In the Footsteps of Looters: Assessing the Damage from the 2011 Looting in the North Cemetery at Abydos

Abstract

The 2013 field season of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University Abydos Expedition, made possible in part by support from ARCE’s Antiquities Endowment Fund, focused on the systematic investigation, documentation, and condition assessment of archaeological features in the North Cemetery at Abydos that had been targeted by looters in early 2011. Although in some instances the damage to buried architecture and other archaeological features was found to be severe, much was determined to be quite superficial. The 2013 looting damage assessment excavations explored features from a wide range of periods, from the Middle Kingdom through Late Antiquity, and revealed significant new information about the history of ancient activity at the site, considerably expanding upon the understandings gained from the work of early researchers more than a century ago.