Lunch Club Series | Lessons Learned? Looting, Loss, and Landscape at Early Bronze Age sites in Jordan

Lunch Club provides affiliates of the Stanford Archaeology Center with a community-oriented forum for engagement with current issues in archaeology. On Oct 14, 2026,  we will host Dr.Morag M. Kersel  from DePaul University. 

Abstract:

Like many countries, Jordan has a looting problem driven by demand and rooted in the legal and illegal trade in cultural material. Tourists, locals, and museums desire Jordanian artifacts, often without questioning their market appearance. Despite the efforts of local communities, Ministries of Culture, Departments of Antiquities, and cultural heritage NGOs, archaeological landscapes are destroyed, sites are pillaged, and local communities are disenfranchised from their heritage. An integrated approach to assessing the issue of looting includes archaeological evidence, archival documents, ethnographic interviews, and pedestrian and aerial surveys using unpiloted aerial vehicles (drones), provides valuable lessons regarding the consequences of archaeological site looting at a series of Early Bronze Age sites (3600–2000 BCE) along the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan.