WASHINGTON – Museums should make ownership history records publicly available for all ancient art and archaeological artifacts in their collections and rigorously research new acquisitions, according to guidelines released Monday by the American Association of Museums.

The final guidelines took two years to develop and are designed to suppress the market for looted archaeological treasures. Beyond strict adherence to U.S. and international law, museums should establish their own clear collections policies and require documentation that new artifacts have not been illegally exported from their countries of origin.

“The American people rely on museums to preserve and interpret the world's cultural heritage,” AAM President Ford W. Bell said of the newly approved guidelines. “In recent years, however, the public has come to expect that museums, through their collecting activities, do not contribute to the illicit trade in cultural property.”

Many museums are already in compliance with the guidelines, said Bell, whose Washington-based association includes 3,000 institutional members.

“The harder thing will be looking at existing collections, which is a big job,” he said. The ownership histories of antiquities and Nazi-era artwork are perhaps the hardest to determine.

Similar guidelines adopted in June by the Association of Art Museum Directors said museums should normally not acquire an ancient work of art unless research proves it was outside the country where it was discovered in 1970 or was legally exported from its place of discovery after 1970.

The policies adopted by the two organizations, while not identical, are very similar, Bell said.

According to the AAM standards, future acquisitions should at the very least include ownership documentation dating to the November 1970 signing of a United Nations convention on the trade of cultural property. Objects without documentation going back that far are more likely to have been stolen or smuggled out of their countries of origin.

Museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles have agreed in recent years to return artifacts to Italy that the Italian government says were looted or stolen.

Under the new guidelines museums may continue to honor requests for anonymity by donors, but all sellers or donors should be required to provide all available information on the artwork or artifact.

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