PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Dec. 14— In 1924, the French writer Andre Malraux was arrested and imprisoned when he removed nearly a ton of stone carvings and ornaments from a temple in the remote Cambodian jungle and trundled them away in oxcarts.
In 1980, starving refugees fleeing the terrors of the Khmer Rouge arrived at the border of Thailand lugging stone heads lopped from temple statues and ornate silverwork looted from museums.
Today the looting continues, from hundreds of temples and archeological sites scattered through the jungles of this often-lawless country, sometimes organized by smuggling syndicates and abetted by antique dealers in Thailand and elsewhere.
Entire temple walls covered with bas-relief are hacked into chunks and trucked away by thieves. Villagers sell ancient pottery for pennies. Armed bands have attacked monks at remote temples to loot their treasures and have twice raided the conservation office at the temple complex of Angkor.
But the tide is slowly beginning to turn. With the Cambodian Government beginning a campaign to seek the return of the country's treasures, and with cooperation from curators and customs agents abroad, this has been a significant year for the recovery of artifacts.
Fifteen objects have come home, in three separate shipments from three continents, raising hopes that some of the more significant artifacts may be returned.
In July, the United States returned a small head of the god Shiva that had been seized at customs in San Francisco. Cambodia is a largely Buddhist nation, but over the centuries its history and its art have seen successive overlays of Buddhist and Hindu influences. At some temples, statues of Buddha mingle with those of the Hindu deities Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu.
In September, the Thai Government returned 13 large stone carvings, some up to 800 years old, that had been confiscated by the Thai police from an antique shop in Bangkok in 1990. Thai officials said the return was a gesture of good will meant to combat that country's image as a center of antique trafficking.
And just this month, a British couple returned a stone Brahma head -- lacking one of its four faces -- that they had bought at auction. Its Cambodian origin was confirmed by its inclusion in a list, published by Unesco, of 100 artifacts that had disappeared from an inventory compiled in the 1960's.
In addition, Sebastien Cavalier, a Unesco representative here, said he was expecting the return as early as next month of a 10th-century Angkorean head of Shiva that is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Six bronze pieces sent to the Guimet Museum in Paris for cleaning and safekeeping in the 1970's could also be returned in the coming months, he said.
''There are many ongoing projects to recover artifacts,'' Mr. Cavalier said. ''This year was a good year because some efforts that started two or three years ago bore fruit.''
Now with the launching in January of a major traveling exhibition of Khmer artifacts -- to Paris, Washington, Tokyo and Osaka -- accompanied by an updated catalogue of some of Cambodia's missing treasures, Mr. Cavalier said he hopes the returns will accelerate.
The exhibit will be on display in Paris from Jan. 31 to May 26, at the National Gallery in Washington from June 30 to Sept 28, and in Japan from Oct. 28 to March 22, 1998.
But the pillage of artifacts continues at a far greater pace than the returns.
Government control remains tenuous in much of Cambodia and the Ministry of Culture has little money for the protection of antiquities. There is little check on armed groups and corrupt officials throughout the countryside, where hundreds of temples remain unused and unguarded or overgrown with jungle.
Truckloads of treasures regularly pass through military checkpoints into Thailand, art experts say. Heavy stone artifacts are towed in fishing nets to cargo ships off the southern coast. In Thailand, skilled artisans repair or copy damaged objects and certificates of authenticity are forged.
Most of Cambodia's artistic patrimony remains uncatalogued and Mr. Cavalier said there was no way to know the full extent of what had already been stolen over the last decades, or what remained scattered around the country.
Even in the National Museum, the jumble of objects in storerooms has not been put in order.
The other day, Hun Tha, a restorer, painstakingly replaced a broken head onto the 10th-century stone statue of a female divinity. But museum workers said there were no records to show where the statue and its broken head had come from or how long they had lain in the storeroom.
In his office in the Ministry of Culture, Under Secretary of State Michel Tranet stepped over piles of broken pottery and bits and pieces of statues to pull from a cupboard a brightly painted metal can bearing the words ''Chocolate Sandwich Cookies.'' Wrapped in newspaper inside were a tiny fifth-century ceramic head of Shiva, a stone lion, a jade earring, a terra-cotta Hanuman monkey, a bone necklace and several small pre-Angkorean Buddha heads.
Villagers in Angkor Borei had unearthed these miniature treasures, Mr. Tranet said, and he had persuaded them, with a small payment, to give them up.
''I am sick! I am sick!'' he exclaimed. ''There is no way to stop this.''
Last year in Siem Reap, he said, researchers discovered a 10th-century kiln site but had no way to protect it. Since then, soldiers and villagers have looted and sold more than 100 ceramic pieces.
''You can see them now in Thai antique shops,'' Mr. Tranet said. ''Yes! I have seen them! Last week I saw them.''
In what might have seemed an encouraging sign, he said, the Thai border police recently seized from smugglers six wooden statues of Buddha from about the 17th century.
''I am very happy,'' Mr. Tranet said. ''This is good news. But they are asking for some compensation from us before they return them. They want $200. And we don't have $200.''
Photo: Most of Cambodia's artistic patrimony is uncatalogued, with even the storerooms at the National Museum a jumble of unsorted objects. Hun Tha, a restorer there, replaced the head on a broken 10th-century statue. (Seth Mydans/The New York Times) Map of Cambodia showing the location of Phnom Penh.

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