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An unpublished squeeze from the collection of the École biblique, recording a dedication to the ‘Olympian Gods’ for Hadrian's sōtēria, is here presented in conversation with two closely related inscriptions, recently identified as fakes. The authenticity and provenance of the new object are carefully analysed and discussed and a conclusion cautiously in favour of its genuine antiquity is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the relationship between war and European Qur'anic studies from the mediaeval period to the nineteenth century. It surveys manuscript sources that bear traces of wartime looting and the work of Muslim captives and converts. It argues that war played a recurring role in European oriental studies, helping to shape its practices, aims, and geography. In their early stages, war contributed to a broader shift in academic oriental studies toward the study of the Qur'an in its multilingual Islamic intellectual contexts. Later, as colonial expansion facilitated access to new sources, illicitly acquired manuscripts, especially early Qur'an fragments, were instrumental for historical scholarship on the Qur'an. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The looting of cultural heritage sites has been a growing problem and threatens national economies, social identity, destroys research potential, and traumatizes communities. For many countries, the challenge in protecting heritage is that there are often too few resources, particularly paid site guards, while sites can also be in remote locations. Here, we develop a new approach that applies deep learning methods to detect the presence of looting at heritage sites using optical imagery from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). We present results that demonstrate the accuracy, precision, and recall of our approach. Results show that optical UAV data can be an easy way for authorities to monitor heritage sites, demonstrating the utility of deep learning in aiding the protection of heritage sites by automating the detection of any new damage to sites. We discuss the impact and potential for deep learning to be used as a tool for the protection of heritage sites. How the approach could be improved with new data is also discussed. Additionally, the code and data used are provided as part of the outputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an overview of some of the foreign policies implemented regarding cultural heritage protection during wartimes, with specific focus on the Gulf Wars in Iraq and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. This article follows historical examples prior and post-World War II, noting pertinent international laws such as the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. The author also highlights current technological advances that are being implemented to help survey and better understand the destruction of cultural sites. This article argues for an increased focus on cultural heritage protection and preemptive measures that should be put in place by cultural institutions to protect their heritage. Information professionals are stewards of cultural heritage and part of their mission should be disaster-preparedness to best preserve artifacts and heritage sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, it was aimed to examine geographically the prisoners who were imprisoned for theft, looting and fraud in Turkey between 1990-2020. A multiple linear regression analysis was also conducted in the study, which used quantitative and qualitative research methods. During the specified period, 708,982 people were imprisoned in Turkey for the aforementioned crimes. Accordingly, 20.1% of those imprisoned in Turkey during the 31-year period are those convicted of the crimes stated. Especially after 2011, an increase is observed in the rate of those imprisoned for the crimes stated. As a matter of fact, the annual average of those who were imprisoned for the crimes mentioned in the 9-year period after 2011 (46,972) is almost as much as the population of the Faroe Islands in 2021. In the specified period, 95.38% of the convicts imprisoned for the aforementioned crimes were men and 4.62% were women. In addition, a regression analysis questioning the relationship between the rate of those who were imprisoned for the crimes stated in the study and three independent variables (unemployment rates by province, the ratio of the population of the province to the population of the country, the proportion of people registered in another province's population) was also included. According to the multiple regression analysis, a highly statistically significant relationship was found between the proportion of those registered in the population of another province and those who were imprisoned for the specified crimes. Accordingly, it is possible to say that the more the rate of those who are registered to the population of other provinces increases, the more the rate of those who are imprisoned for the crimes stated increases. This shows that theft, plunder and fraud crimes are most easily committed in cosmopolitan provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on identifying the legal implications of archaeological heritage in relation to the practices of looting, locally known as "huaquería", and collecting in the Sigsig canton, Ecuador; with emphasis on tenure, education, and the intention of constituting spaces for the exhibition of objects. The inhabitants of this Andean region assign to the past and its materiality a series of links and imaginaries that are manifested in the discourse, which in turn is replicated in the localities as "official history." The problem is based on the contradictory relationship between the legal norm and the socio-cultural context of the people living in archaeological areas, which generates the destruction of sites and, therefore, makes it impossible to generate stories framed in disciplinary knowledge. The methodology used was based on social cartography, talking maps, and interviews with some local actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 2013, newspapers around the world reported the discovery in Gaza of a rare bronze statue of the Greek god Apollo. A few months after the discovery, the statue disappeared, and its exact location and state of preservation have been unknown ever since. In November 2017, at the very beginning of my doctoral research regarding the impact of organized crime on cultural heritage and archaeological research, I had the opportunity to spend two weeks in Gaza. The Apollo sculpture was the pretext that allowed me to visit many sites around Gaza City and to address several interlocutors about the protection of endangered heritage in the region. The aim of this article, which is based on my doctoral thesis, is to follow in the footsteps of my investigation into the fate of the Gaza Apollo and to provide some introductory elements about the history of heritage legislation in Gaza, the illicit trafficking situation in the region and of course to take stock of the hypotheses concerning the situation of this sculpture called the Apollo of Gaza. