Looting - Blog Posts

TED Grant Goes to Archaeologist Who Combats Looting With Satellite Technology

Her laptop brims with satellite images pitted with thousands of black dots, evidence of excavations across Egypt where looters have tunneled in search of mummies, jewelry and other valuables prized by collectors, advertised in auction catalogs and trafficked on eBay, a criminal global black market estimated in the billions of dollars.

“For the first time technology has gotten to the point where we can map looting,” said Sarah H. Parcak, a pioneering “space archaeologist,” founding director of the University of Alabama’s Laboratory for Global Observation in Birmingham and an associate professor there.

Satellite eyes in the sky, which have transformed the worldwide search for buried archaeological treasures, are now being used to spy on the archenemies of cultural preservation: armies of looters who are increasingly pockmarking ancient sites with illicit digs and making off with priceless patrimony. Read more.