Australia
The practice of grave robbery against Aboriginal Australians can be traced back to the early days of British colonisation, when Aboriginal burial sites were viewed merely as sites of scientific curiosity and anthropological study, and sought to collect and study their remains before they disappeared altogether.This belief was reflected in the work of anthropologists and scientists who travelled to Australia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to collect Aboriginal remains for study. These remains were not only taken without the consent of Indigenous communities but were used to advance racist and pseudoscientific theories about their supposed inferiority.
It was a common practice carried out by medical students who needed corpses for dissection and research. This practice continued until the late nineteenth century when laws were introduced to regulate the supply of cadavers for medical research.
This was all part of a broader pattern of colonial violence against Indigenous Australians, which included forced removal from their land, massacres, and the forced assimilation of Indigenous children into white Australian society.
One of the most notorious examples of grave robbery in Australia is the case of the Tasmanian Aboriginals. After the last full-blooded Tasmanian Aboriginal woman died in 1876, her body was exhumed and her skeleton sent to the Royal College of Surgeons in London for study. It was not until 1976, a century later, that her remains were finally returned to Australia for a proper burial.
Probably the most prolific documented individual pillager of Indigenous burial sites was George Murray Black, who ransacked around 1,800 graves around Victoria, eastern South Australia and southern New South Wales.
The practice continued well into the twentieth century, with some cases reported as recently as the 1970s. The theft and desecration of Aboriginal burial sites and remains has had profound and ongoing impacts on Indigenous communities in Australia. For many Indigenous Australians, the loss of their ancestors' remains has denied them the opportunity to mourn and grieve their loved ones. It has also perpetuated a legacy of trauma and dispossession that has been passed down through the generations.
Efforts to repatriate stolen Indigenous remains and protect Indigenous burial sites have been ongoing in Australia for many years. In recent years, there has been a growing movement to return stolen remains to their traditional owners for proper burial and commemoration.
Deterrents
Geography
The geography and placement of burial grounds became a deterrent within itself. This is because without the accessibility of the automobile, the transportation of bodies was difficult.An example of this is Mount Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge Massachusetts. It was the first rural cemetery inside the United States. The rural location of the cemetery created transportation issues. In addition, the terrain of and around the area was formidable, as the designer, Henry Alexander Scammell Dearborn, wanted to leave the natural terrain within the cemetery. If someone wanted to rob a grave, they would have to maneuver around these obstacles and navigate large stretches of land in the dark. Note that Mount Auburn Cemetery is over 175 acres. Other cemeteries, of the time, that were originally built away from populated areas for similar reasons, include: Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor, Maine ; Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ; Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Taunton, Massachusetts ; Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York ; Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York ; and, Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland.