Supply and demand: exposing the illicit trade in Cambodian antiquities through a study of Sotheby’s auction house

Davis, Tess

doi:10.1007/s10611-011-9321-6

Cited by 22 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 9 publications

(16 reference statements)

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“…Much of the literature in this area revolves around criminological and legal treatises that map contemporary black markets and illicit trade networks (Bowman, 2008; Campbell, 2013; Casey, 2015; Lane et al, 2008). Many of these works conceptualize war as a risk factor for the expansion and diversification of criminal networks and trafficking, and the resultant damage to heritage (Charney, 2016; Davis, 2011; Kersel, 2016; Mackenzie et al, 2020). Adjacent to this literature, a burgeoning school of thought also theorizes plunder and looting, often through the lens of conflict (Apaydin, 2020; Hicks, 2020; Tompkins, 2018).…”

Section: Resources and Conflict: Existing Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The oilfields of Mesopotamia: Resource conflict, oil extraction and heritage destruction in Iraq

Saymour

2022

Human Geography

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The 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by the US Coalition forces, is amongst the most politically and culturally significant events of the twenty-first century. Much research across disciplines has been dedicated to explaining the War, with a significant body of work in the social sciences illuminating the role of oil in fuelling war and ongoing instabilities in the region. Less attention has been paid, however, to the ways that resource conflicts in Iraq expand beyond physical militarized clashes, bleeding into social and cultural realms that are purportedly unconnected to oil. This paper attends to a particularly significant one of these realms: the passive and active destruction of the material cultural heritage of Iraq and the immaterial social, cultural, and political consequences of this on the Iraqi people, including the violent colonial ecologies of plunder-based conflict curation. Using a critical, multidisciplinary array of secondary sources, this paper links oil, conflict, and culture against a (neo)colonial backdrop to illustrate that Operation Iraqi Freedom was a resource war that targeted not only natural but also cultural resources, leading to the parallel extraction and displacement of oil and heritage. Reframing the Iraq War through the lens of culture reveals how the conflict and following instability dispossessed the Iraqi people of their autonomy and capacity for political mobilization, with the broader purpose of establishing a stable regime of extraction to mitigate the demands of resource dependency. This analysis presents a new reading and conceptualization of oil, and a broader understanding of how resource dependency creates holistic spheres of violence and dispossession that work to reproduce and reinforce colonial and imperial power relations.

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Section: Resources and Conflict: Existing Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The oilfields of Mesopotamia: Resource conflict, oil extraction and heritage destruction in Iraq

Saymour

2022

Human Geography

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“…Archaeological site looting remains a particularly well-known and well documented form of heritage crime, sometimes obfuscating that other offences and actions also cause harm to cultural heritage. Decades' worth of scholars and journalists have noted both the archaeological impact of looting, and also its feed into international markets and organised crime networks (see, for example, Meyer, 1973;Davis, 2011): the problem seems to show no sign of abating.…”

Section: Heritage Crime Around the Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preventing crime against cultural and archaeological sites

Thomas

Nicholas

2020

Rural Crime Prevention

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“…Scholars of the international criminal market in cultural objects have access to a number of analyses of what we might characterize as the two ends of the global supply chain, in the form of studies of 'source' and 'market', but comparatively little about how looted cultural objects actually move from the ground to the international market buyer (see Brodie et al 2013 for a literature review of evidence-based studies in this field). With limited exceptions, the available data have clustered around looters who take objects from important archaeological sites (Staley 1993;Paredes Maury 1996;van Velzen 1996;Matsuda 1998;Farchakh Bajjaly 2008a;2008b) and dealers, museums and collectors around the world who provide the destinations for these stolen artefacts as part of their general acquisitive practices (Gill and Chippindale 1993;Chippindale and Gill 2000;Nørskov 2002;Mackenzie 2005;Davis 2011;Brodie and Bowman Proulx 2013).…”

Section: Introduction: From Source To Market But How?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Temple looting in Cambodia: Anatomy of a statue trafficking network

Mackenzie¹,

Davis²

2020

Preprint

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Qualitative empirical studies of the illicit antiquities trade have tended to focus either on the supply end, through interviews with looters, or on the demand end, through interviews with dealers, museums and collectors. Trafficking of artefacts across borders from source to market has until now been something of an evidential black hole. Here, we present the first empirical study of a statue trafficking network, using oral history interviews conducted during ethnographic criminology fieldwork in Cambodia and Thailand. The data begin to answer many of the pressing but unresolved questions in academic studies of this particular criminal market, such as whether organized crime is involved in antiquities looting and trafficking (yes), whether the traffic in looted artefacts overlaps with the insertion of fakes into the market (yes) and how many stages there are between looting at source and the placing of objects for public sale in internationally respected venues (surprisingly few). © The Author 2014.

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Supply and demand: exposing the illicit trade in Cambodian antiquities through a study of Sotheby’s auction house

Abstract: Looters are reducing countless ancient sites to rubble in their search for buried treasures to sell on the international market.

Cited by 22 publications

References 9 publications

The oilfields of Mesopotamia: Resource conflict, oil extraction and heritage destruction in Iraq

The oilfields of Mesopotamia: Resource conflict, oil extraction and heritage destruction in Iraq

Preventing crime against cultural and archaeological sites

Temple looting in Cambodia: Anatomy of a statue trafficking network

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