While difficult to anticipate, we wonder to what extent archaeology, a western discipline, is implicated in these actions, or are they reactions? Archaeology's persistence in making 'spectacular' discoveries disseminated as much in the media as scholarship initiates a process of reification drawing attention to these artifacts' value as icons. Warring parties tussle over such symbolization the same way they do over whose flag symbolically flies over them. Statues and other icons of the loser are typically destroyed by the victors. While we can express our indignities toward this particular destruction, it perhaps might have been better anticipated as a possibility in locations such as this politically unstable in the long run. I think this line of consideration may go far towards explicating why those slighting these icons are also willing to profit from sales of stolen artifacts--its just another way of ransoming the west for funds to further wage war on the west. That is, the actions may be more political rather than religious at the core--anti-western, again emphasizing that archaeology is largely a western discipline grounded on western notions of knowledge. Archaeologists themselves get caught up in internal and external vicious contests over meaning --over who is the interpretive authority.
The text of archaeology contradicts fundamentalists readings of the holy book. This isn't all that different than the situation earlier in the west as the new discipline of archaeology unearthed evidence contrary to literal readings of the Bible. Only then, archaeologists were much more reserved such that the culture was able to remain attached to the past whereas the indignity expressed by us today over the destruction was always apparent to our new protagonists--to the extent that they now reject their own past or the past of their homelands. Only today, the tactics of archaeology are those of the more confrontational culture wars typical of the west for the recent decades, essentially donning the prescribed blinders of science's pleasure to the reality of politics. Was such lack of attachment to the past a factor in the looting of Iraq's museums after the fall of Saddam, when no one looted the mosques? Should we have seen that as a warning signal?
I'm not excusing our adversaries but I sincerely doubt expressing our indignation and calling them criminals is going to do anything productive toward stemming the current war where archaeology in its trenches finds itself inexplicably on the front lines. Indeed, I expect it is counter-productive. But, what else can we do but express what comes natural to us? Do we have alternatives? What we fear is to happen is the political stakes are only going to escalate, bringing more sites into harms way. It's a wound that the weaker forces can effectively inflict on an adversary with superior military forces...and they can see us squirm in agony.
Either the battle, now literal rather than a theoretical contest over meaning, a culture war, must be fought in earnest or ransoms will have to be paid to preserve antiquities if they are not to be continually slighted, broken up, and the remnants auctioned off. Of course, there will be no end to such ransoms and the proceeds will only strengthen the adversary and its willingness to destroy antiquities. Then, ironically, I doubt the west is genuinely attached enough to these relics and sites of the past to wage total war against ISIS and the like?
Therefore, we can only make the near futile suggestion that archaeology might have been more politically astute to the real world situation as they were centuries ago when the dialectic between science and religion hit closer to home. Less aggressive research agendas and media blitzes over discoveries in these lands might have been politically wise rather than adhering stridently to the agenda and ideology of western progress. We didn't have to excavate and package it all up in tourism projects scattered all about these lands today.
It is the same old battle over what is and the sources of knowledge. Has not archaeology been long implicated in the process of colonialism?
One last plain question: Who's buying the stolen artifacts? That may be one area where we can make the destruction somewhat less rewarding?
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road