you
thank you all
so my work initially started with using
satellite imagery to map ancient
landscapes I’ve been working in Egypt
for 15 years and I have to say that I
never expected to be doing looting
mapping but I got started almost almost
at the beginning of my PhD work the site
you see in the lower left hand corner
that’s called tell to Billa it’s located
in the northeast Egyptian Delta about
two hours to the northeast of Cairo it’s
a multi period archaeological site dates
to primarily to the late period so
roughly 600 BC and when the Napoleonic
expedition visited Egypt in the 1800s
the site was fairly large over 1,000 by
1,000 meters in size over time due to
agricultural growth and encroachment the
site has been decreasing and decreasing
in size and you can actually see just
how much the site has shrunk in the last
200 years this is one site in Egypt and
we’ll look at the number of square
meters it’s shrunk we’ve been able to
track this using old maps old spy
photographs from the 1960s Declassified
an information aerial photographs as
well as satellite imagery and as I
continued with my thesis research I
realized that this was not just the
story at Tel tabouleh
this is the story of many if not all of
Egypt’s archaeological sites and this is
not just the story of Egypt this is
something that’s going on all over the
world of course my work focuses in Egypt
but we’re beginning to do work in other
countries and this is a global problem
so that’s the takeaway I want you to
have today is that that this is
something that is going on all over the
world and we now have the technology
tools and resources to map
the problem and begin to strategize
about ways of stopping it because ours
is truly the last generation that will
be able to do something about it before
these sites are gone forever now we
think of Egypt of course we always think
of Egypt’s greatest discovery that of
the tomb of King Tut but what’s
interesting and no one really knows this
is that the tomb of King Tut was not
totally intact it had actually been
looted in antiquity so that’s something
else that we need to bring up that a lot
of looting that goes on on
archaeological sites this is not a
modern phenomenon this is something
that’s been going on this is a very very
human trait and when Howard Carter
opened King Tut’s tomb and looked at the
vessels that contained unguent so
ancient perfumes and creams there were
actually finger marks you have to think
if you’re going to take something from
King Tut’s tomb when you walk into the
market with a gold scarab with King
Tut’s name on it people are going to
wonder where it came from versus a
handful of an unguent that you can
easily sell on so I’m just bringing that
up as an example to show that there’s a
great history of this going on in Egypt
so in January of 2011 my career changed
quite a bit
following the Egyptian revolution we
started hearing rumors of archaeological
sites being looted we didn’t know what
was rumor and what was truth and of
course everyone here knows about the
Cairo Museum with objects being taken
the Egyptian government has done an
incredible job in tracking these objects
down they’ve they’ve managed to find
many of the objects that were taken and
they’re actually going on display at the
Cairo Museum and with support from
National Geographic as well as digital
globe they’re very large provider of
high-resolution satellite data we were
able to get a hold of satellite images
showing that there was looting going on
so the question that we started asking
is what’s the scale where is it
happening and why is it happening
and as I’ve been doing this research
I’ve learned this is not a
straightforward black or white issue
what would we do if we were villagers
and times were hard what would we do to
feed our families so this is an issue
that’s tied in very deeply with economic
development with local opportunities for
individuals education we can’t really
point the finger at any one individual
or any one entity this is something that
is much more complicated than that
my work started off being focused on two
main sites one area being a pyramid
fields just south of Cairo and an area
called El list which is about two hours
south of Cairo to verne well-known zone
for the Middle Kingdom roughly 1800 BC
but since then it’s expanded I’ll talk
more about that shortly and here you see
before-and-after imagery so we have to
be very careful when we’re doing this
mapping and recognizing when looting has
happened when it has taken place and
acknowledging that a lot of looting
that’s gone on in Egypt and elsewhere of
course has been going on for a long time
fortunately I had really good satellite
imagery coverage for most of the main
areas of Egypt and also there’s there’s
wonderful open-source online access to
satellite data with resources like
Google Earth and NASA’s visible Earth
program this data is available to
everyone all over the world but you can
see comparing this image this is from
south aboo-seer just a little bit south
of Cairo this is an image from 2009 the
image on the right is an image from
February 15 2011 and you can see there
are about 220 looting pits it’s pretty
easy to see it you see a black rectangle
surrounded by a doughnut of Earth and we
go in we actually use it use a tool draw
the number of looting pits you can
