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The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) occupied the city of Manbij and its countryside from 23 January 2014 until 12 August 2016. During this period, the region suffered greatly as ISIS monopolized control and brutally imposed its ideology. Fierce battles were fought for the control of oil wells, bakeries, mills, dams, and power stations, all of which were sources of revenue. Antiquities were soon recognized as another potential income source. This article demonstrates the ways in which ISIS began to administer and facilitate the looting of antiquities through the Diwan Al-Rikaz. Within this diwan, ISIS established the Qasmu Al-Athar, which was specifically responsible for looting antiquities. Based on interviews conducted in 2015 and primary documents, this article studies the specific ways in which ISIS facilitated the quarrying and looting of antiquities in Manbij and the rich archaeological sites of its countryside. Further, by examining the damage at a previously undocumented archaeological site, Meshrefet Anz, the looting of antiquities under the direct supervision of the Diwan Al-Rikaz is studied. Using documentary evidence including ISIS’s internal documentation as well as photographs collected by the author between 2014 and 2016, the article demonstrates the methods used by ISIS, reveals its financial motivations, and bears witness to the damage done at specific Syrian heritage sites.

Rescue has long been a defense for the removal of cultural property. Since the explosion of iconoclasm in West Asia, North Africa, and West Africa, there has been a growing demand for cultural property in danger zones to be “rescued” by being purchased and given “asylum” in “safe zones” (typically, in the market countries of Western Europe and North America). This article reviews evidence from natural experiments with the “rescue” of looted antiquities and stolen artifacts from across Asia and Europe. Unsurprisingly, the evidence reaffirms that “rescue” incentivizes looting, smuggling, and corruption, as well as forgery, and the accompanying destruction of knowledge. More significantly, “rescue” facilitates the laundering of “ordinary” illicit assets and may contribute to revenue streams of criminal organizations and violent political organizations; it may even weaken international support for insecure democracies. Ultimately, “rescue” by purchase appears incoherent, counter-productive, and dangerous for the victimized communities that it purports to support.

Nowadays, the antiquities-smuggling phenomenon seems more complicated than many researchers thought before. Antiquity looting is delinquent behaviour and a criminal activity. Hence, it is closely connected to many of the other problems that Greece is currently facing. This article tries to set the smuggling problem in a wider frame. More specifically, many researchers have pointed to the long-term inability of Greece’s tax services to detect income hiding. This has led to increased tax evasion and a shadow economic phenomenon. Moreover, researchers and institutions have made the conclusion that self-employed persons / freelancers in Greece have an increased capability for income hiding, irrespective of the origin of the money. A thorough examination of the occupations of 497 arrested people in Greece revealed that, indeed, the majority of them fall in the self-employed/freelance category. The results of this article are based on the 291 official arrests that took place from 1999 to 2015.

The Khmer Rouge’s impact on Cambodia’s ancient heritage has been understudied. There are, at present, no major resources that explicitly present a centralized compilation of data or information regarding the relationship between the communist regime and the temples of Angkor nor the various damaging effects that a decade of internecine upheavals have had on the monuments. This absence of primary material is surprising considering the extensive archaeological and conservational work that has taken place in Cambodia, and not to mention the international fascination with Angkor. This article aims to take the first steps in redressing this palpable gap in the literature—it is a brief inquiry into the cause and effect of damage, desecration, and destruction committed to the major Angkorian monuments and the treatment of Cambodia’s ancient, tangible heritage by successive political regimes. It also attempts to deal with the inadequate nature of existing documentation that has hindered any analysis of the issues at hand. I restrict my attention to the Buddhist complexes in Cambodia with a focus on four phases of violence: “Operation Menu” or the American bombardment of 1969–70; the Cambodian Civil War, 1970–75; Democratic Kampuchea’s occupancy of power, 1975–79; and the Vietnamese invasion of 1978–79. In regard to what exactly happened to these monumental complexes at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, I have covered structural damage from conventional weaponry; the use, and, in most cases, misuse, of the temples by various political factions (including strategic, practical and quotidian, and propagandistic use); and the effect of conservation interruption and looting. In light of the recent destruction of cultural heritage in the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq and the recent conflict in Mali, these issues remain perpetually relevant in world affairs.

Discussions about looted antiquities often focus on large, culturally and monetarily valuable items. Nevertheless, it is clear that mundane small finds, which sell for relatively small amounts, account for a large portion of the global market in antiquities. This article highlights two types of small artifacts—namely, cylinder seals and coins, presumed to come from Syria and Iraq and offered for sale by online vendors. We argue that the number of cylinder seals and coins sold on the Internet has increased steadily since 2011, reaching a peak in 2016–17. This shows that the trade in Iraqi and Syrian antiquities has shifted from big-ticket items sold in traditional brick-and-mortar shops to small items readily available on the Internet for modest prices. The continuing growth of the online market in antiquities is having a devastating effect on the archaeological sites in Iraq and Syria as increasing demand fuels further looting in the region.

In recent years, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)1 as well as several Al-Qaida affiliates have used the systematic and large-scale looting of antiquities as one of their income streams. Due to the large-scale and organized looting activities of these groups, in particular, in Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), following various reports and recommendations by the ISIL, Al-Qaida and Taliban Monitoring Team has adopted a range of measures, chiefly among them the landmark UNSC Resolution 2347 (2017) to counter this threat. These measures demand that both member states’ regulators as well as private sector stakeholders take specific action to ensure that the art and antiquity trading industry is capable of defending itself against the misuse of their services to finance terrorism. This article outlines the various challenges member states and private industry are facing in this regard and explains how the various new UNSC provisions, including the measures outlined in UNSC Resolution 2347 (2017), could be employed effectively to counter this threat.

How do archaeologists, governments, law enforcement, and a local non-governmental organization react to a hole in the ground—a hole that is the direct result of archaeological site looting? Whatever the response, the aim is the same: the protection of Jordanian cultural heritage through a curtailing of archaeological looting. New to the standard suite of responses are unpiloted aerial vehicles (UAVs). A comprehensive approach to the landscape, which includes UAV flyovers, ground truthing, oral interviews, collaborative efforts with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and local cultural heritage organizations, is essential to safeguarding and documenting what remains of a series of Early Bronze Age sites (3600–2000bc) along the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan. This is an examination of the (w)hole picture—individual and institutional responses to looters’ holes—diverse reactions with the common goal of preserving and protecting Jordanian cultural heritage.

Provenance, the ownership history of an artifact or work of art, has become one of the primary mechanisms for determining the legal status and authenticity of a cultural object. Professional associations, including museum organizations, have adopted the “1970 standard” as a means to prevent the acquisition of an ancient object from promoting the looting of archaeological sites, which is driven by the economic gains realized through the international market. The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), one of the museum world’s most influential professional organizations, requires its members to list the ancient artworks and artifacts that they have acquired after 2008 that do not conform to the 1970 standard in an online object registry. The study presented here of the AAMD’s Object Registry for New Acquisitions of Archaeological Material and Works of Ancient Art analyzes the extent to which AAMD member museums do not comply with the 1970 standard and, perhaps of greater significance, the weaknesses in the provenance information on which they rely in acquiring such works. I argue that systematic recurrences of inadequate provenance certitude are symptomatic of the larger problem of methodology and standards of evidence in claiming documented provenance. A museum’s acceptance of possibly unverifiable provenance documentation and, therefore, its acquisition of an object that may have been recently looted, in turn, impose a negative externality on society through the loss of information about our past caused by the looting of archaeological sites.

Archaeological looting correlates with a number of problems, including the destruction of stratigraphic data and the damage and loss of artifacts. Looting is also understood to generate revenue, but systematic analysis of this issue is challenged by its opacity: how can we study the economic effects of archaeological looting when the practice is rarely directly observable? To address this problem, we estimate the market value of archaeological sites where artifacts have been previously excavated and documented, using a machine-learning approach. The first step uses 41,587 sales of objects from 33 firms to train an algorithm to predict the distribution channel, lot packaging, and estimated sale price of objects based on their observable characteristics. The second step uses the trained algorithm to estimate the value of sites in which a large number of artifacts have been legally excavated and documented. We make an out-of-sample prediction on two Syrian sites, Tell Bi’a and Dura Europos.

In light of the recent rise of destruction and looting of cultural property, a need for formalized heritage protection has arisen. Increasingly popular in the debate has become the instrument of international assistance known as “safe havens.” These temporary refuges for at-risk cultural goods in a third country have recently been implemented by Switzerland, France, the United States, and the Association of Art Museum Directors. We assess the contributions and shortcomings of these four regimes using a comparative approach. Mainly, we find that, despite variations in their scope and structure, none of the models accounts entirely for today’s major difficulties in protecting endangered cultural properties. We draw recommendations for future safe haven states against the backdrop of the existing models and hope to see the instrument used in practice as a way to safely isolate cultural property from destructive conflicts.

The phenomenon of antiquities smuggling is a complicated issue. The lack of official data makes it difficult to do an integrated analysis of the problem. The aim of this article is to present an accurate view of antiquities smuggling in the recent past. After gaining official permission from the Greek police, we examined 246 official arrests made by the Greek Department against Antiquities Smuggling (Athens Office) that occurred between 1999 and 2009. First and foremost, our results revealed that many arrests showed instances of fake antiquities. Moreover, it seems that there is a connection between organized crime and antiquities forgery. In addition, people with higher status are more often involved in antiquities forgery. With respect to the stolen objects, coins were by far the most preferred objects when it comes to forgery, and forgers are also using mostly bronze when it comes to these forgeries. Antiquity looting seems to have many hidden aspects, and the varied natured of antiquities smuggling requires the cooperation of a range of competent authorities and an in-depth investigation of the data, which should be based on the principles of the scientific method.

Over the length of its current tenure, Punjab's Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has sought to become more a socially inclusive party, more responsive to popular demands, and even to improve service delivery and eradicate corruption. However, despite these lofty goals, it has also presided over what people refer to as ‘goonda raj’—a rule of thugs—and has managed to alienate large sections of the population and, in the process, fuelled the rise of the anti-corruption Aam Admi Party in the state. In this article, based on ethnographic fieldwork in rural Malwa, I attempt to shed light on the roots of this contradiction. Is it simply the case, as ordinary people allege, that the SAD's claims are empty and that its members are merely interested in looting the state? Or, alternatively, is it the case that the party merely operates in accordance with Punjab's allegedly time-honoured tradition of rival factions competing to appropriate the spoils of power? I suggest instead that much of the corruption and violence observable at the village level in Punjab has its roots in the antagonistic relationship between the Congress Party and the Shiromani Akali Dal. It is this antagonism that appears to fuel the SAD's highly partisan form of government, and it is partisan government that appears to fuel the corruption and the village-level factional conflict that is documented in this article.

The looting of antiquities from archaeological sites has received widespread coverage in the media. Concerns about the loss of heritage have resulted in international multilateral and bilateral agreements intended to prevent the illicit trade in looted antiquities. China has suffered from the looting of its archaeological sites for centuries, but the problem has been exacerbated in recent years because of the increased demand for Chinese antiquities and the consequent sharp increase in market prices. China has requested international assistance to combat the illicit trade in its heritage. It is strange therefore that one of China’s special administrative regions—Hong Kong—also one of the world’s major art markets, retains a “legal absurdity,”1which may protect the buyer of stolen or looted goods from claims for the return of stolen items. This statutory provision may result in the bizarre outcome that goods stolen from a museum or looted from an archaeological site and then purchased from a shop or market in Hong Kong may be protected from claims for their return; this protection may apply even if the loser is the Chinese state.

