Looting (Hindi lūṭ, akin to Sanskrit luṭhati, [he] steals; also Latin latro, latronis [Sp. ladrón], "thief")—also referred to as sacking, plundering, despoiling, despoliation, and pillaging—is the indiscriminate taking of goods by force as part of a military or political victory, or during a catastrophe or riot, such as during war, natural disaster, or rioting. The term is also used in a broader sense, to describe egregious instances of theft and embezzlement, such as the "plundering" of private or public assets by corrupt or greedy authorities. Looting is loosely distinguished from scavenging by the objects taken; scavenging implies taking of essential items such as food, water, shelter, or other material needed for survival while looting implies items of luxury or not necessary for survival such as art work, precious metals or other valuables. The proceeds of all these activities can be described as loot, plunder, or pillage.
Looting originally referred primarily to the plundering of villages and cities not only by victorious troops during warfare, but also by civilian members of the community (for example, see War and Peace, which describes widespread looting by Moscow's citizens before Napoleon's troops enter the town, and looting by French troops elsewhere; also note the looting of art treasures by the Nazis during WWII). Piracy is a form of looting organized by ships on the high seas outside the control of a sovereign government. The Hague Convention of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, both explicitly ban "pillage" by hostile armies. A common way to avoid this is to establish Custodian of Enemy Property, which handle the property until it can be returned.
Throughout the history of the United States Native American archaeological sites have been looted, destroying religious sites and relics that date back several hundred years. Many Indian burial sites and sacred grounds have been systematically plundered and destroyed until the 1957 dispute about the Gasquet-Orleans Road. The GO road in what is now the Six Rivers National Forest in the Siskyou Mountain Range was the first logging project that raised public Indian opposition. After several legal disputes and lawsuits, including the 1978 Indian Religious Freedom Act, the case was decided at the Supreme Court.
In 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) became the primary federal legislation pertaining to graves and human remains in archaeological contexts. The act "establishes definitions of burial sites, cultural affiliation, cultural items, associated and unassociated funerary objects, sacred objects, cultural patrimony, Indian tribes, museums, Native Americans and Native Hawaiians, right of possession and tribal land."
In 2002 Federal grand jurors have accused two men, Steven Scott Tripp, 40, of Farmington, and William Thomas Cooksey, 53, of Union, of looting and violating the integrity of an American Indian burial site at southeast Missouri's Wappapello Lake. The looters "illegally excavated, removed, damaged and defaced archaeological resources, and that by doing so they caused at least $1,000 in damage. Gary Stilts, the Army Corps' operations manager there, estimated the damage to be about $14,000". Stilts said about the looting:
In 1995, authorities were informed about the looting of Elephant Mountain Cave, located on government property in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Jack Lee Harelson, a former insurance agent, looted the site for years, uncovering two burial sites, grave goods, obsidian blades and deer-hoof rattles. Harelson decapitated the two 2000 year old corpses and buried the heads in plastic garbage bags in his backyard. In 1996 a federal court in Oregon found Harelson guilty of corpse abuse and possession of stolen property, resulting in a $20,000 fine and 30 days in jail. (The conviction of corpse abuse was later revoked because the statute of limitations had expired.) In 2002 a federal administrative judge issued a civil penalty of $2.5 million for Harelson for destruction of archaeological resources.
James Patrick Barker, a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) archaeologist for the state of Nevada, describes the Elephant Mountain Cave as one of the most significant sites of the Great Basin. One pair of sandals plundered by Harelson was later estimated to be 10,000 years old, making them one of the oldest pieces of footwear worldwide.
On December 5, 2005 six Ohio residents, Daniel Fisher, 41, and Thomas J. Luecke, 40, of Cincinnati; Richard Kirk, 56, of Stout; Joseph M. Mercurio, 44, and Tanya C. Mercurio, 43, of Manchester; and David Whitling, 47, of Bellefontaine, entered federal ground to dig for artifacts, using "rakes and digging implements to disturb the surface of the ground, creating holes and displacing archaeological sediment in violation of the federal Archaeological Resources Protection Act". The looted site at Barren River Lake includes Early Woodlands ceramics dating back roughly to 1500 to 300 B.C. They looters were sentenced to probation by Judge Thomas B. Russell in federal court after pleading guilty.
During a disaster, police and military authorities are sometimes unable to prevent looting when they are overwhelmed by humanitarian or combat concerns, or cannot be summoned due to damaged communications infrastructure. Especially during natural disasters, some people find themselves forced to take what is not theirs in order to survive. How to respond to this is often a dilemma for the authorities. In other cases, looting may be tolerated or even encouraged by authorities for political or other reasons.
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