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Palestinian digital archiving in the context of the Israeli regime's settler-colonial suppression and erasure of Palestinian knowledge. Looking closely at the efforts of three digital archives, the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive, the Palestinian Oral History Archive, and the Palestine Poster Project Archives, it argues that Palestinian digital archival projects, despite structural and technical limitations, serve to safeguard Palestinian knowledges and histories from Zionist violence. Noting examples of Israel's looting, destruction, and closure of physical Palestinian archives, the author posits that researchers should use digital archives in tandem with materials accessed in Israeli colonial archives to challenge dominant and distorted Zionist narratives, and to fill in the knowledge gaps in the long arc of the struggle for Palestinian liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morally, South Africa is rapidly spiralling out of control, and the future is gloomy unless severe measures are taken to reverse this trend. South Africa's moral wrongness is likely best summed up by unsettling pathologies such as indiscipline, violence, rape, assault, fraud, and a refusal to assume personal responsibility for high levels of crime, corruption, xenophobic attacks, gender-based violence, and family disintegration. Recently, South Africa has experienced major looting, which began during protests and unrest in some of the country's parts. They are unable to distinguish between what is basically incorrect and what is fundamentally correct. The nation's conscience has become deafeningly silent, or at best, ambiguous. Through qualitative research method and using secondary data, this study aims to discuss the existing challenges in South Africa that have influenced moral decay. It also highlights underlying issues that triggered looting that was instigated by individuals who have been having challenges that have not been addressed. The looting, which was fuelled by protests, happened during COVID-19 national lockdown level 4. This study concludes that non-service delivery, corruption, and negligence, among others, have been the roots of moral decay in South Africa, and the situation will continue to worsen if such challenges within government are not urgently dealt with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For 30 years, Armenia has carried out ecological terrorist incidents against the Republic of Azerbaijan. In our territories under occupation, our natural resources were destroyed, burned, water resources were polluted by the Armenians, nearly 60 thousand hectares of forest area were burned and destroyed. In general, Armenia has caused great damage to the ecology of the region. As a result of these environmental terrorist incidents deliberately committed by the aggressor Armenia, serious consequences have arisen in the region, the natural vegetation, the top fertile layer of the soil formed over thousands of years has been completely burned, the rare and rapidly decreasing plants and animals included in the "Red Book" of Azerbaijan and the International Red List the animal world has been destroyed, the habitats of animals have been destroyed, the balance of the ecosystem has been disturbed, and environmental components have been seriously damaged. It is not even possible to talk about the ecological environment in the territories of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia. Armenia's policy of aggression has endangered the natural ecological environment not only of the Republic of Azerbaijan, but of the region as a whole. The looting of Azerbaijani territories and the enemy's destruction of flora and fauna in these lands had a very negative impact on the ecological situation of the entire Caucasus. During the 44-day Patriotic War, Armenia again invaded the civilian population living outside the war zone, the ecological environment, natural resources, biological diversity of the region of global importance, and rich forest areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The loss of archaeological heritage continues today, because of both natural disasters and human-made actions. Alarmingly, a significant amount of the destruction is perpetrated by looters and illegal excavations. This problem is not a new one. However, it has increased exponentially in recent years, especially in countries which witnessed internal turmoil (i.e., the Arab Spring) but also throughout Europe. Local authorities struggle to provide adequate controls because of a lack of human resources, budget constraints or technological know-how. This paper describes a multimodal documentation and monitoring workflow applied to an archaeological site for which, due to the sensitivity of the topic, no specific details can be publicly disclosed. The techniques used include UAV aerial surveys, image-based modelling, change detection, relief visualization and GIS mapping. Thanks to the analysis of the multitemporal datasets, it was possible to assess the extension and spatial progression of illegal excavation over a two-year period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In South Africa, the politicisation of COVID-19 widened structural fissures, unearthed underlying inequalities, and exposed the 'rainbow nation' fallacy. The pandemic highlighted the struggles faced by marginalised households whose income streams were wiped out during lockdown. Public unrest emerged in townships and manifested as food protests, which undermined the perception of South Africa as a food secure country. Whilst the state and mainstream media dismissed these protests as criminal incidences, a contextualised analysis exposes the desperation of certain groups' experiences of hunger and disillusionment in Black South African townships. Framing 'food as political', this paper interrogates the weaponisation of food by the government, which violently used state security forces to subdue marginalised populations. The paper draws on Dambudzo Marechera's 1978 novella House of Hunger to condemn the gendered and militarised state response to 'starving black bodies.' It exposes the ruthlessness of how the state worked with mainstream media to protect corporate capital and foreign investments in the name of 'security' and 'wellbeing,' and explores the ultimate 'logic' of food protests in South African