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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.
Citations
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DOI
01 Jan 2021
TL;DR: In this article, the authors track 30,000 individual items based on catalogued provenance information indicating their prior transit through various auction houses and dealers, and infer the network inferred from these data allows them to address basic questions about the structure of the antiquities market.
Abstract: The antiquities market repeatedly raises concerns about money laundering, forgeries, and illicit trafficking. Auction houses’ and dealers’ roles in these activities are heavily studied, but there has been little research looking at connections between these market participants. We show the potential for social network analysis illuminate new aspects of the art market. In this case study, we track 30,000 individual items based on catalogued provenance information indicating their prior transit through various auction houses and dealers. The network inferred from these data allows us to address basic questions about the structure of the antiquities market, such as the rate of transit for items in the market, the pathways taken by items between auction houses, and the relationship between sale outcomes and re-appearance at auction. There are two types of objects that reappear at auction: those that failed to sell and are re-auctioned very quickly, and those that are held by a collector for about a decade before returning to auction. We also show that private dealers play a relatively important role in “vetting” certain objects, lending them legitimacy. Finally, we discuss additional uses of social network analysis and possible data sources for future art market researchers.

1 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the current structure and ethos of the antiquities trade provides the conditions that are conducive to illegal excavation and the transfer of archaeological materials, even if inadvertently.
Abstract: The Syrian civil war exacted a massive toll on the country’s population, with hundreds of thousands of children, women, and men killed, injured, or forced to flee. Part and parcel of the human suffering is the widespread loss of artistic and historical materials—the deliberate and collateral destruction of artworks and monuments, mosques and marketplaces, books, artifacts, churches, synagogues, and archaeological sites. One aspect of this destruction, in particular, has generated vigorous debate among scholars, policymakers, and art market professionals: the intensive looting of archaeological sites by insurgent groups and their possible links to the antiquities trade. The war did not introduce site looting to the region, of course, and the antiquities trade did not endorse insurgent looting. But, for several reasons, the cultural loss from this war has attracted sustained media and scholarly attention. One important outcome of this attention is research investment. In the years since the world learned of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) campaign of cultural destruction, considerable efforts have been made by scholars and market professionals to separate myth from fact by prioritizing reliable data to piece together the complex components of the Syrian artifact pipeline. These efforts have already borne fruit, as numerous recent publications attest.1 Any attempt to situate the looting in the broader space of the art market, however, eventually hits the causal wall: does looting proliferate because the antiquities trade encourages it, even if inadvertently? In other words, is there something about the current structure and ethos of the trade that provides the conditions that are conducive to illegal excavation and the transfer of archaeological materials? How these questions get answered tells us about much more than one particular civil war; their answers—and the contentious grounds on which the questions are

1 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors assesses the purchasers of artifacts, the unintended consequences of their acquisitions, and considers the ways we might create a set of better-informed consumers in the licensed antiquities market in Israel.
Abstract: Why do people want to own a piece of the past? What tempts consumers? What effect does consumption have on archaeological landscapes? Generally, Holy Land consumers can be broken down into two categories: those on the low-end interested in small mementoes of a trip, and those on the high-end, wealthier individuals willing to make financial investments for the highest quality pieces. Whether buyers are wily speculators, investing to increase their capital (cultural, economic, social, sensu Bourdieu), or innocent pilgrims on a once in a lifetime trip to the Holy Land, the result is the same: looting and theft from archaeological sites in order to meet consumer demand for archaeological artifacts. With data gathered from archaeological ethnographies, this article assesses the purchasers of artifacts, the unintended consequences of their acquisitions, and considers the ways we might create a set of better-informed consumers in the licensed antiquities market in Israel.
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A review of approximately ninety-three news articles published online between 2012 and 2022 shows that the trade in "ancient" biblical manuscripts in Turkey is legitimized by a narrative of the phenomenon that is fuelled by sensationalism, uncritical reporting, and an indifference to expert opinion as mentioned in this paper .
Abstract: Over the last decade, scores of supposedly ‘ancient’ manuscripts have been seized by police in Turkey. Although reports of the seizures regularly feature in the country’s media, the ‘ancient’ manuscript industry has received only sporadic scholarly attention. As a consequence, very little is currently known about the scope and scale of this persistent, peculiar, and now decade-old phenomenon. To understand the various factors that facilitate its growth, this article investigates how the trade, its participants, and the manuscripts themselves have been represented in the Turkish media over the past decade. Through a review of approximately ninety-three news articles published online between 2012 and 2022, I argue that the trade in ‘ancient’ biblical manuscripts in Turkey is legitimized by a narrative of the phenomenon that is fuelled by sensationalism, uncritical reporting, and an indifference to expert opinion.
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