Cultural property is related to the evolution of a nation’s identity. It forms a vital link to the past, wherefrom the present and future may be nurtured and enriched. However, objects related to cultural heritage have been the target of looting and pilfering, resulting in loss to the country concerned. The situation is worsened where these objects have been removed during an era where there were no laws and regulations to control such removal. This article focuses on the loss of cultural property with reference to two specific modes of loss of particular concern to Sri Lanka—the removal of cultural property during the colonial era and the loss of cultural property during the more recent ethnic conflict. Through an analysis of the relevant laws and regulations, this article evaluates Sri Lanka’s rights to its cultural property and its efforts to regain, and preserve, its cultural heritage.

Artifacts that have experienced atrocities, even genocide, and survived, acquire the power to recall the horrors of the past, and to recollect the absent persons, things, and places that were lost. They symbolize violence, but also survival and resilience. Material objects that have endured looting, mutilation, displacement, and separation from the communities where they functioned as sacred relics, liturgical aids, or prized artworks form a special category. They aresurvivor objects.

First-time European and American visitors to the United Arab Emirates, where I live, are often surprised by the prevalence of heritage villages, festivals, and sports in hypermodern Abu Dhabi and Dubai. “Heritage” in the Arab Gulf, as elsewhere in the Middle East, is a central and growing industry, attracting the attention of scholars as well as investors and tourists. At the same time, much of the region's—and the world's—invaluable cultural heritage has been and continues to be obliterated by insurgents and governments alike. Spectacular assaults on historical sites, cultural institutions, and symbols of cultural-religious diversity in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Yemen demonstrate that the “new wars” of the 21st century are being fought on the terrain of cultural heritage as much as they are over other precious resources. And yet, the interconnections between this heritage construction and destruction remain underexplored. In much of the scholarship produced in the burgeoning field of critical heritage studies, the duplexity of these processes is ignored. Instead, most edited volumes and “global” analyses of the field look to the Middle East and other Muslim-majority nations only in so far as they present case studies of heritage destruction—the bombing of the Bamyan Buddhas in Afghanistan and the looting of the National Museum of Iraq being iconic examples.

In the course of my research on Cyrenaican funerary sculptures, such as the remarkable ‘Mourning Women’ and ‘Funerary Divinities’ and the distinctive local funerary portraits, I realised to my dismay that a large part of this archaeological material has been or is currently on sale on the international art market. The number of sales of these sculptures on the art market demonstrates the extent of looting over the past twenty years in the Greek necropoleis of Libya. These sales show in particular that the degree of tomb destruction has increased exponentially during the past ten years. This preliminary discussion has three main objectives: 1) to alert and to inform the world about this destruction in order to help end the looting; 2) to describe the operational modes of the illicit trade in antiquities on the art market; and 3) to study and document these sculptures, which are important evidence for understanding the culture and history of ancient Cyrenaica.

Libya's archaeological heritage is under serious threat, not only because of recent conflict, but also due to other factors such as urban expansion, agricultural development, natural resource prospection, vandalism, looting and natural deterioration. The Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa Project (EAMENA) has developed a database and methodology using remote sensing and other techniques to rapidly document archaeological sites and any disturbances and threats to them in Libya and across the MENA region. This paper will demonstrate this methodology and highlight the various types of disturbances and threats affecting the archaeology of Libya, concentrating on four case studies in different areas of the country, including the coastal plain around Zliten, a section of the Wadi Sofeggin in the pre-desert, and the desert oases of Jufra and Murzuq.

Although research is currently impossible on the ground, satellite photographs allow some further information to be gleaned concerning the region of the Tur Abdin, of crucial importance during the wars between the late Roman Empire and Sassanian Persia in the fourth to seventh century AD. This article examines the ancient sources and the reports of visitors to the area in the light of what is now visible to all via Google Earth and other suppliers of free satellite imagery. Apart from describing the remains of the fortresses and their role in defending an important redoubt against Persian attacks, it draws attention to the urgent necessity for proper ground surveys of what remains of the fortifications of various periods before these are completely destroyed by looting and reuse of building materials. Dams also present a substantial risk to some of the monuments discussed here.

Why do ordinary individuals participate in political campaigns involving mass looting, killings, and enslavement against members of another religious group? This paper argues that religious justifications of violence have a stronger appeal when they target liminal minorities whose beliefs and norms remain illegible in the eyes of a majority religion. It then formulates a series of alternative hypotheses about the role of greed, threat, resentment, and guilt in the motives of perpetrators and uses the self-styled Islamic State (IS) campaign against Yezidis in 2014 as a case study to test these hypotheses . Empirical evidence comes from extensive fieldwork including dozens of in-depth interviews with Yezidi survivors and others in Iraqi Kurdistan. The analysis reveals that religious beliefs were necessary both for making extreme levels of violence permissible and for mobilizing local population to participate in the atrocities.

Cyrene offers one of the largest and most spectacular necropoleis of the Mediterranean basin and, owing especially to its vastness, it is particularly difficult to control and protect. It reveals an extraordinary patrimony of rock-cut architecture, monumentally built around the ancient site, and also represents a zone at major risk of damage and destruction as a result of continuous looting, uncontrolled urbanisation and vandalism. Recent studies by Jim and Dorothy Thorn have presented a preliminary view and gazetteer of the architectonic monumentality, especially of the rocky chamber tombs, showing the need for survey projects in the area. A joint team of Libyan and Italian archaeologists, geologists, topographers and technicians of the local Department of Antiquities and Chieti University started in 1999 a project of surveying and mapping the southern and eastern parts of the necropolis, giving birth to a GIS using differential GPS and Robotic total station for the positioning and recording of the tombs, as well as multispectral HD satellite images, previously orthorectified and georeferred, combined with old maps and RADAR data for a highly detailed topographic base, up to DEM and DTM. From 2004, the survey and the GIS have been extended to the western and northern parts of the necropolis, at the moment counting more than 2,000 mapped and recorded tombs. An important step in the last two years has been the use of remote-sensing and photo-interpretation analysis in order to map the damages of urbanisation and modern construction in the areas of the necropolis. Using images covering the development of the situation every two to three months, mainly shots coming from Google Earth archives, in combination with further satellite images specifically bought for a more complete view of the last two to three years, it has been possible to start drawing a map of the areas under threat from building works and urbanisation. The aim of this paper is to present the main problems of this huge necropolis, which is at the moment one of the most threatened areas of Cyrene, every day at risk from the destruction of its monumental buildings.

