André Delpuech : “Looting a site means irreparably destroying unique sources of information”

Highly prized by collectors, pre-Columbian relics are the object of intense trafficking, fuelled in particular by “huaqueros”, the grave robbers who operate in several Latin American countries. These clandestine excavations deprive archaeologists of information essential to understanding civilizations that have now disappeared, laments André Delpuech, a French general curator of heritage. He is also a researcher at the Alexandre Koyré Centre of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.