Social Media Drives Cultural Property Theft
Conflict zones are especially vulnerable.
Social media has facilitated explosive growth in the illegal antiquities trade.
Facebook hosts more than 120 Groups where antiquities are openly trafficked.
Ancient items traded include mosaics, mummies, coins and architectural elements.
Some looters claim to use the money they make trading relics to fund violent extremism.
ACCO Member the ATHAR Project is tracking 95 Arabic-language Facebook Groups developed for antiquities trafficking that are highly interconnected and have a global reach.
Group members include average citizens, middlemen, and violent extremists. Violent extremists currently include individuals associated with Syrian-based groups like Hay’at Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), Hurras Al-Din, the Zinki Brigade and other non-Syrian based Al-Qaeda or Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) affiliates.
Some traffickers offer large artifacts, including mosaics, architectural elements, and Pharaonic coffins, while still in situ, using social media to find buyers before they put in the effort to remove the objects.
Resurrecting a Grisly Tradition
The Online Trade in Human Remains
Tech algorithms have facilitated explosive growth in a once-obscure market for human remains, including bones, organs, jarred fetuses, and other items made from or incorporating body parts.
Many objects are marketed as coming from archaeological sites, graveyards, and museum collections.
The human remains trade perpetuates a fundamental disrespect for the dead and resurrects Colonial-era collecting practices of indigenous and other marginalized populations.
This morbid habit now fuels global crime
Specimens stolen from labs and medical schools have turned up for sale on Instagram.
Multiple churches in Europe and the UK have had bones robbed from their medieval crypts.
Online sales of dead body parts have literally resurrected grave robbing in India and Bangladesh.
ACCO Digital Archeologists Dr. Damien Huffer and Dr. Shawn Graham
Track the Online Trade in Human Remains
“Social media has transformed what was a fringe practice into a viable, global free for all.”
—Dr. Damien Huffer, pictured at an archeological dig in Virginia
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