To know where we are going, we need to know where we have been, so it seems only fitting that, to produce a special issue on designing and assessing public education programs in archaeology, we need to look back to the establishment of public outreach and archaeological education in the United States and, specifically, within the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological education, as a subfield of archaeology, can trace its roots to individual efforts at sharing archaeology with the public, but especially to the first Save the Past for the Future Conference in Taos, New Mexico. It was here that the idea took root that, to stem vandalism and looting, we need to educate people about archaeology. This meeting was the springboard for federal initiatives like Project Archaeology and Passport in Time, and it was also the birthplace for the SAA Public Education Committee. For more than 25 years, archaeologists have been creating public outreach programs, students have graduated college thinking of public outreach as a career path, and TV shows have sensationalized our profession, but what do we really know about what we’ve done, whether we’ve made a difference, and how it can propel ourselves and future generations of archaeological educators forward?

The onset of intrastate conflict has two requisite conditions: that prospective insurgents have an incentive to rebel, and that the state lacks the capacity to deter such a rebellion. We outline a simple rationalist argument grounded in gains from economic growth—to both individual income and state revenue—to argue that modernization has the potential to affect the likelihood of civil conflict through both of these conditions. The shift away from a rent-seeking economy affects opportunity costs for rebellion by increasing the cost of recruitment, broadening the time horizon for gain, and decreasing looting possibilities. On the state side, modernization increases state military, economic, and institutional capacity, allowing governments to deter rebellion. We construct an index of modernization from World Bank data and apply a strategic model to explore the effect of modernization on both states and rebels simultaneously. We find that the modernization process describes an arc that may increase the likelihood of unrest in the early stages, but has long-term stabilizing effects.

Chieti University's team in Libya has been mapping and studying the extraordinary patrimony in rupestrian architecture, looking at both funerary and sacred spaces. Particular attention has been paid to the rock-cut sanctuaries in the areas to the east (Ain Hofra/Bu Miliou areas) and to the west (Baggara and Budrag) of Cyrene, which also represent the most problematic zones for looting and vandalism. Therefore, the principal need for these areas has been to plan a project of mapping and recording that is as systematic as possible for this huge patrimony. The resulting data, coming from surveys, non-invasive geo-prospecting, laser scanning of the main monuments, diagnostic mapping of the damaged monuments, as well as from the excavations, have been recorded in a multilayer GIS. In combination with the surveys, a series of excavations have also been organised in several areas in order to have stratigraphic information from sample areas, which have been chosen on the basis of both their typology/monumentality and the degree of risk of damage and looting. These sanctuaries are generally located on the steep slopes of deep canyons, typically associated with water springs, wild landscape, chthonian cults and also, therefore, funerary areas. They are generally monumentalised and emphasised by rock-cut architecture. Among the most interesting finds are the sanctuaries of Budrag and Ain Hofra, with votive inscriptions, rocky altars and shrines. Particularly interesting is the discovery of a rocky high-relief statue of Dionysus, attesting a possible open-air sanctuary in the area of Baggara. It is a unique example of rocky sculpture in Cyrene and it could be one of the best-preserved examples from the Greek world. Distinguishable by their topography, architectonic features and distance from the town, these rocky sanctuaries attest to a reciprocal osmosis between Greco-Roman and Libyan cultural, artistic and ritual elements. The levels of hybridisation and reciprocity vary from case to case and from period to period, suggesting different degrees of Greco-Roman impact, which seem to be, generally speaking, inversely proportional to the distance from Cyrene, giving space and voice to the cults and rites of the local tribes.

The article contrasts long-suppressed details of German art seizures during the Second World War from Ukrainian state museums and Western Jewish dealers, ordered to Königsberg by Erich Koch, Gauleiter of East Prussia and Reich Commissar of Ukraine. While most of the art from Kyiv was destroyed by retreating Germans when the Red Army arrived (February 1945), here we investigate “survivors.” Initial provenance findings about the collection Koch evacuated to Weimar in February 1945 reveal some paintings from Kyiv. More, however, were seized from Dutch and French Holocaust victims by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and his cohorts, including Jewish dealers Jacques Goudstikker (Amsterdam) and Georges Wildenstein (Paris). Many paintings deposited in Weimar disappeared west; others seized by Soviet authorities were transported to the Hermitage. These initial findings draw attention to hitherto overlooked contrasting examples of patterns of Nazi art looting and destruction in the East and West, and the pan-European dispersal of important works of art.

During the seventies, archaeological looting, of both land and underwater sites, not only was widespread in Spain, but also went unpunished. This situation stemmed from a lack of effective administrative and criminal legislation, human resources to combat the plague, and educational policies warning of how harmful such practices were, in spite of damning reports in the media and the social alarm raised in certain professional and political fields. The new political and social phase that began with the Constitution of 1978 has enabled the country to overcome this situation in three ways: first, by passing new, more appropriate administrative and criminal laws to help combat looting and illicit trade; second, through the creation of new regional governments (the autonomous communities) able to enforce these laws, and which have hired archaeologists specializing in cultural heritage management. The fight against the criminal aspect of looting and the illicit trade of antiquities has also been intensified by the creation of police and prosecuting bodies dedicated to the area of cultural heritage, among others. Last, educational policies have been put in place to help increase social awareness of the importance of our cultural heritage and the global loss its destruction represents. In this article we will present the first two points that have improved the initial situation as regards archaeological looting and the illicit trade of looted goods.