urban areas. In conclusion, the paper argues that the mainstream media hyper-visualised Black bodies as unruly, criminal, and therefore disposable, in order to dismiss their human right to food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ancient Šuruppak, today Fara, was one of the major Sumerian cities in Mesopotamia. It was situated along one of the ancient watercourses of the Euphrates River. Findings date it back to the Jemdet Nasr period around 3000 bc with a continuous occupation until the end of the Ur III period around 2000 bc. Fara was first explored and excavated by the Deutsche Orient‐Gesellschaft in the years 1902 and 1903 under the direction of Walter Andrae. Multiple excavation trenches with lengths up to 900 m transect the 1 km2 wide mound and are still visible today which enables us to georeference the excavation maps. Today, the 2.2 km2 wide archaeological area is dry and without any vegetation. Thousands of deep looting pits are covering the majority of mound which not only destroyed its upper metres but also challenge the application of geophysical prospection methods and their interpretation. The magnetometer prospecting of selected areas on and around the mound was carried out with three devices, two total field magnetometers and one gradiometer. The individual survey areas were combined in post‐processing by applying a high‐pass filter on the total field data sets and multiplying the vertical gradiometer data sets by a factor of two. This approach provides visually uniform magnetograms, despite being obtained by different devices, which simplifies subsequent visual interpretation. These magnetograms enable us to review, and to extend the results of the old excavations. The comparison show a good correlation in accuracy to the old drawings and positive identification of the already excavated features with magnetometry. Highlights of the survey are the discovery of the city wall confirming its existence, the layout of a unique building complex in the centre of the mound, likely a temple, traces of canals inside the city and an evaluation of magnetometer prospection over a looted area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In late nineteenth-century France, church bells were an integral part of society, sounding the quotidian rhythms of life. During WWI, a shortage of metals for the war effort resulted in German authorities requisitioning church bells in Germany and occupied territories. While the sequestration of the only bell from the church L'Eglise Sainte-Geneviève in the village of Marquillies (France) occurred under this guise, this was an invented cover story in order to remove the bell as a war trophy to Berlin. Contravening the revised Hague Convention of 1907, the removal the bell occurred because, owing to texts inscribed onto the bell by both parties, it was a propaganda tool by the French community and German forces alike. As a unique political symbol of the tension in the Alsace-Lorraine region in the early twentieth-century, the bell serves as a case highlighting the political power of a communal religious icon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the relevance of the Society for American Archaeology's 2018 "Statement on Collaboration with Responsible and Responsive Stewards of the Past" for imported antiquities (specifically, "classical" ones—that is, from Mediterranean regions). Various practical, legal, and ethical differences between collecting imported versus domestic objects make it difficult to identify "responsive and responsible stewards" of the former. An obstacle to responsible stewardship of privately owned classical collections—and to collaboration between classical archaeologists and collectors—is the 2008 acquisition guidelines issued by the two leading professional organizations in the museum field. I argue that the best home for unprovenienced and poorly provenienced antiquities collections is in university museums, where their complicated object biographies can be fully researched, taught, and displayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The countless number of drawings of the Parthenon made during the last five centuries constitutes a bursting memory of the history of its constructions, destructions and reconstructions. It allows a partial and fragmentary interpretation of the multiple physical and narrative qualities of this architecture both in space and time. The analysis of these series of images as isolated objects implies the risk of their idealization as works of art and also a chronological freezing that would obstruct their power beyond their nature as documents. By contrast, bringing them into dialogue gives way to their vibration reflected either by the dynamism or the flexibility inherent to the architectural ensemble they signify. This text involves a critical perspective and enables a debate focused on the rights and practices adopted by the politics over a planet that is built through transversal approaches between art, culture, and knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Illegal archaeological excavations, generally denoted as looting, is one of the most important damage factors to cultural heritage, as it upsets the human occupation stratigraphy of sites of archaeological interest. Looting identification and monitoring are not an easy task. A consolidated instrument used for the detection of archaeological features in general, and more specifically for the study of looting is remote sensing. Nevertheless, passive optical remote sensing is quite ineffective in dense vegetated areas. For these type of areas, in recent decades, LiDAR data and its derivatives have become an essential tool as they provide fundamental information that can be critical not only for the identification of unknown archaeological remains, but also for monitoring issues. Actually, LiDAR can suitably reveal grave robber devastation, even if, surprisingly, up today LiDAR has been generally unused for the identification of looting phenomenon. Consequently, this paper deals with an approach devised ad hoc for LiDAR data to detect looting. With this aim, some spatial visualization techniques and the geomorphon automatic landform extraction were exploited to enhance and extract features linked to the grave robber devastation. For this paper, the Etruscan site of San Giovenale (Northern Lazio, Italy) was selected as a test area as it is densely vegetated and was deeply plundered throughout the 20th century. Exploiting the LiDAR penetration capability, the prediction ability of the devised approach is highly satisfactory with a high rate of success, varying from 85–95%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authoress presents the history of creation and individual departments of the Kalisz Lan District Museum in Kalisz, with