Power, greed, and heritage: A study into the causes and consequences of looting and destruction of archaeological and cultural sites.

Culture is a core aspect of the human experience, an essential part in forming and maintaining personal and communal identities, memories, and a sense of belonging. Cultural heritage is the expression of the relationship between a population and its history, often through the physical remains of the past, but also through intangible aspects as well. However, as heritage is intertwined with the formation and perpetuation of identities and territories, cultural heritage often caught in conflict between hostile groups (Silverman & Ruggles 2007, UNESCO 2003). A devastating example of this is the destruction and looting of Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic’s cultural heritage at the hands of the Islamic State (Da’esh). The destruction and looting of Iraq and Syria’s cultural heritage is is an insurmountable loss not only for the local populations, but also for academia, as sites in these regions possessed some of the earliest examples of writing, mathematics, cities, empires, and other attributes of human societies (Matthews et. al. 2020). <a href="https://medium.com/@000jaydenmorrison/power-greed-and-heritage-a-study-into-the-causes-and-consequences-of-looting-and-destruction-of-b0b7d8cd29c8">Website</a>