Resumen de The future of Mali's past

R. M. A. Bedaux, Mark Rowlands

• One of the greatest disasters for African archaeology is the systematic plundering of archaeological sites for the antiquities trade (e.g. Schmidt & McIntosh 1996; ICOM 1994). An eloquent proof of this plundering is the beautiful catalogue ‘Earth and ore’, published in 1997 by Schaedler. Of the 668 objects illustrated fullcolour in this catalogue all come, except for a dozen objects and some forgeries, from recent looting of sites in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ghana and Nigeria.

  Regions in Mali that are particularly rich in cultural heritage, such as the Niger Inner Delta and the Dogon country, are particularly shocking examples of this systematic plundering. Archaeological research in 1991 in the south of the Delta, undertaken within the framework of the Malian-Dutch ‘Toguéré’ project of the Institut des Sciences Humaines at Bamako, showed that 450h of the 830 visited sites exhibited traces of illicit excavations (Dembele et al. 1993). In 1996, a sample of 80 of these sites was revisited by Annette Schmidt. The percentage of plundered sites had increased by 20%) (Annette Schmidt pers. comm.). One does not need much imagination to realize the scale of this disaster.