Weaponizing Monuments
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Monuments of Terrorism: (De)Selecting Memory and Symbolic Exchange at the Interface Between Westminster and Raqqa
Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies Vol. 16, No. 2 (2020) Monuments of Terrorism: (De)Selecting Memory and Symbolic Exchange at the Interface Between Westminster and Raqqa Theodore Price Contemporary conflict is conducted across multiple visual fronts, as the old visual symbols of conventional warfare and remembrance are increasingly replaced with digital images. Focusing on three events in the summer of 2015: the attack on tourists in Tunisia, the blowing up of the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, Syria, and the construction of a replica of the destroyed Arch of Triumph from Palmyra in Trafalgar Square, London, this paper details the symbolic exchange between the so-called Islamic State and western governments. Through an examination of the visual representation of violence enacted towards individual holidaymakers and ancient tourist sites, this paper details how the attack on a holiday resort in Tuni- sia was recast through a master narrative of war where the military repatriation of civilians represented the dead tourists as fallen soldiers. It will examine the visual record of the destruction of the Temple of Bel, by the Islamic State (ISIS), arguing that this action gained international legitimacy through the validation and complicity of the visual frame provided by satellite images from the United Na- tions. Finally, it will discuss the replication of the Arch of Triumph, from Palmyra, in Trafalgar Square as a further example of the instrumentalisation of counter- iconoclasm. In this paper I suggest that the new monuments to terrorism are images of the events themselves, rather than simply physical memorials built for remem- brance, and that these new monuments to terrorism circulating within the virtual landscapes of the internet, become the new sites of collective memorialisation Theodore Price is a London-based artist, curator and researcher whose practice is located at the intersection between art and politics. -
Unifying Spatial and Temporal Methodologies to Understand Archaeological Looting in Egypt
ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: BUILDING A BASELINE: UNIFYING SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL METHODOLOGIES TO UNDERSTAND ARCHAEOLOGICAL LOOTING IN EGYPT Michelle R.D. Fabiani, Doctor of Philosophy 2019 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Laura Dugan, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice Archaeological looting – the illegal excavation or removal of an antiquity from the ground or structural complex of an archaeological site – is a persistent issue in many countries. National and international laws, agreements, conventions, and statutes all proscribe the looting transporting, possession, and sale of antiquities illegally removed from archaeological sites. Looting has also generated a lot of academic attention, with scholarship developing in archaeology, sociology, criminology, and law (among others). Despite such legal proscriptions and scholarly contributions to understanding this phenomenon, current efforts have been unable to produce tangible solutions for preventing this crime. Not only has there not yet been extensive scholarship to understand the link between looting and contextual forces, there is a dearth of research on the most effective ways to study these interconnected variables. Using a framework of routine activity theory, this dissertation proposes a new possible approach that considers spatial, temporal, and spatio-temporal relationships to establish baseline data on patterns of archaeological looting attempts in Lower Egypt from 2015 to 2017 relative to sociopolitical, economic, and environmental stress — and to begin to address this research gap. Specifically, this dissertation proposes a methodology for collecting and coding data on archaeological looting attempts from satellite imagery. It then applies a series of spatial (clustering, proximity), temporal (SEM, VAR, ARDL), and spatio-temporal methods (clustering, hot spots analysis, spatial time series) to these data to demonstrate the importance of analyzing this phenomena multidimensionally. -
The United States and the International Efforts Against Looting of Antiquities
Cornell Law Library Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers Faculty Scholarship 2-19-2009 Protecting against Plunder: The nitU ed States and the International Efforts against Looting of Antiquities Asif Efrat Cornell Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clsops_papers Part of the Arts and Entertainment Commons, Commercial Law Commons, International Law Commons, and the International Trade Commons Recommended Citation Efrat, Asif, "Protecting against Plunder: The nitU ed States and the International Efforts against Looting of Antiquities" (2009). Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers. Paper 47. http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clsops_papers/47 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Protecting against Plunder The United States and the International Efforts against Looting of Antiquities Asif Efrat ∗∗∗ Word Count: 21,297 Abstract. In 1970 UNESCO adopted a convention intended to stem the flow of looted antiquities from developing countries to collections in art-importing countries. The majority of art-importing countries, including Britain, Germany, and Japan, refused to join the Convention. Contrary to other art-importing countries, and reversing its own traditionally-liberal policy, the United States accepted the international regulation of antiquities and joined the UNESCO Convention. The article seeks to explain why the United States chose to establish controls on antiquities, to the benefit of foreign countries facing archaeological plunder and to the detriment of the US art market. -
Download Brodie Regulation Perspectives.Pdf
Historical and Social Perspectives on the Regulation of the International Trade in Archaeological Objects: The Examples of Greece and India Neil Brodie* TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................ .. 1051 11. REGULATION AT THE SOURCE OF THE ARTIFACT .......... 1054 A. Example 1: The Greek Cycladic Islands .......... .. 1056 B. Example 2: India .............................................. .. 1059 111. DISCUSSION .................................................................. 1062 I. INTRODUCTION It is a well-established fact that the international antiquities market is responsible for the destruction and vandalism of archaeological and cultural sites worldwide.1 Material removed from these sites is traded across jurisdictions until it can be sold legally and acquired as "art" by private and institutional collectors in North America, Europe and, increasingly, East Asia.2 One consequence of this trade is that most countries outside the United States have now passed laws that protect archaeological heritage by proscribing the unauthorized excavation of antiquities, the export of antiquities, or both.3 Opinions are divided, however, as to the effectiveness and * McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3ER United Kingdom 1. See e.g., ROGER ATWOOD, STEALING HISTORY: TOMB RAIDERS, SMUGGLERS, AND THE LOOTING OF THE ANCIENT WORLD 11, 241 (2004); NEIL J. BRODIE ET AL., STEALING HISTORY: THE ILLICIT TRADE IN CULTURAL MATERIAL 8 (2000); PATRICK J. O'KEEFE, TRADE IN ANTIQUITIES: REDUCING DESTRUCTION AND THEFT 14-16 (1997). 2. BRODIE ET AL., supra note 1, at 33. 3. See 3 LYNDEL V. PROTT & PATRICK J. O'KEEFE, LAw AND THE CULTURAL HERITAGE: MOVEMENT 429-530 (1989). 1051 1052 VANDERBIL T JOURNAL OF TRANSNA TlONAL LA W {VOl. 38;/051 even the desirability of such strong regulations at the source of the artifacts.4 Opponents of such regulation argue that the prohibitions deter people from declaring antiquities that are discovered by chance. -
For Recording Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa.', Geosciences., 7 (4)
Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 29 September 2017 Version of attached le: Accepted Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Rayne, L. and Bradbury, J. and Mattingly, D. and Philip, G. and Bewley, R. and Wilson, A. (2017) 'From above and on the ground : geospatial methods for recording endangered archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa.', Geosciences., 7 (4). p. 100. Further information on publisher's website: https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences7040100 Publisher's copyright statement: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0). Additional information: Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk 1 Type of the Paper (Article, Review, Communication, etc.) 2 -
The Palmyrene Prosopography
THE PALMYRENE PROSOPOGRAPHY by Palmira Piersimoni University College London Thesis submitted for the Higher Degree of Doctor of Philosophy London 1995 C II. TRIBES, CLANS AND FAMILIES (i. t. II. TRIBES, CLANS AND FAMILIES The problem of the social structure at Palmyra has already been met by many authors who have focused their interest mainly to the study of the tribal organisation'. In dealing with this subject, it comes natural to attempt a distinction amongst the so-called tribes or family groups, for they are so well and widely attested. On the other hand, as shall be seen, it is not easy to define exactly what a tribe or a clan meant in terms of structure and size and which are the limits to take into account in trying to distinguish them. At the heart of Palmyrene social organisation we find not only individuals or families but tribes or groups of families, in any case groups linked by a common (true or presumed) ancestry. The Palmyrene language expresses the main gentilic grouping with phd2, for which the Greek corresponding word is ØuAi in the bilingual texts. The most common Palmyrene formula is: dynwpbd biiyx... 'who is from the tribe of', where sometimes the word phd is omitted. Usually, the term bny introduces the name of a tribe that either refers to a common ancestor or represents a guild as the Ben Komarê, lit. 'the Sons of the priest' and the Benê Zimrâ, 'the sons of the cantors' 3 , according to a well-established Semitic tradition of attaching the guilds' names to an ancestor, so that we have the corporations of pastoral nomads, musicians, smiths, etc. -
Using Open Source Data to Detect Archaeological Looting And
Interferometric SAR and Machine Learning: Using Open Source Data to Detect Archaeological Looting and Destruction RESEARCH ARTICLE HASSAN EL-HAJJ *Author affiliations can be found in the back matter of this article ABSTRACT CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Hassan El-Hajj, PhD Candidate Archaeological heritage in the Near East is under an ever increasing threat from multiple Classical Archaeology vectors such as looting and systematic destruction, militarization, and uncontrolled Department, Philipps- urban expansion in the absence of governmental control among others. Physically Universität Marburg, monitoring endangered sites proves to be infeasible due to the dangerous ground Biegenstrasse 10, 35037 Marburg, Germany conditions on the one hand, and the vast area of land on which they are dispersed. In recent years, the abundant availability of Very High Resolution (VHR) imaging satellites [email protected] with short revisit times meant that it was possible to monitor a large portion of these sites from space. However, such images are relatively expensive and beyond the means of many researchers and concerned local authorities. In this paper, I present an KEYWORDS: approach that uses open source data from two of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Coherence Maps; Near East; Archaeological Looting; Copernicus Constellation, Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 in order to generate disturbance Archaeological Destruction; patches, from which looting and destruction areas are classified using Machine Cultural Heritage; Open Source Learning. Such an approach opens the door towards sustainable monitoring over large swaths of land over long periods of time. TO CITE THIS ARTICLE: El-Hajj, H. 2021. Interferometric SAR and Machine Learning: Using Open Source Data to Detect Archaeological Looting and Destruction. -
The Antiquities Market: It’S All in a Price
heritage & society, Vol. 7 No. 1, May, 2014, 32–46 The Antiquities Market: It’s All in a Price Neil Brodie Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, University of Glasgow, UK Abstract Antiquities have cultural and economic value. Scholarly experts create cultural value, and by creating cultural value they also unintentionally establish economic value. So although antiquities are collected as culturally-important objects, they have also been bought for investment purposes as tangible assets, though with mixed results. Collectors and investors must face the problem of how to assess accurately the cultural and economic value of an antiquity, though again the intervention of scholarly experts is crucial. Scholars themselves benefit finan- cially from even indirect involvement with the antiquities market, and their work can be appropriated and exploited financially as intellectual property. Anti- quities trading is often illicit, and in such conditions profits made from the anti- quities market are proceeds of crime, though that fact is generally overlooked. Resumen Las antigüedades tienen valor económico y cultural. Los eruditos crean valor cultural y, al hacerlo, también generan involuntariamente valor económico. Por lo tanto, aunque las antigüedades se coleccionan como objetos cultural- mente importantes, también se han comprado con fines de inversión como bienes tangibles, aunque con resultados ambivalentes. Los coleccionistas y los inversores deben enfrentar el problema de cómo evaluar con exactitud el valor cultural y económico de una antigüedad, aunque nuevamente la inter- vención de los eruditos es fundamental. Los eruditos se benefician económic- amente hasta de la participación indirecta en el mercado de antigüedades y su trabajo puede apropiarse y aprovecharse económicamente como propiedad intelectual. -
Disentangling Strategic and Opportunistic Looting: the Relationship Between Antiquities Looting and Armed Conflict in Egypt
arts Article Disentangling Strategic and Opportunistic Looting: The Relationship between Antiquities Looting and Armed Conflict in Egypt Michelle D. Fabiani ID Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA; [email protected]; Tel.: +1-301-405-4733 Received: 30 March 2018; Accepted: 11 June 2018; Published: 14 June 2018 Abstract: Antiquities are looted from archaeological sites across the world, seemingly more often in areas of armed conflict. While this is not the only context in which antiquities are looted, it is an important context and one for which much is still unknown. Previously, the relationship between antiquities looting and armed conflict has been assessed with qualitative case studies and journalistic evidence due to a lack of systematically collected data. This study considers the relationship between antiquities looting and armed conflict in Egypt from 1997 to 2014 with a newly collected time series dataset. Autoregressive Distributed Lag Models (ARDL) with a bounds testing approach are used to assess both the overall relationship between these two phenomena and their temporal ordering. This article finds that antiquities looting and armed conflict are, indeed, statistically related; and that antiquities looting more often precedes armed conflict rather than the other way around. This finding suggests that looting is more strategic than opportunistic. Implications and future directions are discussed. Keywords: antiquities looting; Egypt; armed conflict; strategic looting; opportunistic looting; open source data; ARDL 1. Introduction Antiquities looting has become increasingly prominent in news headlines. Newspapers around the world show headlines reporting antiquities looting from Israel, Cambodia, China, Greece, Italy, Egypt, Peru, Syria, and the United States. -
