A scientific support for the control of illicit trafficking of cultural goods in circulation. Algeria

African, Mediterranean, Maghreb country, a place of passage and trade by its strategic position, Algeria has dealt with influences brewed through numerous invasions, occupations, and colonization. The resultant varied cultural heritage is apparent largely through Algeria’s linguistic diversity, forms of cultural expression, and an enormous archaeological wealth. The definition of cultural heritage of the Algerian nation is the sum of all tangible and intangible assets that it has inherited through all ages and without distinction. And the Algerian Ministry of Culture reorganized and created a directorate for the legal protection of cultural heritage and institutions which coordinates all actions related to the struggle against the illicit trafficking, together with specific protection services which set up specialized brigades for operational investigations related to the various acts of damage to the national cultural heritage, the theft and illicit trafficking of archaeological objects, antiquities and works of art, degradation and pillage of archaeological sites and artistic counterfeiting. Threats to cultural property are massive, despite the application of a legal framework for the protection of cultural heritage in Algeria (laws and texts), it becomes today necessary to develop new mechanisms as a control strategy to combat the illicit trafficking by strengthening the methodology of the inventory of protected and classified cultural heritage properties according to the law 04-1998 and others of the country's cultural heritage, and to construct a set of scientific tools and descriptive systems, essential for the work of field operators which we will propose in this paper through a diagnosis at a central and local level of the status of the inventory in the different cultural institutions.