Brits Sign On	Volume 54 Number 3, May/June 2001
by Mark Rose

The U.K.'s arts minister Alan Howarth announced March 14 that Britain will sign the 1970 UNESCO cultural property convention, which gives members the right to recover stolen or illicitly exported antiquities that surface in other signatory countries. "The importance of this for the protection of the world's cultural heritage and preservation of archaeological sites goes far beyond the fact that the U.K. is just one country among the 90-some who have already signed the treaty," says ARCHAEOLOGY's contributing editor Ellen Herscher. "Because England has long been a center for the trade in antiquities, British ratification--in concert with that of France and, expected soon, Switzerland--greatly strengthens the international controls among market countries."

© 2001 by the Archaeological Institute of America archive.archaeology.org/0105/newsbriefs/brits.html