Greece: artifacts

Greece vests archaeological material in the state. Antiquities from 1453 and earlier belong to the state; possession is by permit only, export by ministry licence. The governing law is Law 5351/1932; Law 3028/2002 on the Protection of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage; the date Stratum treats as decisive is 1932 (the year of enactment — the exact commencement has not been checked, so the conservative reading is used). An object documented outside Greece before that date is sold with the document cited; one documented only later is sold with a warning that Greece could regard the export as unlawful, and the ownership history stated in full; one with no provenance at all is not listed.

The United States restricts import of Greece archaeological material of 3000 BCE – 1500 CE and ecclesiastical ethnological material AD 324–1830, coins included under the CPIA (CBP Dec. 21-16, restricted since 2011). Entry needs the export certificate or proof the object left Greece before 2011. Domestic resale of material already lawfully in the US is not restricted by this, but the paper is what a buyer will ask for.

US courts have applied foreign patrimony laws through the National Stolen Property Act (United States v. McClain, 1977; United States v. Schultz, 2003): an object exported after a clear vesting law can be stolen property in the United States even when no US import restriction existed at the time. The date of the earliest document that places an object outside Greece is therefore the single most valuable fact on its record.

Sources

Cite this article

Stratum Strata. "Greece: artifacts" (Law & ethics). Stratum Strata pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-20. https://stratum.black/strata/law/archaeology-greece. Accessed 2026-09-21.

BibTeX · CSL-JSON

@misc{stratum-archaeology-greece,
  title        = {Greece: artifacts},
  author       = {{Stratum Strata}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://stratum.black/strata/law/archaeology-greece}},
  year         = {2026},
  note         = {Law & ethics article, Stratum Strata pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-20; sources: stratum. Accessed 2026-09-21.}
}

Citations carry the pack version and the article's as-of date so they resolve to the same text later. The facts themselves belong to the sources listed below; cite those for the science.

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Sources