When President Emmanuel Macron returned 23 Syrian artifacts in July, it was more than a diplomatic gesture. It was a recognition that antiquities had become symbols of Syria’s reconstruction and of the country’s attempt to reclaim a national identity after more than 13 years of war.
“As Syrian citizens, we feel that trust has been restored between the public and a state that is protecting and actively searching for its antiquities,” said Masaoud Badawi, Syria’s director general of Antiquities and Museums, welcoming France’s return of the artifacts. Syria’s transitional government appears to understand that too. Its campaign against antiquities smuggling has already led to the recovery of around 1,000 artifacts returned to the Aleppo Directorate of Antiquities and Museums. Yet these objects are more than relics of the past. Throughout the conflict, they became part of its wartime economy. They were bought, sold and smuggled out of Syria before finding their way into the international antiquities market.
During the Syrian conflict, as the Assad regime, Islamic State (IS), and the rebels fought, hiding behind the Corinthian pillars for cover, I came to realize that Syrian antiquities had become another currency of war. They provided a source of income for armed groups and smugglers alike. In 2012, a cash-strapped FSA commander in Latakia offered me ancient Syrian figurines of unknown provenance. On another occasion, I sat with an Orthodox Jew in Antwerp who was trying to acquire Torah scrolls, manuscripts and other Jewish antiquities from Aleppo. His aim was to preserve a disappearing heritage; the rebels’ was to keep their men fed and warm.
The world’s attention focused on IS’s spectacular destruction of Palmyra and Mosul, culminating in the execution of Syria’s chief archaeologist, Khaled al-Asaad, whose body was strung up in Palmyra’s main square after he refused to reveal the location of hidden artifacts in 2015. But IS was not alone in damaging Syria’s heritage. Earlier this year I visited the two-thousand-year-old synagogue in Jobar, a suburb of Damascus, now a shattered shell after Assad pounded the area from the air in 2014. Many people assumed such destruction subsided as the front lines froze. However, a new study by Dartmouth College suggests the opposite. Examining nearly 200 archaeological sites across Syria, it found that looting has become more widespread in the years since the conflict stagnated in 2016, revealing a quieter but more extensive phase of destruction driven by economic hardship, mechanized earthmoving and years of weak protection. The findings challenge assumptions about how wars devastate cultural heritage and raise urgent questions about what remains to be preserved as Syria rebuilds.
The paper examines damage that occurred since 2016, drawing on thousands of satellite images from 200 heritage sites across Syria. It found that looting in recent years is “now more widespread than at any point during the Syrian conflict.” Some 59% of affected sites were looted between 2017 and 2025, compared with 13% during the 2011–2016 period. This surge may be due to the desperate circumstances many Syrians find themselves in, but also to the rise of industrial-scale excavation, with bulldozers stripping archaeological sites in search of artifacts.
Syria’s archaeological landscape is especially vulnerable for those sorts of activities, not only due to its rich history but also due to the way ancient humans built cities and towns in the Middle East. Historically, mudbrick houses tended to be built on top of previous ones. Professor Jesse Casana, who led the Dartmouth College project, says it has happened for “thousands of years resulting in mounds hundred feet tall which are just full of archaeology.”
These mounds are reminiscent of lasagna, where one could scrape off one layer, search the layer for artifacts, and then scrape off another layer and repeat the process. This layered archaeology makes Syria particularly vulnerable for what the paper calls, “mechanized looting” instead of the painstaking “traditional” looting where individuals dig small pits in search of artifacts. “Mechanized looting” is the use of heavy machinery that removes large sections of archaeological sites in search of saleable objects. The researchers also documented extensive damage due to military fortifications, trench systems and earthworks, as well as the construction of shelters for displaced civilians.
It is therefore not surprising that some of the country’s most important archaeological sites have suffered catastrophic damage in the process. The Hellenistic ruins of Apamea are pockmarked with looting holes; the Bronze Age site of Mari, near the Iraqi border, has also suffered. Palmyra, in eastern Syria, experienced extensive looting, while the Hittite temple of Ain Dara was severely damaged by airstrikes, followed by the excavation of military trenches and widespread bulldozing.
In particular, the study notes that in areas occupied by the Turkish military and their allied militias in the Afrin valley and around Kobane in late 2018, archaeological sites suffered immense damage “evidently undertaken in coordination with or under the protection of military forces.” According to Casana, such wanton destruction could constitute a “war crime.”
The paper calls on international agencies and foreign governments to help professionals involved in preserving the country’s heritage, saying that Syria’s “irreplaceable cultural heritage should be part of the rebuilding process.” It concludes that safeguarding the country’s cultural heritage will eventually become a “source of national pride” and an “important economic resource for future generations.”
There are signs that this is already happening, and it is not simply a top-down effort. Many Syrians appear increasingly conscious of the value of their country’s heritage. In late 2025, residents of Idlib voluntarily handed over more than 1,400 archaeological objects, many dating to the ancient kingdoms of Ebla and Mari, to the Directorate of Antiquities. It was a small but telling indication that artifacts once traded as commodities of war are again being seen as part of Syria’s shared inheritance. Perhaps these relics of stone and bronze could help put the country back together again.
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