Campania, Italy - Proposed new Italian legislation will decriminalize the illegal possession of archaeological artifacts, putting Italian archaeological patrimony into the very hands of those who have been plundering it. In past years this law has been proposed many times but retracted due to the protests of the cultural world. But this time it will in all probability will be approved. The declared purpose of the law is to recover undocumented patrimony and to allow it to be catalogued. In reality the law will end up being an enormous boon to looters and organized criminals, the so-called "archaeomafia," involved in illegal digging and international trafficking of antiquities.