The discovery of a crushed golden bowl in the remains of the Iron Age citadel of Hasanlu in 1958 attracted considerable media attention at the time. The circumstances of its loss have long remained unclear, but were clearly associated with the violent destruction of the site in c. 800 BC. Detailed review of the find context and the skeletons found nearby now suggests that the bowl was being looted during the sack of the citadel by Urartian soldiers from an upper room where weapons, armour and fine metal vessels were stored. The enemy soldiers carrying off the Gold Bowl died in the attempt when the upper floors of the building collapsed, plunging them to their deaths.

The international community is concerned about criminal activity involving cultural property and is promoting the use of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime to combat looting and trafficking of cultural property. This article discusses how the Convention may be applied, outlines some of the intentions of UN member states with regard to cultural property crime, and the role of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. It is suggested that cultural property stakeholders should scrutinize this developing effort, particularly in the areas of UNTOC application to specific cultural property cases and the collection and analysis of data specifically to address the connections between cultural property and transnational organized crime.

Tangas are small convex triangular pottery covers found in large numbers in the Amazon delta. Their suggestive shape has long been attributed to use as a cover or shield for the female Mound of Venus, for protection, modesty (‘cache-sexe’ is the French term) or embellishment. Here the author offers a typology and searches for correlations between the shapes, sizes and patterns of the tangas and the date, location, purpose and status of the women who wore them. He emphasises that in spite of this advance, better understanding requires new information from properly designed excavations; 85 per cent of known tangas have been acquired by looting, purchase or low-precision digging.

While Africans are generally satisfied that a person of African descent was reelected to the White House following a campaign in which vicious and racist attacks were made against him, the U.S. Africa policy under President Barack Obama will continue to be guided by the strategic interests of the United States, which are not necessarily compatible with the popular aspirations for democracy, peace, and prosperity in Africa. Obama's policy in the Great Lakes region provides an excellent illustration of this point. Since Rwanda and Uganda are Washington's allies in the "war against terror" in Darfur and Somalia, respectively, the Obama administration has done little to stop Kigali and Kampala from destabilizing the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and looting its natural resources, either directly or through proxies. Rwanda and Uganda have even been included in an international oversight mechanism that is supposed to guide governance and security sector reforms in the DRC, but whose real objective is to facilitate Western access to the enormous natural wealth of the Congo and the Great Lakes region.Resume: Bien que les Africains soient en general satisfaits par l'election d'un citoyen d'heritage africain a la Maison Blanche a la suite d'une campagne pendant laquelle des attaques racistes avaient ete faites contre lui, les relations US Afrique sous la presidence de Barack Obama continuent d'etre guidees par les interets strategiques des Etats-Unis, qui ne sont pas necessairement compatibles avec les aspirations populaires de democratie, de paix et de prosperite en Afrique. La politique d'Obama dans la region des Grands Lacs offre une excellente illustration de cet argument. Puisque les nations du Rwanda et de l'Ouganda se sont ralliees a Washington dans la guerre contre le terrorisme au Darfour et en Somalie respectivement, le gouvernement d'Obama n'a pas fait grand chose pour arreter Kigali et Kampala dans leur destabilisation de la Republique Democratique du Congo (RDC) et leur pillage de ses ressources naturelles, soit de maniere directe, soit par procuration. Le Rwanda et l'Ouganda ont ete inclus dans un mecanisme international de supervision suppose guider la gouvernance et les reformes du secteur de la securite en RDC, mais dont les objectifs reels sont l'acces aux immenses richesses naturelles du Congo et de la region des Grands Lacs.Key Words: 2012 presidential electionFor the second time, I share the satisfaction of most Africans that a person of African descent was elected to the White House, and one whose domestic agenda is generally progressive. Compared to my feelings in 2008, this satisfaction is all the more plentiful in view of the great maturity shown by the American people in reelecting Barack Obama in the face of a barrage of vicious and racist attacks of which he was a victim during the electoral campaign, and even before. His opponents alleged, inter alia, that he was not a natural-born citizen of the United States, in what became known as "birthism," a definitely racist phenomenon; that he was a "Kenyan anticolonialist"; and that he did not "understand America" or share "American values."In short, these attacks were clearly racist and beyond the bounds of propriety, as many of the statements made against the President would never be leveled against a white incumbent of the White House. And I can say this without fear of contradiction, since I have lived in this country since 1962, and have seen how the nine white presidents who came before Obama were treated by both the news media and political opponents. The usual deference to the head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces was cast aside.At the same time, as shown in my contribution to the ASR Forum on "Africa in the Age of Obama" (Nzongola-Ntalaja 2010), I do not agree with President Obama's Africa policy in general, and his policy in the Great Lakes region in particular. For like his predecessors, this first U. …

Looting and illicit trafficking of cultural artefacts pose major threats to Asia's cultural heritage. This not only causes a continuing loss of cultural objects but also the destruction of large numbers of archaeological and historical sites as objects are often looted from tombs or cut off from larger pieces in order to obtain transportable parts for sale on the international art market. In addition, items are stolen from collections and museums or are trafficked in violation of export bans. This article explores the relevant international conventions dealing with the prevention of the illicit export of cultural artefacts and their repatriation, examines how those legal instruments are implemented in Asia and extended in bilateral agreements between market and source countries, and how particularly regional co-operation between Asian nations, international solidarity and assistance, and relevant domestic approaches can assist in improving the situation.

