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Journal ArticleDOI

Small Finds, Big Values: Cylinder Seals and Coins from Iraq and Syria on the Online Market

01 Aug 2019-International Journal of Cultural Property (Cambridge University Press (CUP))-Vol. 26, Iss: 3, pp 239-263
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the number of cylinder seals and coins sold on the Internet has increased steadily since 2011, reaching a peak in 2016-17, and 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.
Abstract: 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.
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The illicit trade in cultural objects endures, with harmful consequences to local communities, knowledge acquisition, and archaeologica as discussed by the authors, even 50 years after the adoption of the 1970 UNESCO Convention.
Abstract: Fifty years after the adoption of the 1970 UNESCO Convention, the illicit trade in cultural objects endures, with harmful consequences to local communities, knowledge acquisition, and archaeologica...

5 citations

References
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Book
01 Jan 1968

170 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Sep 1959
TL;DR: The Roman occupation of Northern Iraq lasted less than a hundred and seventy years, from A.D. 197 to 364, and was little more than a turbulent episode in the long struggle between Rome on the west and Persia, under her successive Parthian and Sassanian rulers, on the east as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The Roman occupation of Northern Iraq lasted less than a hundred and seventy years, from A.D. 197 to 364, and was little more than a turbulent episode in the long struggle between Rome on the west and Persia, under her successive Parthian and Sassanian rulers, on the east. The purely military character of this frontier extension is the first of the factors controlling the nature and distribution of its material remains; the second is the high degree of civilisation which the area had attained long before the Romans came, and was to maintain with little change long after their withdrawal. The process of Romanisation, if it was ever attempted, has left no mark. New towns would hardly have been built on sites already occupied by cities far older than Rome itself, and new roads were only constructed for particular military purposes which did not coincide with the requirements of commercial traffic and were not served by the existing highways. Few western imports have been found, and only five Latin inscriptions, three dedications by Roman soldiers and two milestones, have come to light in Iraq; it is significant that there is no known inscription of this period in Greek, the koinē of civilian life in the other provinces of the Roman East. Roman historians usually refer to Mesopotamia only as the scene of eastern campaigns of which they had, with the exception of Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth century, no personal or detailed knowledge.

76 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

46 citations

Book
24 Apr 2006
TL;DR: The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East: A History from Diocletian to Heraclius as discussed by the authors is a history of the Byzantine and early Islamic near East, which is not a scholarly book and need not be discussed at length.
Abstract: “Recruitment in Roman Armies from Justinian to Heraclius (ca. 565–615),” in Av. Cameron, ed., The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, v. 3: States, Resources and Armies [Princeton, 1995], 61–124, at 92–103). From archaeology, moreover, we probably would not know it ever had occurred (88, 95, 150, 172, 204; but see 199ff. for a pattern of abandonment in England). We have no demographic data so we are left with the literary sources, but there is no chapter on the literariness of the literary sources, only scattered observations in discussions of other topics. The volume ably fuses separate historical disciplines and regional historiography with molecular biology—a notable achievement—but has not made the Linguistic Turn. On the other hand, Rosen’s is not a scholarly book and need not be discussed at length. The introduction wants us to believe that plague was largely responsible for the end of antiquity and the “birth of Europe,” but the book explains neither what these processes mean nor how the plague contributed to them (except by killing many people). The author, a former “senior executive” at important publishing houses, succumbs to the temptation of narrating Roman history from Diocletian to Islam based on English scholarship of the 1960s and 70s and a handful of translated sources, all cited in the notes without page references (even to A.H.M. Jones’ massive Later Roman Empire!). This history is full of errors, misunderstandings, and outdated notions (there is no room in this review to list them). The narrative of Justinian’s “glory” (including irrelevant chapters on Hagia Sophia, the codifi cation of law, etc.) is interrupted by a section on the “bacterium,” which is rather more lucid. Rosen handles the scientifi c material better; his mistake was apparently to think that history in the grand style can be done competently by any educated layperson (or that it should be done at all). His feeble sensationalism and insistence on comparing ancient with modern material and throwing everything on his mind into the mix (e.g., praise of American society, arguments against intelligent design) prove that scholarly training matters. The general public deserves better.

42 citations