FROM MOSUL to PALMYRA a Virtual Journey Through the World’S Cultural Heritage 30 August 2019 – 3 November 2019
Press kit FROM MOSUL TO PALMYRA A Virtual Journey through the World’s Cultural Heritage 30 August 2019 – 3 November 2019 1 CONTENT Media Conference: Thursday, 29 August 2019, 11 a.m. 1. Forewords of the publication Page 3 2. Media Information Page 5 3. Exhibition Sections Page 6 4. Virtual Reality and Epilogue Page 12 5. Virtual Reconstruction and Publication Page 13 6. Current and Upcoming Exhibitions Page 14 7. General Information Page 15 2 FOREWORDS OF THE PUBLICATION In recent years, some of the most splendid cities of the ancient world – Mosul, Aleppo, Palmyra, Leptis Magna – have come to be associated with the wanton destruction of their vestiges by fanaticism and war. These ancient sites, some of them completely laid to waste, bear witness to recent and current conflicts that affect us directly. A virtual journey to the sites reveals the disastrous consequences of war on every level, inclu- ding culture. These consequences reach far beyond the regrettable loss of outstanding artefacts of long-gone civilizations. The intentional destruction of cultural heritage constitutes an attempt to obliterate cultural identity. The historical memory of the multireligious sites stands for those achievements of civilization that are now massive- ly threatened by war and terror. While each of the four emblematic sites, which visitors to the exhibition can explo- re in virtual models and reconstructions, tells its own story, they have one thing in common: they embody the universality of our concept of culture, which prizes the individuality and diversity of the remains of numerous ancient civilizations without subjecting them to religious or national hierarchies. -
Turning History Into a Story Arch to Enable a Computer Game Emotive Narrative Immersion in Archaeology: Palmyra from Queen Zenobia to William Wright
International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Studies Volume 8, Issue 2, 2021, PP 39-46 | ISSN 2694-6296 DOI: https://doi.org/10.22259/2694-6296.0802005 Turning History into a Story Arch to Enable a Computer Game Emotive Narrative Immersion in Archaeology: Palmyra from Queen Zenobia to William Wright Luca OTTONELLO University of Glasgow *Corresponding Author: Luca OTTONELLO, University of Glasgow. ABSTRACT There are several steps in the creation of an historically bound computer game which can be used for academic purposes: the programming, the design, the architectural and environmental research, the testing etc. But the factor that makes a game (any game) a success or a failure, is the ability to turn the already known facts into a compelling narrative, which the user will get immersed in and want to continue playing until the end. For that reason, this article delves into the relation between historical accuracy, compelling character arches and the creation of fictional narratives which follow the historical account closely enough to be both accurate and compelling at the same time. The article will follow as a case study the historical narrative of a recently designed Palmyra computer game, following characters who were in Palmyra for different reasons and had strong historical ties to the ancient town: Queen Zenobia, William Wright and a general historically extrapolated slave. Keywords: narrative, computer game design, historical accuracy, Palmyra, Queen Zenobia, William Wright, classics, digital archaeology, emotive archaeological and historical monuments in INTRODUCTION : A BRIEF HISTORY OF PALMYRA, QUEEN ZENOBIA AND THE Palmyra, culminating with the destruction of a large part of the historical knowledge trough the EXPLORER WILLIAM WRIGHT killing of the director of the site Khaled al- In order to discuss the more complicated Asaad1. -
Exhibition Checklist I. Creating Palmyra's Legacy
EXHIBITION CHECKLIST 1. Caravan en route to Palmyra, anonymous artist after Louis-François Cassas, ca. 1799. Proof-plate etching. 15.5 x 27.3 in. (29.2 x 39.5 cm). The Getty Research Institute, 840011 I. CREATING PALMYRA'S LEGACY Louis-François Cassas Artist and Architect 2. Colonnade Street with Temple of Bel in background, Georges Malbeste and Robert Daudet after Louis-François Cassas. Etching. Plate mark: 16.9 x 36.6 in. (43 x 93 cm). From Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phoénicie, de la Palestine, et de la Basse Egypte (Paris, ca. 1799), vol. 1, pl. 58. The Getty Research Institute, 840011 1 3. Architectural ornament from Palmyra tomb, Jean-Baptiste Réville and M. A. Benoist after Louis-François Cassas. Etching. Plate mark: 18.3 x 11.8 in. (28.5 x 45 cm). From Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phoénicie, de la Palestine, et de la Basse Egypte (Paris, ca. 1799), vol. 1, pl. 137. The Getty Research Institute, 840011 4. Louis-François Cassas sketching outside of Homs before his journey to Palmyra (detail), Simon-Charles Miger after Louis-François Cassas. Etching. Plate mark: 8.4 x 16.1 in. (21.5 x 41cm). From Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phoénicie, de la Palestine, et de la Basse Egypte (Paris, ca. 1799), vol. 1, pl. 20. The Getty Research Institute, 840011 5. Louis-François Cassas presenting gifts to Bedouin sheikhs, Simon Charles-Miger after Louis-François Cassas. Etching. Plate mark: 8.4 x 16.1 in. (21.5 x 41 cm).