Five Articles about Community Archaeology from The Ancient Near East Today
A PUBLICATION OF FRIENDS OF ASOR TABLE OF CONTENTS
“Archaeology for the Masses: Tearing Down the Barriers between 1 Archaeology and the Public” By Itzick Shai and Joe Uziel
“Common Ground: Archaeological Practice and Local Communities in 2 Southeastern Turkey” By Melissa Rosenzweig and Laurent Dissard
“The Past Performative: Thinking through the Azraq Community 3 Archaeology Project” By Alison Damick and Ahmad Lash
“A Call for the Preservation of Heritage Landscapes in the United Arab 4 Emirates” By Ronald Hawker
“Preserving the Past: the Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments Project” By 5 Helen Malko Chapter One Archaeology for the Masses: Tearing Down the Barriers between Archaeology and the Public Archaeology for the Masses: Tearing Down the Barriers between Archaeology and the Public
By Itzick Shai and Joe Uziel
Who does archaeology belong to – the few or the many? Sitting in our archaeology labs we often find ourselves delving into small details uncovered in excavations.
These questions of how past societies lived, interacted and functioned often seem of little importance to the wider public, which usually takes interest in the larger, more impressive remains.
Is it not in our interest, and in a sense our duty, to reach out to the public and provide a coherent picture of the human past and heritage, by making archaeological research
The Iron Age casemate wall. All photos courtesy of Itzick Shai and Joe Uziel. more available and important? This vision has begun to spread in Israel, bringing with it a number of community-based projects. It is believed that by involving more people in archaeological fieldwork, their interest in our field will grow and spread.This philosophy
Aerial view of the eighth century BCE building. stood before us when we began work at the site of Tel Burna. There, over the past four years we have worked towards opening our doors to the wider public, and fine-tuned their integration into fieldwork, without comprising the project’s scientific nature.
Tel Burna is located along the northern bank of Wadi Guvrin and situated in the heart of the Judean Shephelah. Over four seasons of excavation, we have excavated in three areas. The first area is located on the center of the summit of the tel, where a fortification system built over 2800 years ago has created a flat, almost square area of 70 by 70 meters. The second area was placed along the eastern slopes of the summit, forming a section of the upper tell. The third area was placed in the terrace just below the summit, to the west of the fortifications. This area – labeled Area B, has yielded the earliest levels excavated to date. In Area B, directly below the surface, we exposed a massive building well dated to the Late Bronze Age (13th Century BCE). The finds includes a row of pithoi, a necklace with beads and scarab, a cylinder seal and more. The building technique alongside the finds (e.g., pottery masks, figurines, chalices, bones) suggested that this was not a standard domestic house.
Iron Age remains were found on the summit. These include 7th century BCE silos and an 8th century BCE building, with finds typical of Judean pottery assemblages, loom weights and stamped handles. The summit was enclosed by a casemate wall that was approximately 6 meters thick and 280 meters long. While it stands to a height of about 2 meters today, it was certainly much taller in antiquity. A firm terminus ante quem can be given, as the wall is cut by one of the 7th century silos. It was in use in the 8th and 9thcenturies BCE, although its construction may predate this, as its base is yet to be reached.
From Day 1, an open door policy was initiated at Tel Burna; anyone is welcome to join, for as long as they like. One of the main concerns is ensuring that the quality of archaeological work remains high. This has prevented other projects from taking on groups or individual volunteers who are not willing to commit to a specific amount of time, where they can gain training necessary to excavate without damaging them. In order to overcome this challenge, our excavation limits its work not according to Orientation for school children, June 2012. the number of volunteers, but rather by making sure there are enough archaeological staff members that can provide proper training and oversee activity to make sure that excavation is done properly. At times, groups are steered towards less sensitive projects, such as cleaning agricultural School children at work. installations carved into the rock, or surveying. However, on a whole we have found that the presence of “untrained” excavators has not posed a problem for the quality of work.
As with other community-based projects in Israel, constant searches for groups of different kinds, including school children and other groups, are conducted. For example, a local nearby school has sent classes of students for a one-day dig. The students receive an introductory talk on archaeology in general, and more specifically on the site itself, after which they participate in active digging. They are often integrated into squares where other volunteers from Israel and around the world are already working, creating interaction with people they may not otherwise meet. In certain cases, prior to the arrival of these groups, lengthier explanations are given in the form of lectures or classes, at their schools. This helps connect groups prior to their arrival at the site.
