Virginia: artifacts

Private land: The Antiquities Act permit requirement is limited to state-controlled land and designated sites; collecting on private land is governed by landowner consent, except that excavation of human burials requires a permit anywhere. (Va. Code § 10.1-2302 (scope).) The landowner's permission is the baseline everywhere; Virginia's statute says how it must be given.

State land — Permit required: Conducting any field investigation, exploration or recovery operation that removes or disturbs an object of antiquity on state-controlled land without a permit from the Director of the Department of Historic Resources is a Class 1 misdemeanor; permits require a qualified professional archaeologist as field supervisor. Intentionally damaging or removing objects of antiquity on state-controlled land or designated sites is also a Class 1 misdemeanor. (Va. Code §§ 10.1-2302, 10.1-2306.) ARPA §470ee(c) makes the interstate sale of anything taken against state law a federal offence, so a dealer in another state is bound by this rule too.

Navigable waters and submerged lands — State property: Underwater historic property (shipwrecks, cargo and underwater archaeological specimens) on state-owned subaqueous bottoms belongs to the Commonwealth; recovery or disturbance requires a permit from the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, violation is a Class 1 misdemeanor with forfeiture of finds. (Va. Code § 10.1-2214.)

Burials: Any archaeological field investigation involving removal of human skeletal remains, on any land regardless of age of the burial, requires a permit from the Director of Historic Resources; unlawfully disinterring or displacing a buried body is a Class 4 felony and defiling a body a Class 6 felony. (Va. Code § 10.1-2305; § 18.2-126.) Funerary objects are also NAGPRA cultural items under federal law and cannot be sold at all.

Sale: No statute found that restricts sale of artifacts; objects recovered from state land or state bottoms remain Commonwealth property.

This article is generated from Stratum's state table as of 2026-09-20, from the statute pages listed below. It states the rule as written; it is not legal advice. Verify locally before relying on a permit route, and treat any penalty figure as a spot-check item.

Sources

Cite this article

Stratum Study. "Virginia: artifacts" (Law & ethics). Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-20. https://stratum.black/study/law/archaeology-us-virginia. Accessed 2026-09-21.

BibTeX · CSL-JSON

@misc{stratum-archaeology-us-virginia,
  title        = {Virginia: artifacts},
  author       = {{Stratum Study}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://stratum.black/study/law/archaeology-us-virginia}},
  year         = {2026},
  note         = {Law & ethics article, Stratum Study 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.