It Is Not against the Law, if No-One Can See You: Online Social Organisation of Artefact-Hunting in Former Yugoslavia

Samuel Andrew Hardy

doi:10.5334/jcaa.76

Abstract

This study uses open-source intelligence to analyse the illicit excavation and illicit trafficking of archaeological goods (and forgeries) across the Balkan-Eastern Mediterranean region(s) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia. It draws on texts and images that have been published by hundreds of artefact-hunters across tens of online communities and other online platforms. These include online forums; social networks, such as Facebook and Instagram; social media, such as Pinterest and YouTube; generic trading platforms, such as eBay, Etsy and olx.ba; and specialist trading platforms, such as VCoins. It shows how artefact-hunters target sites, features and objects; reveal the objects that are collectible and/or marketable; acquire equipment; form patron-client relationships, peer-to-peer partnerships and other cooperative groups; engage in transnational activity; crowdsource techniques for smuggling; crowdsource ways to avoid being caught or punished; and respond to policing. Often, they give identifying details or leave an electronic paper trail that enables their identification. Such information also reveals the destructiveness of processes of extraction and consumption; the economics of the low-end market in cultural goods from poor countries; the gender dimension in cultural property crime and cyber-enabled crime; and the interaction between political allegiance and criminal activity. Thereby, this study shows how netnography and social network analysis can support intelligence-led policing.

Highlights

As elsewhere in the Balkan-Eastern Mediterranean region(s) (Novinite 2008; Hardy 2020b), so in former Yugoslavia, archaeologists are threatened by looters and there have been ‘physical clashes’ between looters and archaeologists
Police officers are notorious as collectors of antiquities and protectors of ‘nedodirljivi [untouchable]’ dealers and looters
Following a series of analyses of open-source research methodology (Hardy 2017b; Hardy 2018) and opensource evidence for cultural property crime in Western Europe (Hardy 2017a), Eastern Europe (Hardy 2016), South Asia (Hardy 2019b), South-East Asia (Hardy 2020a) and East Asia (Hardy 2019a), this study sought to amass data that related to South-Eastern Europe

Summary

Introduction

As elsewhere in the Balkan-Eastern Mediterranean region(s) (Novinite 2008; Hardy 2020b), so in former Yugoslavia, archaeologists are threatened by looters and there have been ‘physical clashes’ between looters and archaeologists (according to Filipović and Vasić 2017: 336). As elsewhere in the region (Hardy 2021b), ‘organizirane skupine [organised [crime] groups]’ (Sedej 1977: 133), who handle drugs and arms (according to Živković and Todović 1995, paraphrased by Radović, Samardžić and Đurđević 2016: 52), have been involved in cultural property crime in former Yugoslavia for decades Their involvement has increased, as other countries have increased regulation of the supply chain (Sedej 1977: 134), while the region has endured war, economic underdevelopment, the ‘tranzicije [transition]’ towards democracy and the ‘globalizacije [globalisation]’ of the economy (Korać and Amidžić 2014: 134). International police officers in Kosovo (as reported by Lama 2005) and peacekeepers in North Macedonia (as reported by Deliso 2005b) have engaged in looting yet escaped punishment

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Conclusion