particular emphasis on their oldest parts, i.e. artefacts collected in the pre-war Kalisz Land Museum. She proves that the basis of the institution’s collection is the old (pre-war) legacy – lost, but partially recovered after World War II. The researcher presents the topic on examples, outlining possible directions for provenance research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Police Special Branch intelligence reports, amidst the chaos of Partition, over 60,000 ounces of gold were stolen from fleeing Hindus and Sikhs in 1947. Alongside political identity and religious organisation and territorialisation, desire for wealth or property was a key trigger for the continuation of the Partition violence. This article documents organised communal violence which erupted in the NWFP and Punjab during 1946–47 using largely underutilised police and intelligence reports from the period. The empirical focus of the article is two-fold. First, to show that the intercommunity violence triggered in these provinces was organised and funded by the Muslim League through its volunteer wings, even if specific perpetrators were locals. Second, that looting was a feature of locally-rooted violence to acquire property owned by non-Muslim minorities. As well, individual motives for revenge or a desire to best one's business rival fuelled the violence alongside ideological imperatives such as the commitment to the idea of Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a case study of the looting, sale, conservation and subsequent publication of 'The Gospel of Judas', this article examines if there is any ethical merit in conserving looted manuscripts. While fully acknowledging the extensive harm caused by looting, it explores the prevailing argument in archaeological circles that all looted artefacts must be ignored by conservators, given the logic that the blanket refusal to authenticate, conserve or research looted objects would decrease demand and their grey market value, and so prevent archaeological sites being robbed. However, this view, it is argued, is complicated by antiquities with written content and that conservation ethics leave room for conservators to use informed judgement on a case-by-case basis, especially as looted manuscripts have two types of context: archaeological and textual. By examining the experiences of a wide range of conservators and applying professional conservation ethics, the argument is made that there is still merit in conserving and publishing the textual content of otherwise unique, historic and badly deteriorated manuscript artefacts such as 'The Gospel of Judas'. Conservators need to retain agency and uphold a duty of care to an object in order to help unlock and preserve landmark texts, so long as it is undertaken responsibly in the service of mitigating the harm done by looting as much as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a multitemporal approach to the study of archaeological ceramics in the Peruvian North Coast through archaeological ethnography. It allows us to create a new perspective of a past that seems to be continuously brought back in the ritual practices of curanderos (shamans), and in the daily life of other subjects that interact with what archaeologists call archaeological artifacts. In the rituals of curanderos and in the practice of huaqueo, where archaeological ceramics are known as huacos, it is possible to see how these vessels come to life, performing within a complex meshwork of relationships which extend over different worlds, as well as human and other-than-human participation. This discussion provokes the reevaluation of the relationships among archaeological heritage, archaeological material, and archaeological practice itself. It also shows how past and present are related in this specific Andean context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, the activities of looters have become increasingly widespread in Russia. For certain regions of a huge country, for example the Republic of Bashkortostan, this problem is of key importance. The analysis of various sources presented in this paper shows that the system of protection of archaeological sites in Russia is ineffective in counteracting looters. There are neither analytical materials nor scientific papers that objectively reflect their illegal activities in the information area. One of the most accessible sources for studying the activities of looters is virtual communities in social networks. Using a variety of software products and scientific techniques, subscribers and content of three communities of looters in the social network Vkontakte have been studied. This study concludes that social networks actively promote the practices of looters and develop effective methods and ways to avoid responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains pervasive regulatory failure, lagging productivity, and the corporate capture of policy and policymakers as possibly unintended, but not unpredictable, outcomes of the New Zealand Treasury's radical adoption during the 1980s of public choice and Chicago school doctrines. With deregulation and a limited role of government written into statutes and embodied in regulatory practice, the pathologies identified and described by Buchanan, Tullock, Stigler and their collaborators became more, rather than less, prevalent in the New Zealand regulatory landscape. Privatisation opened the way for looting; the Commerce Act and new regulatory guidelines enabled rather than blocked anticompetitive practices and monopolistic renttaking; relaxed oversight meant that foreign direct investment became more extractive and less productive. From relatively inclusive politics and strong regulatory enforcement, New Zealand shifted towards more extractive institutions and weaker regulation. As a result, market power is exercised by the current business and financial elite in ways that have worsened wealth and income distributions, imposed deadweight burdens (both static and dynamic) on the economy, and now confront policymakers with roadblocks to achieving more inclusive institutions and pursuing a 'wellbeing' agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this review of Adam Raz's Looting of Arab Property during the War of Independence (2020, in Hebrew) Rona Sela critiques the book as dealing with the subject from a Zionist perspective and accepting Ben-Gurion's attitude of reducing official/state responsibility for the massive theft against Palestine and Palestinians, and being unconcerned that looting/seizures violated international law. Sela points out that Raz shows that the government made manipulative political use of the "looting" in its drive to ethnically cleanse what would become the State of Israel while arguing, at the same time, that the responsibility