The looting of antiquities has been an age-old problem in the Middle East – from Napolean’s carting off of Pharaonic heritage  to the wholesale pillage of Syrian artifacts that is going on during the civil war – but archaeologists in Jordan are using a the latest technology to track the problem: drones.

Archaeologist Chad Hill is working with the Follow the Pots project that tracks the trail of antiquities looted from Jordanian cemeteries. He is now flying a custom-built drone to get high detailed imagery of sites that are at risk, so that the team can monitor the destruction of the sites over time.

The project, led by Morag Kersel of DePaul University and Meredith Chesson from University of Notre Dame in Indian, is focused on the flow of looted goods from several sites in southern Jordan.

The ‘Follow the Pots’ research program explores two interconnected sides of an archaeological looting story: the conventional archaeological investigation of the emergence of prehistoric urbanism and increasing social complexity in the Early Bronze Age of the southern Levant, and the multiple and contested values of this archaeological heritage to multiple stakeholders today.

What this means is that we study how archaeologists, people living in the southern Ghor, looters, middlemen, museum administrators, government officials, antiquities dealers, and collectors think about, acquire, and use pots and other grave goods from the Early Bronze Age (EBA) cemeteries of Fifa, Bab adh-Dhra` and en-Naqa/es-Safi.

The Associated Press recently interviewed Hill about how the advancements in drone technology had enabled better imagery for the team.

“We can see the change through time, not just of ‘a huge pit has been dug’ but where different stones have moved,” Hill said . “It’s a level of resolution of spatial data collection that’s never really been possible until the last couple of years.”

The Follow the Pots project is attempting to bridge the disconnect between the local looters, who are often driven to looting due to a lack of legitimate jobs, and the wealthy antiquities traders, who turn a blind eye to the shaky provenance of the finds and profit greatly.

“People don’t ask the sticky questions about where artifacts come from,” Kersel told AP. “They just want to own the piece regardless of what kind of background the artifact has, and that is what causes people on the ground to loot.”