Convenient Commodities or Blood Antiquities? The Relationship between Antiquities Looting and Armed Conflict in Egypt

• In Event: Innovations in the Study of Cultural Property Crime

Abstract

Antiquities are being looted from archaeological sites all over the world, seemingly more often in areas of armed conflict. Previously, the relationship between antiquities looting and armed conflict has been looked at tangentially through qualitative case studies and anecdotal evidence due to a lack of existing data. This study considers the connection between antiquities theft and armed conflict with a newly collected dataset that lends itself to quantitative analysis. Focusing specifically on Egypt from 1993 – 2014, a systematic collection of open source data and the use of vector autoregression (VAR) allow for the consideration of both the overall relationship between these two factors and the possible causal order between the two. Ultimately, this paper argues that it is possible to use empirical methods to better understand the relationship between antiquities looting and armed conflict.

Author

• Michelle D'Ippolito Fabiani, University of Maryland