Dozens of archaeological sites were destroyed by looting during Syria's civil war, which began in 2011 and lasted until 2024.
But, because the last comprehensive analysis was published in 2017, the extent of the more recent damage to cultural heritage sites that occurred since 2016—including at UNESCO World Heritage sites such as Palmyra, long-running archaeological excavations like Mari, and the ancient Roman city of Apamea, which is known for its Great Colonnade—has been largely unknown.
A new Dartmouth study finds that many of Syria's archaeological sites were damaged not just by looting but that, in areas occupied by the Turkish military, sites were systematically bulldozed.
The findings are published in the journal Heritage .
Using satellite imagery from Google Earth and the European Space Agency's Pleiades program, researchers analyzed looting and damage at 200 sites throughout Syria.
They classified the damage into four categories: "traditional looting," where individual holes were excavated on a site; "mechanized looting" by a bulldozer; "militarization," where dugouts and other features were installed; and "construction or encampments," including temporary shelters used by refugees.
The results show that from 2015 to 2025, 59% of the sites were looted, as compared to 2011 to 2016, when 13% of sites were looted.
"The mechanized looting in Syria and its association with military activities is really disconcerting," says lead author Jesse Casana , the W.J. Bryant 1925 Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology . "The military is supposed to protect the people, not destroy archaeological sites, which is a war crime."
In the Middle East, the military will often pick an archaeological site as a location to establish a base, as they tend to be tall mounds.
"Topographically, these sites have been formed progressively by occupation in the same place over time," says Casana.
People build a house out of mud brick, and when it collapses, they build a new one on top of that, he says. "This happens for thousands of years, resulting in mounds that can be more than 100 feet tall, which are just full of archaeology."
With mechanized looting, bulldozers scrape off the entire surface, people look for artifacts, and then the surface is scraped off again. Looters are typically looking for gold, which Casana refers to as "aspirational looting" by people with limited economic means.
"Looting is a whole lot of work, and a lot of destruction, with very little payoff," he says.
Among the cultural sites that the researchers examined was Ain Dara, famous for its Iron Age temple and large lion statues.
Based on the team's earlier analysis, as of 2014, no war-related damage was evident, but the imagery shows that by 2016, a military compound was under construction. In February 2019, mechanized looting was clearly in progress, with bulldozing marks evident in four areas at the site. Ground observations by people living in the area indicated that the Turkish-backed military was likely behind such activities. By January 2022, nearly the entire surface had been combed by a bulldozer except for a stone-built temple complex dating to the 8th- to 12th centuries BCE.
Casana says the new study provides an important roadmap for mitigation efforts.
"Before archaeologists potentially excavate any of these areas, there needs to be some sort of systematic investigation to check out every one of these sites because there will be ancient architecture and artifacts and all kinds of things just falling out of these sites that have been damaged in this way," he says. "We need to know where to prioritize efforts and what those efforts should look like."
The study was part of a cultural heritage initiative of the American Society of Overseas Research, a nonprofit that supports research of the Near East and Mediterranean world, under the Damascus Committee, which Casana chairs.
Additional support for the project was provided by the Dartmouth Initiative for Middle East Exchange, aka DIMEX, a provost-level initiative to deepen partnerships and advance global engagement in the region.
The study was co-authored by Mary Lamberth '27, Jasper Clayton, a postbaccalaureate fellow in archaeology, and Carolin Ferwerda, a research scientist in the Spatial Archaeometry Lab .