As with any group of people, reactions are usually mixed. Some of the students take no interest in archaeology and find themselves resting beneath the tents passing the time. The general approach is not to push these children into something, as they will develop a negative attitude towards the field. These children do still go home and tell of their “experiences” on the dig, which has its importance as well. Other participants however School children at work. connect very well to the informal learning environment, asking questions about how the artifacts they collect and the architectural remains they uncover can teach us about past human society.
It is important to stress that creating a connection with the site is no less important than with archaeology in general. It is this facet, the tangible connection with a specific place, also helps us bring “walk-in” volunteers. In contrast with many other community- based projects, individuals are welcome to join us at Tel Burna for any amount of time that they wish. In this manner, we have opened up the excavations to a wide variety of people, many of whom return on a regular basis from year to year. The power of even a few days of archaeological work cannot be understated. And by returning consistently, they are no longer lacking the proper training, and can even help new volunteers understand archaeological concepts from a layman’s eyes.
These returning volunteers take their interests past the basic explanations in the field, usually asking questions about how to obtain further information, for example in the form of articles and textbooks, as well as relating to various aspects of research, particularly in connection with their personal expertise. For example, biologists who have volunteered have taken interest in archaeobiological remains, such as fauna and carbonated seeds, while an artist who volunteers regularly took time to draw his view of the site and the people working there.
To these people, archaeology is an escape from their day to day life – a form of vacation that stimulates their mind. This way, the Tel Burna project has created a connection between it and many people, both in the Volunteers at work. immediate vicinity and throughout Israel.
Itzick Shai is assistant professor at Ariel University and a lecturer at Bar Ilan University. Joe Uziel is a researcher with the Israel Antiquities Authority. Chapter Two Common Ground: Archaeological Practice and Local Communities in Southeastern Turkey Common Ground: Archaeological Practice and Local Communities in Southeastern Turkey
By Melissa Rosenzweig and Laurent Dissard
Eastward view of the mound of Ziyaret Tepe. Photograph by H. McDonald.
For excavations to remain inclusive and viable, community archaeology must provide for non-archaeologists to pursue their concerns in and around sites. We discovered, through a funeral procession, that ceding to local affairs only preserves the integrity of the archaeological project, and expands the value of sites as locations with scientific, historic, and contemporary meaning.
Since 1997, a multidisciplinary and international team of archaeologists has been working at the site of Ziyaret Tepe in southeastern Turkey to uncover its Late Assyrian settlement (ca. 900–600 BCE), as well historical remains from the late third millennium to the Ottoman period. Excavations have taken place every summer for the past 15 years, as part of a larger salvage project preceding the construction of the Ilisu hydroelectric dam on the Tigris River, which will flood areas northeast of the mound. The summer arrival of the Map of the village of Tepe and the archaeological site of archaeologists constitutes a regular, Ziyaret Tepe, adapted with permission from the Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Expedition. Inset map of Turkey adapted from seasonal event for the people of Ronayne 2005: figure 1:7. Tepe, the host community.
Tepe is small town (or belde) of around 8,000 people located on the southern bank of the Tigris River in the modern province of Diyarbakır. Tepe’s community is largely comprised of underprivileged, Kurdish-speaking residents, but four large, wealthier families have lived in the region for several generations. These well-established families generate income from cash cropping their lands and employ Tepe’s other residents as seasonal farm laborers. The archaeologists also hire many local men as manual laborers for the excavation.
Early during a recent excavation season, a respected female member of one of these powerful families in Tepe passed away. This family decided that the matriarch’s final
View of the village of Tepe from the mound of Ziyaret Tepe. Photograph by A. Wodzińska. The cemetery located atop the Ziyaret Tepe mound, adjacent to the excavation trenches. Photograph by M. Rosenzweig. resting place would be among her relatives’ graves on the cemetery atop Ziyaret Tepe. Although Tepe contains several available burial places, the top of the mound carries special significance as a graveyard for this particular family.
The site itself, Ziyaret Tepe, obtains its name from these present-day tombs, the word ziyaret referring both to the act of pilgrimage to local sacred sites and to the religious sites themselves. More specifically, the mound attracts visitors to a türbe, or small shrine, built around the tomb of Sheikh Muhammad, an honored religious leader who lived and died in Tepe several decades ago. For these reasons, the people of Tepe value the mound of Ziyaret Tepe as a sacred burial site and a destination for memorial and prayer. Generations Excavation on the high mound, with the cemetery in the before archaeologists arrived to background. Photograph by Ian J. Cohn. perform their own scientific pilgrimage, local people have been coming to Ziyaret Tepe to visit the cemetery, bury friends and family, and remember loved ones.
