Lucio Milano

<p>It is a well-known fact that organized crime has developed into an international network that, spanning from the simple 'grave diggers' up to powerful and wealthy white-collar professionals, makes use of money laundering, fraud and forgery. This criminal chain, ultimately, damages and dissipates our cultural identity and, in some cases, even fosters terrorism or civil unrest through the illicit trafficking of cultural property.</p><p>The forms of 'possession' of Cultural Heritage are often blurred; depending on the national legislation of reference, the ownership and trade of historical and artistic assets of value may be legitimate or not. </p><p> Criminals have always exploited these ambiguities and managed to place on the Art and Antiquities market items resulting from destruction or looting of museums, monuments and archaeological areas. Thus, over the years, even the most renowned museum institutions have - more or less consciously - hosted in their showcases cultural objects of illicit origin.</p><p> Looting, thefts, illicit trade, and clandestine exports are phenomena that affect especially those countries rich in historical and artistic assets. That includes Italy, which has seen its cultural heritage plundered over the centuries ending up in public and private collections worldwide.</p><p>This edited volume features ten papers authored by international experts and professionals actively involved in Cultural Heritage protection. Drawing from the experience of the Conference <i>Stolen Heritage</i> (Venice, December 2019), held in the framework of the NETCHER project, the book focuses on illicit trafficking in Cultural Property under a multidisciplinary perspective.</p><p>The articles look at this serious issue and at connected crimes delving into a variety of fields. The essays especially expand on European legislation regulating import, export, trade and restitution of cultural objects; conflict antiquities and cultural herit [...]

In years 1999 and 2002 the Yale University Tell Leilan Project, directed by Prof. Harvey Weiss, focussed the excavation fieldwork on Tell Leilan Acropolis upon the Akkadian occupation of the site. The exposure now comprises 1200 square meters, and has provided new perspectives on Akkadian imperialism and Subarian adaptations. A 600 square meter unit was opened in 1999 in the Northwest Acropolis area, to the east of the 1993 excavation area, which had produced important data on the occupation in periods Leilan IIa (preAkkadian) and Leilan IIb (Akkadian) (Weiss 1997; Weiss et al. 2002; Ristvet _ Weiss 2004). In year 2002 the excavation was further enlarged northwards, 600 square meters were added to the already exposed area, and produced a complex Akkadian administrative centre across the street from an Akkadian administrative building, shedding light on the Akkadian imperialization of Tell Leilan and its environs. In particular, in square 44 W 16 the retrieval of school tablets assoc...

The paper provides an overview of the digital tools developed as part of the Ebla Digital Archives Project, which aims to offer a digital edition of roughly 3,000 cuneiform tablets from ancient Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh, in western Syria), dated to the middle of the third millennium BCE. The Ebla archive is the oldest one in the history of mankind, for which extensive information concerning the primary setting of the documents is available. The archaicity of the writing system, combined with the inherent difficulties in reconstructing languages from the remote past (Sumerian, Akkadian, Eblaite), pushes us to rethink the strategies to properly digitally capture the complexity of these sources, of invaluable historical significance: administrative documents, literary texts, vocabularies, letters, etc. We tackled the problem through the development of a PostgreSQL database, which is populated by ad hoc Python scripts that parse input transliteration files, which in turn are encoded usi...

It is a well-known fact that organized crime has developed into an international network that, spanning from the simple ‘grave diggers’ up to powerful and wealthy white-collar professionals, makes use of money laundering, fraud and forgery. This criminal chain, ultimately, damages and dissipates our cultural identity and, in some cases, even fosters terrorism or civil unrest through the illicit trafficking of cultural property.The forms of ‘possession’ of Cultural Heritage are often blurred; depending on the national legislation of reference, the ownership and trade of historical and artistic assets of value may be legitimate or not. Criminals have always exploited these ambiguities and managed to place on the Art and Antiquities market items resulting from destruction or looting of museums, monuments and archaeological areas. Thus, over the years, even the most renowned museum institutions have - more or less consciously - hosted in their showcases cultural objects of illicit origi...

The paper provides an overview of the digital tools developed as part of the Ebla Digital Archives Project, which aims to offer a digital edition of roughly 3,000 cuneiform tablets from ancient Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh, in western Syria), dated to the middle of the third millennium BCE. The Ebla archive is the oldest one in the history of mankind, for which extensive information concerning the primary setting of the documents is available. The archaicity of the writing system, combined with the inherent difficulties in reconstructing languages from the remote past (Sumerian, Akkadian, Eblaite), pushes us to rethink the strategies to properly digitally capture the complexity of these sources, of invaluable historical significance: administrative documents, literary texts, vocabularies, letters, etc. We tackled the problem through the development of a PostgreSQL database, which is populated by ad hoc Python scripts that parse input transliteration files, which in turn are encoded usi...

The Ebla Digital Archives [ EbDA ] aims to provide a digital edition of the entire corpus of Ebla texts. It includes all documents published so far in the ARET series (“Archivi Reali di Ebla – Testi”) as well as in other monographs and journals. Compared with hard copy publications, the digital edition provides harmonized transliterations, corrections and numerous collations made over the years by the team of epigraphers who cooperate with the “Italian Archaeological Mission to Syria”.
The Ebla Digital Archives project provides scholars an students alike with an easy-to-use, yet powerful research tool for the study of the Ebla texts. Users may browse the documents individually, or query data in the most flexible way, thanks to one of the most advanced database implementation for the digital representation of cuneiform dicuments. An extensive, searchable, up-to-date bibliography of all Ebla material published so far complements the results.

Texts of ARET I-V; VII-IX, XI: tagged transliterations with special search functions. Text established by L. Milano with M. Maiocchi and J.L. Platt, digital coding by T. Szink. With the participation of M. Bonechi, A. Catagnoti, G. Conti, M.V. Tonietti