National Geographic Kids Does It Right

Museums pride themselves on the artifacts they have on display in their spacious rooms and tucked away in storage areas. They spend lots of money and time searching for certain objects. They dedicate hours to creating exhibits that will attract the masses. So it should not come as a surprise that museums try to avoid the subject of looting. Looting is linked with plundering, thieves or treasure hunters like pirates, and other uncivilized and illegal activities that would tarnish a museum's reputation. Some of the objects in museums are donated by anonymous sources. In these instances, the history and origin of the object is unknown because more likely than not, the artifact was looted from an ancient site somewhere.

Looting is a sad and disgusting practice, but laws and regulations regarding looting were created only a few decades ago, way after most items were looted. Anything acquired by museums after the late 1900s now has to be returned to the rightful owner or country.

Although this article by National Geographic Kids is about how citizens and police in Egypt protected a museum from looters and not about how museums have items in them that have been looted, they are still acknowledging that looting happens. It is time for children (and adults) to know about looting and face it. Looting happened and still happens today. It cannot and should not be avoided. I praise National Geographic for sharing this tidbit rather than trying to cover it up.

How often do we hear stories about looting or people trying to prevent looting? Once in awhile, a huge scandal involving an artifact in a museum or something will be the headlines for a few days, but other than that, museums and news sources that discuss archaeological news avoid the discussion of looting and looters when it can be avoided. This article is a good step to introducing the topic of looting to children. But there needs to be more discussion about looted items displayed in museums and people's private collections. What should be done about these artifacts? Who has the right to them? When will the dirty and complicated details about looting be figured out? These are all questions that governments and archaeologists need to discuss and hopefully, come to a satisfactory conclusion otherwise there will be bad blood among nations and governments and looting will continue to be a problem.

I feel like often, newspapers, magazines, and books simplify archaeology too much. They feel that children should just learn about exciting and fun things. This is done by writing simple articles that highlight news about dinosaur bones, digs (that sound like treasure hunts), and finding pieces of puzzles in the form of pottery pieces. It is hard sometimes to find a substantial and serious piece that is about something less pretty in the archaeological world, like looting. In addition, it seems that there is very little discussion with archaeologists about what they do and what it is like to go on a dig. There are fun simulations in the form of games or photos, but an article that touches on drier stuff is not usually written. In part, this is because the target audience for such articles is probably elementary age children, but at that age, they can be serious. 

We should not underestimate the abilities of children. They can be pushed a little bit to read more sophisticated and realistic information about archaeology. I feel like if I had received a mix of exciting and informative facts about archaeology, I would have felt more compelled to learn about it as a child. But then again, I was always loved art and reading, so I was pretty easily entertained. I remember reading Time for Kids and loving it as a child. It was required in schools, but it told us the facts about the world. It encouraged us to learn some challenging words, to understand what was going on in the news, and was very engaging. More archaeological material for children should aim to do this, be educational and factual without focusing too much on the "flashy" details but rather on content.

Photo taken from "Egypt Protects Artifacts from Looters." NG Kids. Posted Tuesday, February 1, 2011. http://kidsblogs.nationalgeographic.com/kidsnews/archaeology/