lies with the individual (Jewish) citizens of that state, who became "passive accomplices" of its policies. According to Sela, by Raz not distinguishing between individual looting and organized official seizure, he is led to minimize the direct responsibility of the sovereign and adopt biased conclusions that contradict, conceal, reframe, and whitewash the testimonies and cases described in his own book. While the pillaging and seizure of Jewish private property during the Holocaust is always on the Israeli public agenda, the looting and pillaging of Palestinian property and culture has been largely silenced. Just as Israel demands and receives compensation for Jewish stolen property and for crimes committed against them, Sela argues that compensation for the crimes perpetrated against Palestinians must be on the agenda - morally, legally, and practically - and that Israel must reveal the Palestinian textual and cultural treasures held and hidden in Israeli archives and return them to their rightful owners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report provides three photographs of a silver gilded crown obtained after the pillage ofMagdala, the mountain fortress ofthe Abyssinian Emperor Tewodros II, by soldiers ofthe English Napier expedition in 1868. While the odyssey of this crown from Magdala to Addis Ababa via Berlin and London could be reconstructed previously (Gaehtgens 2018/19), no pictorial evidence of it could be presented, because two photographs taken in Berlin in 1869 appeared to have been lost. These two as well as a third photograph were since then successfully recovered. They are made available here for an analysis of artistic features, which might help to elucidate the crown's pre-Magdala origin and provenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study was designed to shed light on the origin of disaster myths, such as panic, looting, crime, and psychological shock in postdisaster situations, by examining effects of secondhand information and the moderating effect of anxiety on such negative misconceptions. It was hypothesized that secondhand information on disaster behaviour, such as media reports and word‐of‐mouth rumours, and trait anxiety would increase the degrees to which people gave credit to four popular disaster myths. Also, trait anxiety was predicted to moderate the association between information sources and disaster myths. Questionnaire data obtained from 1,500 Japanese participants indicated that people relying on secondhand information gave more credit to all the four misconceptions than those relying on firsthand information such as direct disaster experience. However, trait anxiety was not found to significantly affect the degrees of the disaster myths. Furthermore, the moderating effect of trait anxiety on the association between the information sources and the disaster myths was not observed in any of the four myths. The present results imply that although reliance on secondhand information increases the degree of disaster myths to some extent, there should be other causes from which disaster myths originate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looting of archaeological sites and thefts from cultural institutions in the Middle East is driven by an international demand for artifacts. Despite the efforts of Ministries of Culture, Departments of Antiquities, cultural heritage NGOs, and local communities, landscapes are destroyed, sites are pillaged, and museums are ransacked across the region. Like other countries, Jordan has a demand driven looting problem rooted in the legal and illegal trade in cultural material from the Middle East (Kersel 2019b). Tourists, locals, and museums desire Jordanian artifacts, often without questioning their market appearance. In addition to the standard set of approaches to physically and legally protecting their cultural heritage, Jordan recently turned to diplomatic measures to curb the illegal movement of looted and stolen materials. In order to support their request for a bilateral cultural property agreement with the United States, Jordan is using data from drones, databases, and archaeologists to prove that looting is an ongoing concern and the purloined artifacts are destined for the US. Deploying a case study based on data from drones, in the following we demonstrate the power of archaeological research in national policy formation and international diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: During the Second World War Germany and German nationals looted the Netherlands and its nationals of many valuable assets, that were taken to Germany. Often the looting took the form of forced sales. In some cases, the sales price was too low, in other cases the German buyer paid market value or more, but often the buyer paid with guilders looted from the Dutch State. After the liberation of the Netherlands the 'restoration of rights regime' enabled victims of forced sales to seek annulment of the sales. This article concentrates on those movable goods that were sold to German buyers and that, after the war, returned from Germany to the Netherlands with the help of the Allied Forces, the so-called recuperation goods. If the seller did not seek annulment before the deadline of July 1951, for example because the price paid was considerable so that he preferred to keep the purchase price, or if his request was rejected, the Dutch State should not be forced to return these goods to their German buyer. Therefore, these goods were first subjected to Royal Decree E 133 which expropriated all German owned property in the Netherlands. Upon return to the Netherlands the recuperation goods became State property, but this measure could be undone by the seller successfully seeking annulment of the sales contract under Royal Decree E 100. However, if no annulment took place, the State remained owner of these goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice of metal detection has developed considerably over the past forty years. Taking into account the risk that it posed to the archaeological heritage, public authorities, following international recommendations, have put implemented legislation to try to reduce its impact. Some nations such as England and Wales, and recently Belgium, nevertheless consider users of metal detectors more as research assistants than as a real risk to the archaeological heritage and encourage them to report their findings to the competent authorities. In addition, discoverers of exceptional objects can be rewarded financially. In France, where legislation requires administrative authorization to use a metal detector, declaratory systems are models for the detector user community who have dreamed of "active collaboration" between themselves and archaeologists. Some scientists, arguing that illegal