Archaeology and Commerce: Olbia Dolphins on the Global Antiquities Market

Abstract

The original promise of the internet was that it could have served as a tool whereby the general public could access, a single mouse-click away, unlimited amounts of reliable open access archaeological information supplied by academia or the museum world. This vision is in practice frustrated by the current form of that resource. Since changes that started taking place from 2015, the internet has increasingly been developing primarily as a commercial tool of modern capitalist trade. The casual searcher for information on a large range of archaeological phenomena will therefore primarily be faced with page after page of adverts offering examples of archaeological artefacts for sale and texts about their private collection.

Keywords

• Olbia ‘Dolphins'
• Olbia