Shortly following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an American mobile exploitation team was diverted from its mission in hunting for weapons for mass destruction to search for an ancient Talmud in the basement of Saddam Hussein's secret police (Mukhabarat) headquarters in Baghdad. Instead of finding the ancient holy book, the soldiers rescued from the basement flooded with several feet of fetid water an invaluable archive of disparate individual and communal documents and books relating to one of the most ancient Jewish communities in the world. The seizure of Jewish cultural materials by the Mukhabarat recalled similar looting by the Nazis during World War II. The materials were spirited out of Iraq to the United States with a vague assurance of their return after being restored. Several years after their arrival in the United States for conservation, the Iraqi Jewish archive has become contested cultural property between Jewish groups and the Iraqi Jewish diaspora on the one hand and Iraqi cultural officials on the other. This article argues that the archive comprises the cultural property and heritage of the Iraqi Jewish diaspora.

Not the least of the unusual revelations that have come from the wonderfully preserved ninth-century Norwegian ship burials at Oseberg and Gokstad, is the fact that both had been later broken into—by interlopers who defaced the ship, damaged the grave goods and pulled out and dispersed the bones of the deceased. These ‘mound-breakers’ helpfully left spades and stretchers in place, and through the application of some highly ingenious dendrochronology our authors have been able to date the break-ins with some precision. Mound-breaking, it seems, took place during the domination of Norway by Harald Bluetooth in the tenth century as part of an extensive campaign which included subduing local monuments as well as converting Scandinavians to Christianity. The old mounds retained such power in the landscape that it was worth desecrating them and disinterring their occupants a century after their burial.

In his conclusion to his seminal book, Politics in the Congo (1965), Crawford Young wrote the following: Belgium . . . constructed in Africa a colonial state which stood out by the thoroughness of its organization, the formidable accretion of power through an interlocking alliance of state, church, and capital, and the ambition of its economic and social objectives. The very strength of the system as a colonial structure, and its steadfast refusal to face effectively the problem of political adaptation until it began to disintegrate, made an ordered transfer of power peculiarly difficult. A colonizer who suddenly lost the profound conviction of the righteousness of his policy was confronted with a revolution by the colonized which lacked both structure and ideology. Total colonialism was replaced by total independence virtually overnight, yet the very completeness of the victory of the colonized had as its concomitant an impotence which emptied success of its substance. (1965:572) Since this abrupt and failed decolonization, as outlined by Young, the Congo has never recovered. More recently John Le Carre said that "if one were patrolling the globe in search of great problems to address, the DRC would be the logical first stop" (Le Carre 2001:5). According to Le Carre, the Congo has been bleeding to death for five centuries, a victim of Arab slavers, King Leopold's destructive extraction, Belgian restructuring, Mobutu's rule, and now the predation of Rwanda occupation and associated mineral companies. Indeed, thanks to Congolese wealth, Rwanda has become a gold and diamond exporter without possessing gold or diamond mines of its own. In December 2008, Herman Cohen wrote a commentary in the New York Times encouraging the DRC to let Rwandans exploit the minerals in eastern Congo. According to Cohen, because Rwanda is already smuggling minerals from eastern DRC, if the DRC were simply to allow Rwandans to exploit the minerals and collect taxes on them, the country would receive at least some return. This argument is economically sound. But simply because it is economically beneficial does not mean that it is socially and politically acceptable. Eastern Congo is not only an economic space; it is also a political space where people have claims to their patrimony - on their land and everything it contains. Cohen's argument - a call for the Congolese to acquiesce in foreign intrusion - sounds much like one put forward about nuclear waste by Lawrence Summers (when he was chief economist for the World Bank) , who suggested that nuclear waste should be sent to Africa because the benefits provided by the financial compensation would far outweigh any possible health risks incurred. In economic terms, by this logic, Africa is "underpolluted." But even if Summers's logic seems economically sound to some, it is of course ethically and morally unacceptable, and certainly the same could be said of Herman Cohen's proposal to validate Rwandan extraction of Congolese mineral wealth. After all, would either proposal have been seriously entertained if applied to the U.S.? A second objection to Cohen's proposition relates to the assertion that Rwanda has acted only as a middleman to outside power brokers in the West. In the 1990s no Western state was ready to point the finger at Rwanda, and Rwanda was therefore implicitly encouraged to occupy eastern Congo (sometimes through surrogate channels) and pillage Congolese resources. By empowering Rwanda at the expense of the DRC, the West (mostly the U.S. and Britain) has furthered instability in eastern Congo where the Congolese Tusti in North Kivu and the Banyamulenge, a tiny minority in south Kivu supported by the Rwandan government, have claimed land and provoked confrontations with other ethnic groups. Of course, plundering the Congo is not a new phenomenon, and it did not start with the current war: from long before the publication of Adam Hochschild 's King Leopold's Ghost (1998), it was well known that King Leopold's "Congo Free State" was little more than a barbaric looting enterprise. …

The ‘debate’ section of theReviewaims at contributing to the reflection on current ethical, legal, or practical controversies around humanitarian issues.The definition of occupation under international humanitarian law (IHL) is rather vague, and IHL instruments provide no clear standard for determining the beginning of occupation. Derived from the wording of Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations, occupation may be defined as the effective control of a foreign territory by hostile armed forces. It is not always easy to determine when an invasion has become an occupation. This raises the question whether or not the law of occupation could already be applied during the invasion phase. In this regard, two main positions are usually put forward in legal literature. Generally it is held that the provisions of occupation law only apply once the elements underpinning the definition set out in Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations are met. However, the so-called ‘Pictet theory’, as formulated by Jean S. Pictet in the ICRC's Commentary on the Geneva Conventions, proposes that no intermediate phase between invasion and occupation exists and that certain provisions of occupation law already apply during an invasion.The collapse of essential public facilities such as hospitals and water-supply installations, partly due to the large-scale looting and violence that came along with the progress of the coalition forces, in Iraq in 2003 demonstrates that this discussion is not simply a theoretical one. Invading armed forces need clarity as to what rules they need to apply.Three experts in the field of occupation law – Marten Zwanenburg, Michael Bothe, and Marco Sassòli – have agreed to participate in this debate and to defend three approaches.Marten Zwanenburgmaintains that for determining when an invasion turns into an occupation the only test is the one set out in Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations, and therefore rejects the ‘Pictet theory’.Michael Bothe, while also rejecting the ‘Pictet theory’, argues that a possible intermediate situation between invasion and occupation, if there is any at all, would be very short and that, once an invader has gained control over a part of an invaded territory, the law of occupation applies. Finally,Marco Sassòlidefends the ‘Pictet theory’ and argues that, in order to avoid legal vacuums, there is no distinction between an invasion phase and an occupation phase for applying the rules of the Fourth Geneva Convention.The debaters have simplified their complex legal reasoning for the sake of clarity and brevity. Readers of theReviewshould bear in mind that the debaters’ actual legal positions may be more nuanced than they may appear in this debate.

