The British Museum has asked eBay to postpone auctions of archaeological artifacts when British authorities identify them as potential national treasures.
The London Times quoted museum executive Roger Bland as saying that negotiations that have gone on over the past year have resulted in an agreement in principle by eBay that it does not want illicit antiquities on its Web site and is willing to remove them provided British authorities can state clearly which ones are illegal.
Many of the antiquities that turn up on eBay auctions are items recovered in Great Britain by treasure hunters, said to number more than 10,000, who scour the earth with metal detectors as a weekend hobby. Finds have ranged from gold and silver Roman jewelry and coins to artifacts from Medieval and Elizabethan times.
Under the Treasure Act of 1996, any found item of gold or silver that is 300 years old has to be reported to a county coroner, and it is difficult to establish when such items were dug up, according to Bland. For its part, eBay says there are limits to what an auctioneer in cyberspace can do to identify illegal antiquities.
"Because we do not take possession of the item, we can never prove, disprove or confirm the original because it is not ours," Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman, was quoted as saying.
© Copyright 2004 by United Press International
