This is a very interesting way to think about things! Although we have learned a great deal about looters and archaeologists in class in separate fashions, I never considered juxtaposing them together in thought. One thing that popped into my mind when reading your blog post was regarding what you said about looters taking artifacts from sites for their own personal benefit, whether to sell on the market or keep for themselves. One thing I thought about after reading this was whether or not taking artifacts from sites makes the artifacts themselves less valuable on places such as the black market. We know that to archaeologists, material culture taken from a site is almost useless because now the site is compromised and now it will be impossible to figure out what these artifacts meant in a time and space context. Ethan always tells us that the artifact itself isn’t important, the place in which it was find and the context in which it was once used and valued is the most important. Because of this I have to wonder if this has any impact on its selling value in potential selling venues like the black market and at auction. Additionally, I wonder if keeping sites secret during and after excavation would help. As you said, many sites are discovered and immediately are blasted on the news so people could potentially sneak into the sites and try to loot them before archaeologists are able to get in there. However, if we had the ability to keep these sites a secret, it would most likely cut down on the amount of looters. But I wonder if this is actually feasible and if it is, how long would they need to be kept secret?