The recent introduction of irrigation around the site of Mashkan-shapir, together with the availability of high resolution satellite imagery, has resulted in the preservation of architectural traces which could not be recovered when the site was researched between 1987 and 1990. In spite of recent looting, these traces have allowed the identification of the location of the palace and the reconstruction of much of the street system of this city, including the connection points across the ancient canals. Moreover, the survey data recovered through past fieldwork can be related to these traces, allowing an understanding of the larger context for many of the activities at the site, especially burial and manufacturing. Together these data provide a detailed view of how an ancient Mesopotamian city was conceived—in this instance by Sin-iddinam, who transformed it from a small village to a large city by building the city wall.

The authors describe the excavation and interpretation of an intact seventh-century high status burial at the Maya site of Nakum. The dead person wore an incised pectoral with an eventful biography, having started out as an Olmec heirloom 1000 years before. No less impressive was the series of votive rituals found to have been enacted at the tomb for another 100 years or more. The beautiful objects, their architectural setting and the long story they recount, offer a heart-breaking indictment of the multiple losses due to looting.

This article presents a new initiative in combating looting from the air, building on previous work in Iraq and Jordan. Looted sites in the Virú Valley, Peru, are visible as pit clusters on dated versions of Google Earth. Compare these with earlier air photographs and Gordon Willey's famous survey of the 1940s, and we have a dated chronicle of looting events. This makes it possible to demonstrate that modern looting is certainly taking place and linked to an upsurge in the antiquities trade. As well as being a new instrument for managing heritage, the author shows that the looting survey offers an important research dividend: the location of cemeteries not previously systematically documented, with potential for more thorough investigation even of already looted areas.

In the early evening of 14 September 1989, ferocious Hindu-Muslim rioting broke out in the city of Kota in the north Indian state of Rajasthan. The rioting started during the Hindu festival of Anant Chaturdashi, while celebrants were taking out religious processions through the city. Although most of the violence occurred during that first night, it would be another three days before the Indian army could restore an uneasy peace to the city and nearly three weeks more would pass before the military curfew that eventually confined city's inhabitants to their houses for all but a few hours a day was fully lifted. The mayhem claimed the lives of twenty-six individuals and left a further ninety-nine injured in hospital. Countless more ‘walking wounded’ were treated on an outpatient basis in local dispensaries or by friends or neighbors. In addition, vandalism, arson, and looting caused property losses exceeding ten million rupees. Although Muslims constituted only 9 percent of the city's population of roughly half-a-million, they suffered the vast majority of the casualties and bore a disproportionate amount of property loss. By convention we commonly refer to such rioting as ‘Hindu-Muslim violence,’ but the parity implied in this formula is deeply misleading. The vast majority of victims were Muslims.

The archaeological sites of Iraq, precious for their bearing on human history, became especially vulnerable to looters during two wars. Much of the looting evidence has been anecdotal up to now, but here satellite imagery has been employed to show which sites were looted and when. Sites of all sizes from late Uruk to early Islamic were targeted for their high value artefacts, particularly just before and after the 2003 invasion. The author comments that the ‘total area looted … was many times greater than all the archaeological investigations ever conducted in southern Iraq and must have yielded tablets, coins, cylinder seals, statues, terracottas, bronzes and other objects in the hundreds of thousands’.

The proposal to develop an Iraqi-British project to protect and promote cultural heritage in Southern Iraq was first mooted at a lunch in the British Museum on 24 September 2007, involving Major-General Barney White-Spunner, Charles Moore, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, and John Curtis, Keeper of the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum. The lunch had been arranged to provide Major-General White-Spunner with recent information about the state of the Iraqi cultural heritage, as he was due to be deployed to Iraq in February 2008 as Commander-in-Chief of British troops and General Officer Commanding the Multi-National Division South-East. At the lunch, it was suggested that the greatest need would be to arrange for the inspection of archaeological sites and, if necessary, to arrange for the protection of them, and also to consider facilitating the reopening of some provincial museums. It is known that archaeological sites particularly in Southern Iraq suffered grievously from looting, particularly after the Second Gulf War, and most provincial museums were sacked following the First Gulf War in 1991 and again in 2003. Major-General White-Spunner immediately recognised the importance of these proposals and appointed a project manager, Major Hugo Clarke, to work up a scheme with John Curtis. The project has been made possible by a generous grant from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, that has covered all costs except those incurred in Iraq, which have been met by the British Army.