actually see in the upper right hand
corner bulldozing marks which which is
again a sign of more organized activity
so this is another thing
tracking who is doing the looting if the
gangs of youths going in digging up a
few looting pits trying to find treasure
versus organized criminal activity and
what we’re seeing in Egypt and indeed in
many parts of the world is that this
blue ting is changing it is a global
problem and it is something that has
deep connections with global criminal
activities so with the support of of
Deborah at the capital archaeological
Institute and the International
Coalition for the protection of Egyptian
antiquities at the very kind invitation
of egypt’s foreign ministry in May of
2011 we went to Egypt to meet with a
number of officials and also to visit
some of these looting pits on the ground
a really critical part of satellite
imagery of course is ground truthing you
go and you examine for yourself to see
is what the satellite imagery is showing
what you think it is what people might
not know is the incredible deep
knowledge that local people in Egypt
have of their history and many
individuals as it turns out who were
involved with the looting or at least we
think we’re involved with the looting
had experience with archaeological
excavations they knew where to look for
tombs you can see us standing in front
of it that’s definitely my my unhappy
face I prefer to be digging and you can
see it’s fairly deep they know exactly
where to go and so the big question then
is were these tombs intact how can we
really know if when we get there they’re
empty where you can see where I’m
standing on the left hand side you can
see bits of human bone little bits from
sarcophagi broken pottery by the way you
can’t see it from from from this picture
but they had fresh breaks so I think
many of these tombs that have been
looted on actually were partially –
almost fully intact so this gets at at a
really crucial issue for mapping
archaeological site looting all over the
world the most important thing that we
need is an inventory not just of the
objects which is absolutely crucial but
in an inventory of the number of
archaeological sites in that
and what may be shocking to hear is that
there is no single country in the entire
world that has a comprehensive database
of every single known archaeological
site this is the 21st century this this
so information should be open it should
be online and we simply don’t have this
information so I want to show you a
little bit about how much things have
changed in the last three years at one
particular site and then talk to you
about what we’re doing about this right
now and how we’re hoping that this work
will change public perceptions and and
hopefully in working in conjunction with
the Egyptian government begin to protect
some of these sites that are under
threat this is an image of a very well
known archaeological zone – or their
series of Middle Kingdom pyramids again
these are from roughly 1800 BC the top
image is from 2009 you can see the tip
of a pyramid just the black edge just to
the south of the image you see what look
like looting pit those aren’t those were
actually exposed to muffs and things
look okay you don’t see much looting
flash ahead to May of 2011 we’re
starting to see some looting pits not
maybe maybe 15 or 20 not too bad 2012
maybe 100 to 150 pits but 2013 things
start getting really bad we see about
450 to 500 looting pits and even more
concerning it’s a significant extension
of the cemetery this is an illegal
cemetery and this is a big problem in
Egypt into many parts of the world there
simply aren’t enough places for the
Egyptians to bury their dead and so
there’s a lot of illegal encroachment on
archaeological sites what do we do about
this and how do we begin to map this
problem with generous funding from
National Geographic we are in the midst
of the first comprehensive looting
mapping project for an entire country
we’re using satellite imagery that’s
openly available and online using Google
Earth as well as additional sources and
we’re going back to
years in time from 2002 to the present
and we’re looking at every known
archaeological site in Egypt plus many
thousands of others that I’ve been able
to find through my research and looking
at the history of site looting all over
Egypt and what’s fascinating right now
if you don’t know the time period of a
looted site
you simply can’t begin to think about
what objects might be looted from it and
you can’t you can’t inform Interpol in
the Carabinieri and u.s. customs and
international authorities as to what
might be taken what we do know from all
of these thousands of known sites is
their time period so we can go to
international entities and say we have
57 sites from 600 BC that have extensive
site looting here is a typical tomb
group from the late period you know it
would have a stone sarcophagus here the
types of pottery that come from that
particular site here are the shop tees
here’s the here other objects and
artifacts from that time period so we
can begin from space even though we
can’t zoom in and see a single pot based
on the time period known from that site
we can begin to come up with inventories
for international authorities to look
for what about more broadly well with
generous funding from the National
