Archaeological sites preserve thousands of years of human history, offering valuable insights into previous civilisations and societies. In Syria, many irreplaceable landmarks were severely threatened during the Civil War, which spanned from March 2011 to December 2024. Conflict, looting, and military occupation caused widespread destruction to sites across Syria and northern Iraq.

Monitoring this damage on the ground has often been impossible because of the dangers of ongoing conflict. Instead, archaeologists have increasingly turned to high-resolution satellite imagery to document changes from space, allowing them to track damage over vast areas and build a clearer picture of the threats facing cultural heritage.

Building on a landmark satellite monitoring project that documented damage between 2011 and 2016, researchers have now revisited archaeological sites across Syria to understand how the situation has changed over the past decade.

The new study, published in the Open Access journal Heritage, analysed almost 200 sites using commercially acquired and publicly available satellite imagery. The findings reveal that while some forms of destruction have declined, others have become increasingly widespread.

Watching history from space

High-resolution satellite imagery has transformed the way archaeologists monitor heritage sites, particularly in regions where fieldwork is dangerous.

Modern commercial satellites can capture images with resolutions of less than one metre, allowing researchers to identify features such as looting pits, military fortifications, bulldozing, construction work, and even refugee camps. By comparing images collected over time, archaeologists can determine not only what damage has occurred, but also when it happened.

For this study, the researchers combined freely available imagery from Google Earth with recently acquired commercial satellite images. Each site was carefully assessed by trained analysts using the same monitoring methods developed during earlier investigations.

Using the same assessment methods as the previous study was particularly important, as it allowed the researchers to directly compare patterns of damage over time and identify how threats to Syria’s archaeological heritage have evolved over the past decade.

A changing pattern of destruction

The renewed analysis paints a more nuanced picture of Syria’s archaeological landscape than the team’s original survey.

During the initial years of the conflict, 2011 to 2016, the researchers documented widespread organised looting alongside extensive military occupation of archaeological sites. The new study shows that while some of these large-scale looting campaigns have largely subsided, other forms of damage have continued to increase. This reflects the changing realities of a country emerging from years of conflict.

The researchers identified four main types of damage affecting archaeological sites today:

• Traditional looting: Small-scale excavation by individuals or small groups searching for artefacts. Visible evidence of these incidents increased from 13.4% of sites in the previous study, to 59% in this one.
• Mechanised looting: The systematic use of bulldozers and heavy machinery to strip away archaeological deposits in search of valuable artifacts. This large-scale destruction emerged as a major new threat in northern Syria after 2019 as sites become occupied by the Turkish military and their allied militias.
• Militarisation: The construction of military compounds, trenches, artillery positions and defensive structures on ancient settlements, where the elevated positions provide strategic advantages.
• Construction and refugee encampments: The Syrian Civil War saw the region witness one of the worst refugee crises in the modern era, with 16 million in the country in need of dire support. Damage was observed caused by temporary settlements and infrastructure associated with this crisis.

One encouraging finding is that the widespread, organised looting campaigns that devastated major archaeological sites during the height of the conflict appear to have largely subsided. Sites such as Mari (Figure 1) and Apamea, which experienced severe looting between 2012 and 2016, showed relatively few new large-scale looting events in recent satellite imagery.

Figure 1: Satellite imagery showing the extent of looting damage to Mari from 2011 through to 2025.

However, this does not mean that Syria’s cultural heritage is any safer. Instead, the nature of the damage has shifted. Small-scale looting has become far more common, while mechanised earthmoving and continued militarisation now pose some of the greatest threats to the country’s archaeological record. Notably, a monumental stone lion statue was stolen from a site at Ain Dara and brought to Turkey.

A new threat: mechanised looting

The study’s most striking finding is the emergence of what the researchers described as mechanised looting.

Unlike traditional looting, which leaves behind scattered excavation pits, mechanised looting involves the systematic bulldozing of entire archaeological sites in search of valuable artefacts. Satelitte imagery revealed extensive digging across numerous sites in northern Syria, particularly in regions occupied between 2019 and 2024.

The researchers documented widespread bulldozing at historically important sites including Ain, Dara, Cyrrhus, and Hammam et Turkman. In several cases, satellite images captured the gradual destruction of archaeological mounds over multiple years, showing how large areas were stripped away by heavy machinery.

This form of destruction is particularly damaging because it removes the upper archaeological layers that protect older remains beneath, permanently destroying valuable historical information before it can be studied.

Prof. Jesse Casana, lead author of the study, commented the following:

Looting is a whole lot of work, and a lot of destruction, with very little payoff.

Conflict leaving lasting scars

Looting was only one of several threats identified by the researchers.

Many archaeological sites were also heavily affected by militarisation, with ancient settlements transformed into strategic military positions. Satellite imagery revealed the construction of bunkers, trenches, artillery positions, and fortified compounds across prominent archaeological mounds, causing extensive disturbance to buried remains.

At the same time, the humanitarian consequences of the conflict have also affected cultural heritage. Some archaeological sites became temporary refugee settlements, where the construction of shelters and associated infrastructure added further damage to already vulnerable landscapes.

The future of heritage monitoring

The study highlights how satellite imagery has become an indispensable tool for protecting cultural heritage during conflict and after conflict.

Although expert interpretation remains essential for identifying the wide variety of damage observed, the authors suggest that advances in artificial intelligence and computer vision could help automate parts of the monitoring process. Automated systems capable of detecting changes in newly acquired satellite images could enable archaeologists to identify damage much more quickly, allowing authorities to respond sooner when sites are threatened.

Prof. Jesse Casana explains how this study provides an important roadmap for future 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, we need to know where to prioritize efforts and what those efforts should look like.

As Syria begins the long process of rebuilding, the researchers argue that protecting its archaeological heritage should form part of wider recovery efforts. Alongside restoring infrastructure and supporting communities, documenting damage and safeguarding historic sites will help preserve an irreplaceable record of human history.

While satellite imagery cannot prevent destruction, it provides an increasingly powerful way to document what has been lost, identify emerging threats, and guide future conservation efforts. By communicating remote sensing with advances in image analysis, researchers are developing new ways to protect cultural heritage, even when those sites remain beyond physical reach.

More studies on conserving cultural heritage and artifact excavation can be found across the Open Access journals Archaeological Studies and Heritage. Alternatively, you can access the full MDPI journal list here.