detection is a reality that cannot be combated, nevertheless choose to record and study the discoveries of clandestine users of metal detectors, seeing in this the possibility of "saving what can be saved". However, various examples from current events and the media show that, far from its original purpose, this practice provides a scientific validation for the detection of metals and a market value for the objects discovered, thus creating a demand for the looting of heritage sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the genesis, scope, and significance of the 1899 Hague Convention's prohibition against pillage. It analyses how it intersected with the moral contours of pillage as revealed in the actions and attitudes of British soldiers, British commanders, and Boer civilians during the South African War. In doing so, it crosses from ideal moral theory to international law, to shared and disputed moral beliefs among participants in the South African War. Drawing from pillage in the South African War, it concludes that the motives, policing, and moral and political context of pillage are vital to understanding its historical significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many British soldiers charged with suppressing the American Revolution embarked on their mission animated by anger. They expressed their fury most frequently through indiscriminate looting. Marauding undermined the discipline of the king's troops and their commanders' strategy by making enemies out of American moderates who had not yet rebelled, alienating Loyalists, and renewing Rebel resolve to continue fighting. In either 1778 or 1779, General Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander-in-chief in North America, commissioned two aides-de-camp, Major Patrick Ferguson and Captain John André, to formulate independent plans to enable British armies to operate in the interior without alienating hearts and minds. This article explores how Clinton, Lieutenant General Lord Charles Cornwallis, and other British commanders attempted to implement the André/Ferguson plan in the American South in 1780 and 1781. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1868, Queen Victoria's government sent a military expedition to Ethiopia/Abyssinia to liberate a group of Europeans, notably the British consul, who had been put in chains by Abyssinia Emperor Tewodros II in his mountain fortress Magdala. After an arduous 400 mile march to the Abyssinian highlands, the troops fulfilled their mission, liberated the captives, looted the treasury of Tewodros who had committed suicide, and burned the settlement to the ground. Thousands of valuable articles of Tewodros' treasure were shipped to England and ended in museums and collections all over the world. This article describes the cultural and political context of the expedition as well as the enormous cultural damage inflicted on the country which is impossible to assess: while the fate of a few objects of particular historical/artistic value has been described by others, the present article attempts to reconstruct the complex odyssey of a gilded silver crown from Magdala to Addis Ababa via Berlin and London, and, potentially, its end in the context of Mussolini's capture in Dongo near the Swiss-Italian border in 1945. This odyssey is discussed on the background of the long interaction between Europe and Ethiopia and, in particular, the roles played by crowns in the different cultural traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethics has abandoned its niche status to become a shared concern across archaeology. The appraisal of the sociopolitical context of archaeological practice since the 1980s has forced the discipline to take issue with the expanding array of ethical questions raised by work with living people. Thus, the original foci on the archaeological record, conservation, and scientific standards, which are behind most deontological codes, have been largely transcended and even challenged. In this line, this review emphasizes philosophical and political aspects over practical ones and examines some pressing ethical concerns that are related to archaeology's greater involvement with contemporary communities, political controversies, and social demands; discussion includes ethical responses to the indigenous critique, the benefits and risks of applied archaeology, the responsibilities of archaeologists in conflict and postconflict situations, vernacular digging and collecting practices, development-led archaeology, heritage, and the ethics of things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looting and spoliation of archaeological sites represent a known crisis in many parts of the world, and it is widely acknowledged that despite what we know about the scale of site destruction, the reality is worse. Available evidence suggests that the scale and severity of looting are increasing. Legal and ethical remedies exist but have not proven adequate to reduce the impact of looting and antiquities trafficking. This reflects, in part, inadequate resources and uneven enforcement, and also the pressures of rising prices for antiquities, growing market demand, severe economic depression, and lawlessness, particularly in conflict zones. But it also reflects expanding ideological causes for site destruction by others, as well as competing epistemologies and deontological expectations within the discipline itself challenging the site preservation imperative in archaeology. More than ten years ago, a previous review of these topics found the response inadequate; a decade later, matters are worse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the preliminary results of the excavations of 2017 season at the Mycenaean site of Kastrouli, Phokis. It attempts as well a preliminary interpretation of the data obtained during the 2016 season, now based on the first results of the still ongoing archaeometric research. During the second season of excavation a circular feature in the eastern side of the fortification wall has been investigated, and a second gate with its access ramp has been located, in addition to the gate already known on the western side. On the E-SE side of the fortified area some walls and foundations visible on the surface led to the excavation of the Building 1, which has been destroyed by fire. Further, a very long wall belonging to a large building (Building 2), or possibly to a complex of buildings, has been cleaned and documented on the southern terrace of the fortified area. Finally, two large holes dug by looters, one close to the Western gate and the other close to the Tomb A, have been examined and refilled with soil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The illegal excavation and trade of cultural objects from Syrian archaeological sites