Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Systematic looting at archaeological sites in Syria is understood to generate income for insurgent groups in the region. Satellite imagery, corroborated by on-the-ground reports, suggests intensive, illegal digging at more than 200 archaeology sites in 2014 and 2015. These reports triggered a series of media stories about potential revenues for the Islamic State and other groups, ranging from $4 million to $7 billion. Few of these profit estimates came with any empirical evidence to support them. Media outlets relied on each other for reference, concretizing the public policy debate in a set of numbers that was ultimately unsubstantiated. Meanwhile, researchers familiar with the global trade in antiquities asked each other what they had missed: were archaeological materials from Syrian sites really commanding such lucrative revenues for insurgents?

This paper addresses three related questions. First, what kind of an illicit good is an archaeological artifact? In other words, how should researchers and policymakers understand the behavior of this type of good in a global “gray” market? Second, why is the antiquity prone to high revenue estimates in a way that other illicit goods are not? Third, why do estimate discrepancies matter for policymakers and how can comparative data from other sites of illicit artifact trading help to manage the unknown features of the Syrian trade?

Using data from Italy and Syria, I first compare artifact performance in different vendor settings so as to establish basic parameters of market behavior. I then draw on the conceptual framework of singular goods to argue that the antiquity falls into a special category that we might think of as a serial singularity. The “serial singularity” captures the paradox whereby an antiquity is narrated and marketed as a one-of-a-kind treasure with unique historic and cultural qualities when it fact it is, statistically, likely to be a fairly mundane object of a class mass-produced in the ancient past. The final part of the paper connects this conceptual intervention with policy pragmatics. Market-oriented solutions to looting and trafficking in antiquities are more likely to succeed with better data and a clearer understanding of how suppliers and marketers understand and evaluate artifacts as commodities. Empirical data draw from the authors’ ethnographic fieldwork and extensive archival research in Italy, and from a unique data set of market observations connected with the ongoing Syrian conflict.