ROME, April 25 Dozens of documents were dissected in a courtroom here on Wednesday as prosecutors sought to weave the doings of art dealers, collectors and museums into what they argue is a broad criminal pattern: the trafficking of archaeological artifacts looted from Italian soil. "This was one big swamp where many swam and many others came to drink," said the trial prosecutor, Paolo Ferri, summing up the day's testimony. "Marion True and Robert Hecht were part of this swamp. In fact Hecht was the biggest pike in the swamp." Ms. True, the former antiquities curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and Mr. Hecht, an American dealer, are being tried on charges of conspiring to deal in looted antiquities. Much of Wednesday's testimony centered on Gianfranco Becchina, a Sicilian antiquities dealer working out of Basel, Switzerland, and his contacts with dealers, museums and collectors around the world. Mr. Becchina is not on trial but is under investigation in a related case. In more than four hours on the stand, Giuseppe Putrino, an officer with the art theft squad of the Italian military police, or carabinieri, expounded on documents, including faxes, invoices, money transfers, letters and Polaroid photographs, confiscated during police raids on Mr. Becchina's warehouses in Basel and his home in Castelvetrano, Sicily. Several of the documents linked Mr. Becchina with American collectors, in particular a New York couple: Leon Levy, who died in 1998, and his wife, Shelby White, a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One letter asked Mr. Becchina to keep Mr. Levy and Ms. White "in mind when objects arrive." Other documents suggested that Mr. Becchina had offered several works to them. Mr. Putrino also testified about documents related to the sale of a marble kouros, or naked youth, by Mr. Becchina to the Getty for 10 million in 1983, when Jiri Frel was curator of antiquities. Mr. Becchina was once a major supplier to the Getty, but his relationship with the museum soured after the Getty kouros was found to be a fake. Documents shown in court indicated that Mr. Becchina had a photocopy of Mr. Frel's passport and Italian residency papers, which cited Castelvetrano as Mr. Frel's residence. Mr. Frel now lives in Rome. Mr. Putrino pointed out that the contested objects discussed in court on Wednesday had all found their way to Switzerland, "with no trace of how they got there from Italy."