Why loot when you can fake?

Archeologists feared that eBay would democratize antiques trafficking, increasing demand and causing more ancient sites to be looted. But things haven’t worked out that way ..

By improving access to a worldwide market, eBay has inadvertently created a vast market for copies of antiquities, diverting whole villages from looting to producing fake artifacts, Stanish writes. The proliferation of these copies also has added new risks to buying objects billed as artifacts, which in turn has worked to depress the market for these items, further reducing incentives to loot

from “EBay Has Unexpected, Chilling Effect On Looting Of Antiquities, Archaelogist Finds,” ScienceDaily, 9 May 2009