Police in Greece said an ancient statue was dumped near garbage cans in the city of Thessaloniki. GREEK POLICE

Police in Greece said Wednesday they were investigating how an ancient Greek statue came to be dumped in a black plastic bag near garbage cans in the northern city of Thessaloniki.

The organized crime unit said it was investigating "after a 32-year-old man went to the police to drop off a statue he had apparently found inside a black bag near dustbins."

According to the first assessment by the archaeology service, the headless statue is from the Hellenistic period (between 323 and 31 BC), said the police statement. Authorities also released a photo of the statue, which measures 32 by 10 inches.

It will be transferred to the crime investigation team in northern Greece for lab tests, then to the antiquities service for evaluation and conservation, according to the statement.

Police have long had to contend with the illegal traffic in antiquities because of the number of artifacts in sites across the country that date back to ancient Greece.

Road and construction work across Greece still turns up new finds from that era on a regular basis.

Accidental archaeological discoveries are relatively common in Greece, a country renowned for its ancient heritage, and often made during building construction or public works.

In December, workers installing natural gas pipelines near Athens uncovered a Roman-era statue of Hermes buried upright in a brick-lined pit near the Acropolis. Thessaloniki weeks ago unveiled a trove of antiquities found during the decades-long construction of its metro system, which officially opened in November.

Key finds, including a marble-paved Roman thoroughfare and tens of thousands of artifacts spanning the Greek, Byzantine and Ottoman periods, are now showcased at subway stations.

Ancient statues have also been found in trash before in other parts of Europe. In 2023, a Roman-era statuette of Venus was discovered in a trash dump in Rennes, France. That same year, ancient bronze statues were found in a garbage dump in Tuscany, Italy.

In 2013, a 1,800-year-old carved stone head possibly depicting a Roman god found in an ancient trash dump in England.

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