Pam Patterson

Bio info

A Brief History of Looting and Modern Efforts to Prevent Plunder

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لمحة تاريخيّة موجزة عن النهب، ومساعٍ حديثة لمنعه

Keynote speaker: Leila A. Amineddoleh

As violence rages in Afghanistan, many experts believe it will lead to increased looting of cultural artifacts and destruction of historic sites. Since ancient times, conflict has been accompanied by the looting and destruction of cultural sites. Unfortunately, this trend has persisted through the centuries. During the first two decades of the 21st century, looting has raged across the Middle East, in part due to the US invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring, and other political unrest throughout the region.

The keynote speech will address looting throughout history (with an emphasis on the Middle East and Syria), as well as the long-term effects of looting and loss of historic record. The talk will then examine the development of legal tools used to prevent destruction and looting, and how those laws developed in concert with changing norms concerning both private and public ownership of heritage. Finally, the talk will address the current state of the law for heritage protection, dangers to archaeological sites, the market for looted artifacts, and difficult questions concerning the role of international institutions protecting objects and sites.

 

The Pillaging of Dura Europos: ISIS and the Illicit Trade in Antiquities

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نهب دورا-أوروبوس: داعش والتجارة غير المشروعة في القطع الأثريّة

Amr Al Azm

Syria’s cultural heritage has been an early casualty of this conflict through the systematic looting and deliberate destruction of many of its archaeological sites and monuments. So, when ISIS began to occupy large swathes of territory in Syria in the latter half of 2013 and early 2014, it came upon an already-thriving trade in looted antiquities.

Recognizing that as a potential source of income, ISIS institutionalized and intensified this process of looting in areas under its control at sites like Dura-Europos, and Mari. This coincided with an exponential increase in popularity of social media platforms like Facebook in the region which became one of the main routes to sell and traffic looted antiquities.

Then 2015 heralded a darker and more sinister manifestation of ISIS’s control and exploitation of cultural heritage, which can only be described as cultural atrocities. This included the destruction of numerous religious sites and monuments most famously, temple of Bel at Palmyra. This paper aims to trace the evolution of the systematic looting and destruction of Syria’s cultural heritage by ISIS and other groups through the site of Dura-Europos and the role of social media like Facebook in facilitating and amplifying this phenomenon.

Leila A. Amineddoleh

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amineddoleh

With a decade and a half of experience in both litigation and transactional law, Leila A. Amineddoleh is an expert in the field of art and cultural heritage law. She represents major art collectors, museums, galleries, dealers, non-profits, artists, estates, foundations and foreign governments. She has been involved in matters related to multi-million dollar contractual disputes, international cultural heritage law violations, the recovery of stolen art and antiquities, complex fraud schemes, authentication disputes, art-backed loans, and the purchase and sale of hundreds of millions of dollars of art and collectibles.