Trafficking Culture

Mackenzie, Simon; Brodie, Neil; Yates, Donna; Tsirogiannis, Christos

doi:10.4324/9781315532219

Cited by 29 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…With a refined model and method, what might we see if we could begin to quantify the numbers of individual humans bought and sold in this trade, and where they are coming from? Would we see patterns similar to what are observed in the larger antiquities trades, of source and destination countries, as multi-year systematic research has revealed (Mackenzie et al 2020)? Or would it be similar to the patterns of opportunistic looting documented for Facebook (Al-Azm & Paul 2019)?…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 57%

Towards a Method for Discerning Sources of Supply within the Human Remains Trade via Patterns of Visual Dissimilarity and Computer Vision

Graham

Lane

Huffer

et al. 2020

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology

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While traders of human remains on Instagram will give some indication, their best estimate, or repeat hearsay, regarding the geographic origin or provenance of the remains, how can we assess the veracity of these claims when we cannot physically examine the remains? A novel image analysis using convolutional neural networks in a one-shot learning architecture with a triplet loss function is used to develop a range of 'distances' to known 'reference' images for a group of skulls with known provenances and a group of images of skulls from social media posts. Comparing the two groups enables us to predict a broad geographic 'ancestry' for any given skull depicted, using a mixture discriminant analysis, as well as a machine-learning model, on the image dissimilarity scores. It thus seems possible to assign, in broad strokes, that a particular skull has a particular geographic ancestry.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 57%

Towards a Method for Discerning Sources of Supply within the Human Remains Trade via Patterns of Visual Dissimilarity and Computer Vision

Graham

Lane

Huffer

et al. 2020

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology

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“…62 Rasmussen 2014. phaned" antiquities and orchids: they care for them, conserve them and protect them for the good of all humanity. 63 Controversies and considerations regarding "safe deposits" and evacuation of objects from and within Afghanistan in the mid-1990s to early 2000s have been laid out by cultural property lawyer and former Secretary of the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage, Juliette van Krieken-Pieters, using the Schøyen case as an example of the potential risks and problems associated with the "safe-haven" concept:…”

Section: Demand and Consumption Of Manuscripts: Collectors Scholars And Buddhistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tales of saviours and iconoclasts. On the provenance of "the Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism"

Rasmussen

Justnes

2021

Acta

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Academic research on newly discovered ancient Buddhist manuscripts is largely based on objects that come from the antiquities market and to a much lesser degree on objects coming from documented and controlled archaeological excavations. Despite their being unprovenanced, collectors and scholars often present such objects with narratives mimicking provenance. The use of the label "Dead Sea Scrolls" attached to archaeological material without connections to Judaism or early Christianity is a prevalent example of this scholarly praxis. In this article, we deconstruct provenance narratives associated with the undocumented Buddhist manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection and discuss their implications for research on these manuscripts and beyond. On cover:ANNIBALE CARRACCI (BOLOGNA 1560 - ROME 1609), An Allegory of Truth and Time c. 1584-1585.Oil on canvas | 130,0 x 169,6 cm. (support, canvas/panel/str external) | RCIN 404770Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021.

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“…These individuals have been termed "Janus figures" because like the two-faced Roman god of transitions, they see both sides of the antiquities smuggling chain. 12 They know what they receive is looted, often with exact details of the theft, and they know that the pieces will be moved into the hands of the moneyed elite. In many cases, these "Janus figures" exist in both worlds, hobnobbing with art world and underworld figures alike.…”

Section: Transitmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Global Traffic in Looted Cultural Objects

Yates¹

2017

Preprint

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The looting, trafficking, and illicit sale of cultural objects is a form of transnational crime with significant social and legal dimensions that call into question competing ideas of ownership and value, as well as how we define organized crime, white collar crime, and crimes of the powerful. The looting of cultural objects from archaeological and heritage sites is inherently destructive and is almost always illegal. However, through a complex smuggling chain which depends on lack of import/export regulation standardization in transit and opaque business practices at market, stolen cultural objects are able to be passed onto the international market in large quantities and at little risk to market actors.

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Trafficking Culture

Cited by 29 publications

References 0 publications

Towards a Method for Discerning Sources of Supply within the Human Remains Trade via Patterns of Visual Dissimilarity and Computer Vision

Towards a Method for Discerning Sources of Supply within the Human Remains Trade via Patterns of Visual Dissimilarity and Computer Vision

Tales of saviours and iconoclasts. On the provenance of "the Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism"

The Global Traffic in Looted Cultural Objects

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