Polaroid photography was not invented until 1948, nine years after the relevant Italian law restricting the export of antiquities came into force, and the SX-70 [Polaroid camera] was not introduced until much later, in October 1972 in the United States and in Europe later still’ (Peter Watson, The Medici Conspiracy). Therefore, Polaroid photographs of recently excavated antiquities in their raw state, documented with soil and salt encrustations visible, are a form of evidence that the artefacts left the ground illegally.

Discovered amongst 45 crates of looted antiquities at Geneva Freeport in 2014, these Polaroids were a secret form of documentation used by the illicit network.