Tuesday 17 February 2015

Map of Smuggling-Related Places


I thought it might be helpful to set out on a map the location of the places mentioned in the recent BBC documentary and the WSJ articles discussed earlier related to the smuggling of dugup artefacts.
 


Gaziantepe and Hatay are noted in the WSJ article as places where artefacts are on sale, while Urfa and Mardin as places where artefacts seized from smugglers are being stored (suggesting they are crossing the border somewhere in the region). The Beqaa valley mentioned in the BBC text runs NE-SW between mountain ranges in eastern Lebanon. I also show in relationship to this Al Nabak mentioned in earlier reports. Manbij in Syria (in ISIL held territory) is mentioned by the WSJ article as a hub of the illicit antiquities trade. 

Note that the current discussion is focused on Syria and makes very little reference to artefacts looted and smuggled from and within Iraq. It seems also that journalists writing about this follow one another into two regions southern Turkey and Lebanon. It is about time we had some investigative journalism in the Gulf, Dubai and Qatar in particular. Let us learn something more of another end of these routes.

The map currently is a blank.









1 comment:

lalbertson said...

Syria's Ministry of Culture also has a trial version of interactive map of archaeological sites damaged/looted during the conflict. Its in Arabic at present but they are working on the English version which should go live at the end of the month.

The website is not real-time but will be updated the first and middle of each month.

 
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