Science Foundation I will be working
directly with the Egyptian Ministry of
Antiquities to set up training programs
for young Egyptians these are the men
and the women that are really the true
unsung culture heroes of post and
pre-revolution Egypt there’s a gentleman
named Omar Farouk was a very dear friend
of mine he’s our head fixer in Luxor
he’s been his family’s been doing
archaeological work in Egypt for 150
years this great grandfather was
Petrie’s rice so the the chief boss
egyptian who worked with with with
Petrie one of the great the grandfather
of Egyptian archaeology and Omer and a
group of young men just after the
Revolution started were under gunfire an
attack
at karnak temple in luxor and they
actually managed to fight off a gang of
looters risking their own lives to
protect this this site there are so many
dozens of stores like that all over
egypt so we’re hoping through
educational initiatives to work with
young Egyptian men and women to provide
them tools and resources like Google
Earth and other resources for them to be
able to take part in protecting their
sites so more broadly what do we do
we’re hoping that this is just the first
step what we want to do is we want to
create crowdsourcing opportunities for
the world
so it’s not just me and my and my
students doing this work in my lab but
actually students and individuals from
all over the world can help in the look
in the search for for looting everywhere
we also want to emphasize just how
important it is for countries all over
the world to have good site inventories
because if you don’t know where your
sites are how in the world can you begin
to protect them so well I would love to
get back to my search for settlements
and pyramids this is this is very
important for me and certainly something
that I know I will be devoting the rest
of my life to doing and with new
technologies and new advancements on
this is something that simply would not
have been possible 15 to 20 years ago so
I think the urgency is here it’s it’s
it’s time for our generation to do
something about this because as we’ve
been able to map you know every day
we’re mapping thousands of looting pits
we’re seeing an over 1000% increase in
site looting since the start of the
Revolution and billions of dollars in
antiquities that we’ve estimated to date
that have been stolen and if we think
this is Egypt alone and you begin to
scale that all over the world I give a
number right now off the top of my head
but it would be very large so this is a
global issue this is then it’s and the
time is now to do something about it
thank you very much
you
you
thank you all
so my work initially started with using
satellite imagery to map ancient
landscapes I’ve been working in Egypt
for 15 years and I have to say that I
never expected to be doing looting
mapping but I got started almost almost
at the beginning of my PhD work the site
you see in the lower left hand corner
that’s called tell to Billa it’s located
in the northeast Egyptian Delta about
two hours to the northeast of Cairo it’s
a multi period archaeological site dates
to primarily to the late period so
roughly 600 BC and when the Napoleonic
expedition visited Egypt in the 1800s
the site was fairly large over 1,000 by
1,000 meters in size over time due to
agricultural growth and encroachment the
site has been decreasing and decreasing
in size and you can actually see just
how much the site has shrunk in the last
200 years this is one site in Egypt and
we’ll look at the number of square
meters it’s shrunk we’ve been able to
track this using old maps old spy
photographs from the 1960s Declassified
an information aerial photographs as
well as satellite imagery and as I
continued with my thesis research I
realized that this was not just the
story at Tel tabouleh
this is the story of many if not all of
Egypt’s archaeological sites and this is
not just the story of Egypt this is
something that’s going on all over the
world of course my work focuses in Egypt
but we’re beginning to do work in other
countries and this is a global problem
so that’s the takeaway I want you to
have today is that that this is
something that is going on all over the
world and we now have the technology
tools and resources to map
the problem and begin to strategize
about ways of stopping it because ours
is truly the last generation that will
be able to do something about it before
these sites are gone forever now we
think of Egypt of course we always think
of Egypt’s greatest discovery that of
the tomb of King Tut but what’s
interesting and no one really knows this
is that the tomb of King Tut was not
totally intact it had actually been
looted in antiquity so that’s something
else that we need to bring up that a lot
of looting that goes on on
archaeological sites this is not a
modern phenomenon this is something
that’s been going on this is a very very
human trait and when Howard Carter
opened King Tut’s tomb and looked at the
vessels that contained unguent so
ancient perfumes and creams there were
actually finger marks you have to think
if you’re going to take something from
King Tut’s tomb when you walk into the
market with a gold scarab with King
Tut’s name on it people are going to
wonder where it came from versus a
handful of an unguent that you can
easily sell on so I’m just bringing that
up as an example to show that there’s a
great history of this going on in Egypt
so in January of 2011 my career changed
quite a bit
following the Egyptian revolution we
started hearing rumors of archaeological
sites being looted we didn’t know what
was rumor and what was truth and of
course everyone here knows about the
Cairo Museum with objects being taken
the Egyptian government has done an
incredible job in tracking these objects
down they’ve they’ve managed to find
many of the objects that were taken and
they’re actually going on display at the
Cairo Museum and with support from
National Geographic as well as digital
globe they’re very large provider of
high-resolution satellite data we were
able to get a hold of satellite images
showing that there was looting going on
so the question that we started asking
is what’s the scale where is it
happening and why is it happening
and as I’ve been doing this research
I’ve learned this is not a
straightforward black or white issue
what would we do if we were villagers
and times were hard what would we do to
feed our families so this is an issue
that’s tied in very deeply with economic
development with local opportunities for
individuals education we can’t really
point the finger at any one individual
or any one entity this is something that
is much more complicated than that
my work started off being focused on two
main sites one area being a pyramid
fields just south of Cairo and an area
called El list which is about two hours
south of Cairo to verne well-known zone
for the Middle Kingdom roughly 1800 BC
but since then it’s expanded I’ll talk
more about that shortly and here you see
before-and-after imagery so we have to
be very careful when we’re doing this
mapping and recognizing when looting has
happened when it has taken place and
acknowledging that a lot of looting
that’s gone on in Egypt and elsewhere of
course has been going on for a long time
fortunately I had really good satellite
imagery coverage for most of the main
areas of Egypt and also there’s there’s
wonderful open-source online access to
satellite data with resources like
Google Earth and NASA’s visible Earth
program this data is available to
everyone all over the world but you can
see comparing this image this is from
south aboo-seer just a little bit south
of Cairo this is an image from 2009 the
image on the right is an image from
February 15 2011 and you can see there
are about 220 looting pits it’s pretty
easy to see it you see a black rectangle
surrounded by a doughnut of Earth and we
go in we actually use it use a tool draw
the number of looting pits you can
actually see in the upper right hand
corner bulldozing marks which which is
again a sign of more organized activity
so this is another thing
tracking who is doing the looting if the
gangs of youths going in digging up a
few looting pits trying to find treasure
versus organized criminal activity and
what we’re seeing in Egypt and indeed in
many parts of the world is that this
blue ting is changing it is a global
problem and it is something that has
deep connections with global criminal
activities so with the support of of
Deborah at the capital archaeological
Institute and the International
Coalition for the protection of Egyptian
antiquities at the very kind invitation
of egypt’s foreign ministry in May of
2011 we went to Egypt to meet with a
number of officials and also to visit
some of these looting pits on the ground
a really critical part of satellite
imagery of course is ground truthing you
go and you examine for yourself to see
is what the satellite imagery is showing
what you think it is what people might
not know is the incredible deep
knowledge that local people in Egypt
have of their history and many
individuals as it turns out who were
involved with the looting or at least we
think we’re involved with the looting
had experience with archaeological
excavations they knew where to look for
tombs you can see us standing in front
of it that’s definitely my my unhappy
face I prefer to be digging and you can
see it’s fairly deep they know exactly
where to go and so the big question then
is were these tombs intact how can we
really know if when we get there they’re
empty where you can see where I’m
standing on the left hand side you can
see bits of human bone little bits from
sarcophagi broken pottery by the way you
can’t see it from from from this picture
but they had fresh breaks so I think
many of these tombs that have been
looted on actually were partially –
almost fully intact so this gets at at a
really crucial issue for mapping
archaeological site looting all over the
world the most important thing that we
need is an inventory not just of the
objects which is absolutely crucial but
in an inventory of the number of
archaeological sites in that
and what may be shocking to hear is that
there is no single country in the entire
world that has a comprehensive database
of every single known archaeological
site this is the 21st century this this
so information should be open it should
be online and we simply don’t have this
information so I want to show you a
little bit about how much things have
changed in the last three years at one
particular site and then talk to you
about what we’re doing about this right
now and how we’re hoping that this work
will change public perceptions and and
hopefully in working in conjunction with
the Egyptian government begin to protect
some of these sites that are under
threat this is an image of a very well
known archaeological zone – or their
series of Middle Kingdom pyramids again
these are from roughly 1800 BC the top
image is from 2009 you can see the tip
of a pyramid just the black edge just to
the south of the image you see what look
like looting pit those aren’t those were
actually exposed to muffs and things
look okay you don’t see much looting
flash ahead to May of 2011 we’re
starting to see some looting pits not
maybe maybe 15 or 20 not too bad 2012
maybe 100 to 150 pits but 2013 things
start getting really bad we see about
450 to 500 looting pits and even more
concerning it’s a significant extension
of the cemetery this is an illegal
cemetery and this is a big problem in
Egypt into many parts of the world there
simply aren’t enough places for the
Egyptians to bury their dead and so
there’s a lot of illegal encroachment on
archaeological sites what do we do about
this and how do we begin to map this
problem with generous funding from
National Geographic we are in the midst
of the first comprehensive looting
mapping project for an entire country
we’re using satellite imagery that’s
openly available and online using Google
Earth as well as additional sources and
we’re going back to
years in time from 2002 to the present
and we’re looking at every known
archaeological site in Egypt plus many
thousands of others that I’ve been able
to find through my research and looking
at the history of site looting all over
Egypt and what’s fascinating right now
if you don’t know the time period of a
looted site
you simply can’t begin to think about
what objects might be looted from it and
you can’t you can’t inform Interpol in
the Carabinieri and u.s. customs and
international authorities as to what
might be taken what we do know from all
of these thousands of known sites is
their time period so we can go to
international entities and say we have
57 sites from 600 BC that have extensive
site looting here is a typical tomb
group from the late period you know it
would have a stone sarcophagus here the
types of pottery that come from that
particular site here are the shop tees
here’s the here other objects and
artifacts from that time period so we
can begin from space even though we
can’t zoom in and see a single pot based
on the time period known from that site
we can begin to come up with inventories
for international authorities to look
for what about more broadly well with
generous funding from the National
Science Foundation I will be working
directly with the Egyptian Ministry of
Antiquities to set up training programs
for young Egyptians these are the men
and the women that are really the true
unsung culture heroes of post and
pre-revolution Egypt there’s a gentleman
named Omar Farouk was a very dear friend
of mine he’s our head fixer in Luxor
he’s been his family’s been doing
archaeological work in Egypt for 150
years this great grandfather was
Petrie’s rice so the the chief boss
egyptian who worked with with with
Petrie one of the great the grandfather
of Egyptian archaeology and Omer and a
group of young men just after the
Revolution started were under gunfire an
attack
at karnak temple in luxor and they
actually managed to fight off a gang of
looters risking their own lives to
protect this this site there are so many
dozens of stores like that all over
egypt so we’re hoping through
educational initiatives to work with
young Egyptian men and women to provide
them tools and resources like Google
Earth and other resources for them to be
able to take part in protecting their
sites so more broadly what do we do
we’re hoping that this is just the first
step what we want to do is we want to
create crowdsourcing opportunities for
the world
so it’s not just me and my and my
students doing this work in my lab but
actually students and individuals from
all over the world can help in the look
in the search for for looting everywhere
we also want to emphasize just how
important it is for countries all over
the world to have good site inventories
because if you don’t know where your
sites are how in the world can you begin
to protect them so well I would love to
get back to my search for settlements
and pyramids this is this is very
important for me and certainly something
that I know I will be devoting the rest
of my life to doing and with new
technologies and new advancements on
this is something that simply would not
have been possible 15 to 20 years ago so
I think the urgency is here it’s it’s
it’s time for our generation to do
something about this because as we’ve
been able to map you know every day
we’re mapping thousands of looting pits
we’re seeing an over 1000% increase in
site looting since the start of the
Revolution and billions of dollars in
antiquities that we’ve estimated to date
that have been stolen and if we think
this is Egypt alone and you begin to
scale that all over the world I give a
number right now off the top of my head
but it would be very large so this is a
global issue this is then it’s and the
time is now to do something about it
thank you very much
you
you
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