Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-7mr9c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-18T06:19:03.273Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Patterns of looting in southern Iraq

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Elizabeth C. Stone
Elizabeth C. Stone*
Affiliation:
*Department of Anthropology, SUNY, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4364, USA (Email: estone@notes.cc.sunysb.edu)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

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’.

Keywords

IraqWilayaUrukLarsaBabylonIslam
Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 82 , Issue 315 , March 2008 , pp. 125 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adams, R. McC. 1981. Heartland of Cities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Adams, R. McC. & Nissen, H.J.. 1972. Uruk Countryside. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Al- Gailani, L. 1965. Tell edh-Dhibai. Sumer 21: 33–40.Google Scholar
Baqir, T. 1946. Tell Harmal: preliminary report. Sumer 2: 22–30.Google Scholar
Baqir, T. 1948. Excavations at Harmal. Sumer 4: 137–39.Google Scholar
Carter, E., Black, J. & Kenoyer, J.. 1989–1990. A surface survey of Lagash, al-Hiba, 1984: shell artifacts from Lagash, al-Hiba; inscribed objects from Lagash, al-Hiba and Girsu. Sumer 66: 60–83.Google Scholar
Gibson, McG. 2003. From the prevention measures to the fact-finding mission. Museum International 55/3–4: 108–18.Google Scholar
Hamoodi, K.K. 1990. The excavations at Tell Dhibai. Sumer 46: 91.Google Scholar
Hussein, L.M. 1999–2000. Excavations in Tell Harmal: spring 1997. Sumer 50: 61.Google Scholar
Hussein, L.M. 2001–2002. Excavations in Tell Harmal: fall 1998. Sumer 51: 114–22.Google Scholar
Kepinski-Lecomte, C. 1992. Haradum I. Paris: Recherche sur les Civilisations.Google Scholar
Lawler, A. 2003. Beyond the looting. National Geographic (October): 58–75.Google Scholar
Malko, H. 2006. A comparison of the social and economic organization of cities and small settlements in Mesopotamia. Unpublished MA dissertation, Stony Brook University.Google Scholar
Mustafa, M.A. 1949. Sounding at Tell Dhibai. Sumer 5: 173–86.Google Scholar
Pollock, S. 1999. Ancient Mesopotamia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Postgate, J.N. 1991. Early Mesopotamia. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wright, H.T. 1981. The southern margins of Sumer: archaeological survey in the area of Eridu and Ur, Appendix in McC, R.. Adams Heartland of Cities: 295–346. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar