TOMB RAIDERS

ITALY

September 2011: a team of “tombaroli”, Italian tomb raiders,

is looting since several nights an archaeological site of the ancient Daunia, an Italian civilization that developed between IX and II century BC, excavating pits to reach the graves in some fields in the northern Puglia region. It is a group specialized into looting of necropolis, able to detect tombs and carring out diggings deep untill twenty feet. Their instruments

are simple and effective: hoes, candles for lighting, picks and long poles for the preliminary drillings, manoevrated with techniques that are the result of years of experience.

Inside the reportage is documented the looting of several graves of the Hellenistic age, around IV-V century BC, full of craters and other ceramics with red figures, votive statues and ritual objects: artifacts buried besides the dead for their passage in the life beyond that, two thousand and five hundreds years later, will have flown secretly,

by the intermediation of receivers and international traffickers, into the rich market of art collectors and auction houses.

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