worsened markedly after the outbreak of civil disturbance and conflict in 2011. Since then, the damage to archaeological heritage has been well documented, and the issue of terrorist funding explored, but hardly any research has been conducted into the organization and operation of theft and trafficking of cultural objects inside Syria. As a first step in that direction, this paper presents texts of interviews with seven people resident in Syria who have first-hand knowledge of the trade, and uses information they provided to suggest a model of socioeconomic organization of the Syrian war economy regarding the trafficking of cultural objects. It highlights the importance of coins and other small objects for trade, and concludes by considering what lessons might be drawn from this model to improve presently established public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper evaluates the results of a 2016 study examining high-resolution open-source satellite data from 2002-2013 for sites across Egypt that mapped looting and site encroachment. The author features a looted tripartite coffin (now returned to Egypt) to suggest how satellite imagery might narrow down or provide the general provenience of looted objects and their possible site origins. Mapping where looting has occurred, the intensity of the looting, and emerging future threats to sites are important, but there is no established method at present to work backwards from unprovenanced looted items. Through an assessment of when objects enter countries illegally, the time-period of the looted objects, and an analysis of satellite imagery looting data concerning their country of origin, it is possible to suggest a potential provenance for looted objects. This approach shows how satellite data can be integrated into traditional provenance research. This study presents a workflow for how other projects might utilize a similar approach in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In England and Wales there exists a corpus of unprovenanced and unrecorded antiquities; a corpus adrift from archaeological context and now ebbing and flowing across the antiquities market and which could be described as ‘floating culture’. This corpus includes illicit antiquities and also antiquities found legitimately but not recorded and subsequently sold with or without the landowner’s knowledge. The definition of floating culture as ‘traces of the human past not fixed on one position, place or level’ presents a way of conceptualising what is, in essence, a transnational issue. This paper explores floating culture and suggests that the impact of non-reporting of antiquities remains a significant ethical and legal challenge both for heritage protection policy and the antiquities market in the U.K. and beyond. Attention is given to the Code of Practice for Responsible Metal Detecting in England and Wales, and to the landowner-finder search agreement as potential ways of mitigating the flow of unrecorded antiquities of uncertain legal status. While neither document is enforceable, both have potential to improve the protection of the archaeological record. Many of the themes conceptualised by ‘floating culture’ are relevant to the wider discussion on heritage protection and the global trade in illicit antiquities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Operatives of the Islamic State reportedly destroyed six Palmyrene funerary busts and statue fragments in Manbij, Syria, on July 2, 2015. This article considers the ethical implications of publishing photographs of antiquities that have been destroyed, arguing that in such dramatic cases as destruction, it is justified to publish readings. Photographs of these antiquities are then analyzed, their physical and iconographic characteristics described, and readings for three of the inscriptions suggested. Finally, the loss of data caused by the items' destruction is measured against the loss of data occasioned by looting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isfahan, as a prosperous district having a strategic position at the bank of Zayandehrood River, has a special position in the history of Iran. During the Islamic era, Isfahan was noticeably prosperous because of this it attracted the attention of different tribes and races and conquerors who brought prosperity to the city in return. However, political and religious struggles and the social hypocrisy governing the city in the sixth H.Sh. Century reduced its prosperity. This little prosperity was terminated by the looting of the Mongols continuing towards the start of the Safavid Dynasty. This paper attempts at investigating the social-economic backgrounds of the conquer of Isfahan by the Mongols, based on clarifying the conditions of the time in Isfahan and raising the question about the effect of the looting of the Mongols on the social and economic life of the city, to identify the consequences of this conquer. Results of the study show that looting of the Mongols brought about a break down in the social life and a recession in the economic life of urban as well as rural life of Isfahan, bringing about changes in the structure of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In front of many cameras and representatives of the international community that surround him, unexpectedly, and outside of any protocol that was prepared for this occasion, an elderly Palestinian man dares to stop, to withdraw his consent to leave his home and ceases to move. This old man is my companion in exploring the archives and attempting to understand its implication in the invention of the figure of 'infiltrator.' Together, we refrain from studying his figure, as defined by the nation-state that forced him out of his home. Halting precisely where many cameras were present, this person threatens to spoil the orchestrated spectacle of Arabs 'leaving of their will.' Together, we study the linkage between the expulsion of several hundred thousands of Palestinians and the looting of a vast treasure of books, documents, and photographs from Palestinians in 1948 and their transformation into 'abandoned files' in the newly constructed Israeli archives at the same time. The article proposes to relate to the ongoing looting of archives not merely as a violation of Palestinian property and rights, but rather as a continuous performance of national sovereignty. Sovereignty is performed as the continued project of partition of populations into distinct, differentiated groups, whereby violence among the two groups is both the pretext and the effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contemporary world, archaeology has become drawn, sometimes in dramatic fashion, into the violence of war. Archaeologists have taken part in monitoring and attempting to protect sites, museums, and