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This is a 2007 research report containing data and analysis in relation to an ESRC-funded study of the reception of the 2003 Act by the antiquities market in London.

As our editorial introduction to this volume suggests, source country legal controls have only been proven of significant value in relation to their place in an international network of control, and it has gradually become apparent to commentators on the illicit market in antiquities that there are other points in such an international network of control where intervention may be more effective than at source (O’Keefe, 1997; Polk, 2000). Strategies of regulation at the demand end of the chain of supply have been thought potentially capable of achieving a sanitising effect on the market, and it is under this broad philosophy of demandreduction as applied to illicit antiquities that the 2003 Act appears.