SATELLITE IMAGERY-BASED ANALYSIS OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL LOOTING IN SYRIA

Since the start of the Syrian war in 2011, antiquities officials, archaeologists, and cultural heritage professionals have struggled to assess the nature, severity, and scope of damage to sites and monuments (e.g., Abdulkarim 2014). Individual episodes of direct, conflict-related damage, as in Aleppo's Old City, have received significant media attention, while there have also been occasional reports of severe looting, as at the Roman city of Apamea (Trafficking Culture 2012). And of course, since late 2014 there have been a growing number of high-profile, intentional demolitions of historic and archaeological monuments, most notoriously by members of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) (Bott and Harmansah, this issue). Clearly, the cultural heritage of Syria and surrounding regions is being impacted in sometimes extreme ways through military activity, looting, and ideologically-motivated destruction. Yet assessing how widespread these various issues are, where they are most common, and what sites are being most commonly targeted remains difficult to determine (Danti, this issue).