RITUAL, RISK, AND DANGER: AVOIDANCE RITUALS AMONG ANTIQUITY LOOTERS

Abstract

This paper deals with the role of taboos and avoidance rituals as a means of psycho-cultural adaptation to taking personal risks among illicit antiquity looters in the Black Sea region of Turkey. My ethnographic fieldwork showed that antiquity looters indeed cared more about the possibility of being crushed by spiritual creatures than of being caught by law enforcement. Spiritual creatures, namely jinn, are the most unpredictable threats imagined by illicit antiquity looters. They force looters to perform rituals to mitigate the perceived danger, including temporary or permanent loss of sanity, loss of limb, or loss of life. The paper concludes that looters' avoidance rituals play a functional role rather than a rational one, and they are performed to show that looters are willing to get along with a spiritual environment beyond their control.