Part 6/15:
The process of restitution involves meticulous detective work—matching fragments, analyzing photographs, and tracking the journey of objects from temples to auction houses and private hands. For example, the statue nicknamed “Golden Boy,” a 900,000-year-old bronze figure, was identified in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Through diligent provenance research, investigators linked it back to a site in Cambodia, revealing its illegal removal and potential theft.