Looters continue to pillage Afghanistan ’s rich archaeological heritage

Looting of archaeological sites in Afghanistan is continuing, despite vows by the Taliban government to protect the nation’s cultural treasures, a recent analysis finds. Using artificial intelligence (AI) to help comb through a trove of satellite images, researchers at the University of Chicago’s (UC’s) Center for Cultural Heritage Preservation found that looters are still actively pillaging at least 3 dozen sites that had been targeted before the Taliban came to power in August 2021. Researchers say the finding suggests the Taliban government, like its predecessor, is having difficulty cracking down on local leaders who profit from selling artifacts. “Since coming to power, the Taliban has taken some steps” to protect archaeological sites and prevent smuggling, says Noor Agha Noori, former director of the Archaeology Institute of Afghanistan who is now a Ph.D. student at the Free University of Berlin. But, “The borders remain porous, and there are no clear policies or laws and regulations to punish those violating Afghanistan’s cultural heritage,” he says. The recent analysis of looting in Afghanistan grew out of the Afghan Heritage Mapping Partnership , a U.S. government–funded effort to identify archaeological sites across the nation. When the project began in 2015, previous efforts had documented some 5000 sites, including settlements dating back to the Achaemenid Empire some 2500 years ago and l...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news