The excavations of the Cambridge Keros Project at early bronze age Dhaskalio and Dhaskalio Kavos on the Cycladic Island of Keros during the 2006 and 2007 seasons are described. They were directed by Colin Renfrew with Olga Philaniotou as Associate Director and Neil Brodie and Giorgos Gavalas as Assistant Directors. The site of Dhaskalio Kavos is well-known for the extensive looting which took place there during the 1950's. Rescue excavations by Christos Doumas in 1963 and by Photeini Zapheiropoulou in 1967, and a project in 1987, directed by Renfrew, Doumas and Lila Marangou, defined the extent of the looted ‘special deposit’, assigned to the early bronze age Keros-Syros culture (Early Bronze II). At the beginning of the 2006 field season a separate and unlooted special deposit was located at the southern end of the Kavos site (the ‘Special Deposit South’). Its excavation yielded thousands of fragments of marble vessels and potsherds, and hundreds of broken marble figurines. These had been deliberately broken elsewhere, brought to the site and deposited there in what appears to be a ritual context. Work on the Special Deposit South continued in 2007, and excavations on the extensive Early Cycladic settlement on the small (200 metre) but precipitous island of Dhaskalio were initiated. Well preserved building remains were uncovered with abundant Early Cycladic domestic materials.Dhaskalio island may now be recognised as a major settlement of the Keros-Syros culture (c. 2800 to 2300 BC). Kavos, immediately opposite on Keros itself, is confirmed as the locus for two separate areas of structured deposition of high status materials, brought from a wide range of sources in the Cyclades and possibly beyond, apparently already in fragmentary condition, and placed there in a series of prestations for which a ritual context may safely be inferred. Dhaskalio Kavos may now be claimed as the first major symbolic centre of the early Aegean.

There was nothing unusual in an indemnity per se. Indeed, an indemnity could be seen as a forward step in European civilization, replacing the regime of indiscriminate plunder which preceded it—although it could equally be argued that in their pacification of north China following the razing of the Siege of the Legations in 1900 the Allies, through their looting of the Tientsin and Peking areas in disregard of recently agreed definitions, had acquired both indemnity and plunder. Indeed the chaos was such that among the first financial and contradictory consequences of the post-Boxer period was Sir Robert Hart's successful arrangement with the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation of a loan of Ts10,000 a month for the chief Chinese negotiator, Prince Ch'ing [I-K'uang], on the one hand, while in Shansi the Protestant Church refused to accept any indemnity for the Christian lives lost; consequently the authorities voluntarily agreed to establish a University on Western lines, to be maintained by the authorities, and to operate under joint control for ten years at the annual cost of Ts 50,000.

Based on archival research and on multi-sited fieldwork, this article offers the first available description of the food lootings that took place in Argentina in December 2001. The paper joins the current relational turn in the study of collective violence. It examines the existing continuities between everyday life, routine politics and extraordinary massive actions, and scrutinises the grey zone where the deeds and networks of looters, political entrepreneurs and law enforcement officials meet and mesh. The article reconstructs the looting dynamics at one specific site and highlights the existence of three mechanisms during the episodes: 1. the creation of opportunities by party brokers and police agents, 2. the validation of looting by state elites, and 3. the signalling spiral carried out by party brokers.

This paper explores access to the Honduran past with a focus on northwestern Honduras, particularly the Ulua Valley. The foundations of national patrimony legislation and the practice of collecting antiquities are used to explore whether the disassociation of the archaeological community from the collecting sphere over the last several decades has better protected the archaeological record. I argue that early field expeditions led by U.S. archaeologists, the shipment of their finds to U.S. institutions, and subsequent massive looting galvanized Honduran efforts aimed at national patrimony legislation. The roles of the U.S. government and U.S.-based businesses as negotiating bodies in the early days of Honduran expeditions from 1890 to 1940 are explored in detail, particularly in the sphere of opening up the region to collectors and the role of the U.S. antiquities market. We can understand the early days of collecting in Honduras precisely because of the close relationships once forged between collectors, museums, and archaeologists, networks that have now disappeared because of current conceptions of archaeological ethics. The changing definition of a collector represents a key point throughout this analysis; at one time archaeologists, museums, and businesses were the primary collectors. The shift from the labelcollectortoarchaeologistis explored through the lens of the development of archaeology as a discipline, with a particular emphasis on context, and the contemporary legislative efforts aimed at cultural heritage projection. The essay concludes with a look at recent archaeological work in the region and the increasingly strict cultural patrimony legislation, specifically the 2004 U.S.–Honduran Memorandum of Understanding.

A fragmentary Egyptian Middle Kingdom statuette was found in the north-west area of Central Court at Knossos in 1900. The three hieroglyphic texts show that the statue was mortuary in character, and that it was linked to a gold-caster called User of the Wadjet nome in Egypt. The User statuette is part of a wider distribution of Middle Kingdom statues from Nubia, Anatolia, and the Levant which have been found in funerary and nonfunerary contexts. Theories for this distribution are reviewed including diplomatic gifts and exchanges, dedications in sanctuaries, the movement of specialised Egyptian workers, portable funerary statues and looting. Looting of tombs in the Wadjet nome followed by redistribution of finds looks like the most likely explanation for the appearance of User's statuette on Crete.

The Istanbul Initiative was established in 2003 in response to concerns raised by the continuing episodes of cultural destruction that have accompanied armed conflicts in Cambodia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, and Iraq. The Initiative is comprised of Turkish academics, lawyers, and media professionals who aim to raise international awareness of the destruction of cultural heritage during wartime. Their first action was to organize the symposium A Future for Our Past in Istanbul from June 24 to 26 2004. The immediate impetus for the symposium was provided by the large-scale looting of museums, libraries, and archaeological sites that followed the Coalition invasion of Iraq in April 2003.

In violent conflicts in places like Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, economic interests have crowded out ideologically articulate mass-based social movements for reform or revolutionary change to a degree that was not apparent during earlier anti-colonial struggles. Some scholars offer a ‘looting model’ of rebellion that explains the predations of politicians and warlords but it is not clear why people who receive few benefits from this – or even suffer great harm from them – fail to support ideologues instead, or why self-interested violent entrepreneurs do not offer political programmes to attract more followers. Yet some groups defy this ‘looting model’. Explaining why armed groups vary so greatly in their behaviour provides a means to address important questions: is it possible to construct public authorities out of collapsed states in the twenty-first century, or do local predations and global conditions preclude indigenous state-building in these places? Why do social movements for reform there seem so ineffective? What conditions have to be present for them to succeed? This article considers the nature of rebellion in failing states, focusing on Nigeria to find clues to explain variations in the organization of armed groups.