monuments. However, they have engaged to a lesser extent with the underlying connections between damage to and destruction of archaeological remains and the reasons why archaeology has become increasingly both a target and a weapon of war. To highlight the complex intertwining of archaeology and war, this review examines the relationships among archaeologists' conceptions of their profession, the spiraling commodification of remains of the past, understandings and practices of cultural heritage, and the willful destruction of archaeological sites and objects, with a focus on Western Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contemporary world, archaeology has become drawn, sometimes in dramatic fashion, into the violence of war. Archaeologists have taken part in monitoring and attempting to protect sites, museums, and monuments. However, they have engaged to a lesser extent with the underlying connections between damage to and destruction of archaeological remains and the reasons why archaeology has become increasingly both a target and a weapon of war. To highlight the complex intertwining of archaeology and war, this review examines the relationships among archaeologists' conceptions of their profession, the spiraling commodification of remains of the past, understandings and practices of cultural heritage, and the willful destruction of archaeological sites and objects, with a focus on Western Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the collection of Nazi or German militaria in the Channel Islands and the change in meaning that this practice has held for four generations of islanders from 1945 to the present day. Focusing on the role of children in building this trade in militaria, it examines why they have been the primary agents of collection and asks what meaning or value such objects hold for them. This article proposes the concept of ‘inherited nostalgia’ to explain the desire of the third and fourth generations for such objects. It also presents German militaria as ‘postmemorial objects’, and their display as a ‘postmemorial project’, as a way of understanding their meaning in this particular formerly occupied part of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 1950s and 1960s constitute a key “moment” in the history of the looting of archaeological sites in Southeast Asia. The emergence in the region at that time of a commodity market for antiquities such as pottery triggered a wave of illicit excavation of archaeological sites. Simultaneous with the trafficking of antiquities out of the Philippines and Thailand into the hands of private collectors and museums in the West during this period and subsequent decades a thriving domestic antiquities market developed. It is argued here that the valorization of antiquities as national heritage, rather than inhibiting acquisition by citizen collectors, facilitated a process wherein collecting became a form of cultural capital accumulation. It is inaccurate to categorize Thailand and the Philippines simply as “source” or “supply” nodes in the global antiquities trade. This paper aims for a more nuanced approach to the geoeconomics of antiquities consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A number of commentators have suggested that the riots in England in August 2011 were distinctive because of the character and extent of the looting that took place. In doing so, they have argued that the nature of modern consumer capitalism should be placed front and centre of any explanation of the disorder. While concurring with elements of such arguments, we depart from such analyses in three ways. First, we argue that it is important not to overstate the extent to which the 2011 riots were a departure from previous outbreaks of civil disorder--violent consumerism having a quite lengthy history. Second, using testimony from those involved, we argue that a focus on looting risks ignoring both the political character and the violence involved in the riots. Finally, and relatedly, we suggest that the focus on consumption potentially simplifies the nature of the looting itself by underestimating its political and expressive characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The boat-grave cemetery at Vendel, Uppland, is one of the iconic sites of first-millennium Sweden. The high-status grave-goods and weaponry have been widely displayed and studied since their discovery over 130 years ago. Yet it is rarely mentioned that the burial ground had been almost completely ransacked long before archaeologists stepped in. The celebrated finds are only a fraction of the wealth that was originally buried at the site. This is the first evaluation of the evidence of disturbance from Vendel since the excavations in the late 19th century. The ancient re-opening of the graves is reconstructed through the letters and diaries of the excavator, Hjalmar Stolpe, as well as the various preliminary and final reports. Evidence is presented that the main parts of the burials, notably the human bones, were systematically dug out of nearly every grave and removed from the site. The reopening probably took place during the Christianization period, before or during the construction of the nearby church in the 13th century. This is an example of the widespread reworking of monuments at this time, specifically highlighting the significance accorded to buried human remains. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Collected sites are commonly seen as places requiring expert intervention to ‘save the past’ from destruction by artifact collectors and looters. Despite engaging directly with the physical effects of collecting and vandalism, little attention is given to the meanings of these actions and the contributions they make to the stories told about sites or the past more broadly. Professional archaeologists often position their engagement with site destruction as heritage ‘salvage’ and regard collecting as lacking any value in contemporary society. Repositioning collecting as meaningful social practice and heritage action raises the question: in failing to understand legal or illegal collecting as significant to heritage, have archaeologists contributed to the erasure of acts that aim to work out identities, memories and senses of place, and contribute to an individual’s or group’s sense of ontological security? This question is explored through a case study from the New England region of North America where archaeologists have allied with Native American and other stakeholders to advocate for heritage protection by taking an anti-looting/collecting stance. We explore alternatives to this position that engage directly with forms of collecting as meaningful social practices that are largely erased in site narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]