It is extremely rare for an interment to take place on the mound, much less in the midst of a field season, Excavation in the lower town of Ziyaret Tepe, with the high mound and all parties were unclear visible in the background. Photograph by Ian J. Cohn how to proceed. The wishes of the deceased’s family brought the excavations to a temporary halt so that various stakeholders could gather to discuss the situation. Present were the deceased’s senior family members, Ziyaret Tepe’s project director, the state’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism representative, as well as the Diyarbakır Museum’s director, the local jandarma (local military police) captain, and the town’s imam.
Each attendee represented one of the relationships that animates the community, within which the Ziyaret Tepe project operates. But prior to this event, this group had never actually come together to discuss the site and its administration. At this rare but significant meeting, two critical outcomes unfolded for the community archaeology that we advocate: (1) Ziyaret Tepe’s community context became fully visible from the interplay of history, politics, and culture of each representative, and (2) the participants acknowledged and reaffirmed the site’s meaningfulness as both an archaeological and sacred place.
Tepe’s history informs the ways in which its residents understand the Ziyaret Tepe project. Before the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the Kurdish-speaking residents of Tepe enjoyed relative prosperity and independence vis-à-vis the central authorities in and out of the region. In the 1930s, however, the government in Ankara, with an eye towards strengthening Turkish national identity, intensified the restructuring its southeastern provinces. Officials designated the city of Diyarbakır, 65 km west of Tepe, as the capital of a province with the same name, and declared the Turkish- speaking village of Bismil head of a provincial district that included Tepe.
This political decision greatly influenced the social and economic development of each town. On the one hand, as a district center (or belediye), Bismil profited from the business and amenities generated by state investment, including new roads, schools, and banks, as well as a post office and hospital. On the other hand,Tepe’s residents would not witness major infrastructure development, such as electricity, until the 1980s, when the migration of people caught in the conflict between the Turkish army and the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) dramatically increased Tepe’s population.
It was within this political history, as representatives of both a historically Kurdish village and a state-run municipality, that the family of the deceased approached the other authority figures gathered to discuss the burial. Powerful by local standards, the Kurdish relatives of the deceased nonetheless found themselves requesting permission from Turkish officials and foreign visitors to perform one of their culture’s most sacred traditions. Politics tempered the family’s inclusion in the decision-making process, and the mourners would gauge the other participants’ regard for local, Kurdish concerns from the outcome.
The state representative and museum director, both sensitive to the local politics, found themselves weighing the petition against the possibility of breaking protocol by allowing private individuals to conduct a burial on state land. Designated by the state as an archaeological site, the mound could no longer legally accommodate new burials. These officials had to navigate the expectations of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, to assess the loss of cultural heritage, and of a local family and their religious leader (imam), to honor the wishes of the bereaved and respect Muslim burial customs. Moreover, whatever verdict reached would be enforced by the jandarma, charged with security in rural areas, as well as set a precedent for future activities on the mound. The state representative and museum director faced a common cultural heritage problem: negotiating between the protection of the past and the preservation of present, local customs. Into this already complicated situation entered the archaeologists, who come to Ziyaret Tepe with their own objectives and obligations; namely, to conduct scientific research by the rules set forth by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. With the power to explore Ziyaret Tepe, they depend upon the Ministry for access to the site and upon the regional museum for support and resources, including storage facilities and artifact curation. The overriding authority of the Ministry and the project’s reliance upon the museum limited the project director’s ability to alter archaeological practice and easily accommodate the unexpected funeral.
The meeting consequently exposed a limitation of all archaeological work conducted under state license: despite the unique concerns of individuals, organizations, or institutions involved in the research, the site is ultimately the property of the state and subject to its legal discretion. In other words, the scientific space of excavation is always political and, more often than not, contested.
The archaeologists’ desire to observe the protocols of the Ministry challenged their equal commitment to maintaining good relations with the residents of Tepe, upon whom they rely for labor, logistics, and hospitality. Since arriving in Tepe, the project has become a major seasonal employer for the village, providing a much-needed source of revenue Modern water management systems have since become widespread in Tepe’s fields, making summer cropping jobs more available. But the expectation of work on the archaeological project remains and the excavation regularly employs around sixty men, some of whom have been with the project for many years.
Archaeologists are Villagers hired as laborers headed to the mound of Ziyaret Tepe. Photograph by M. Rosenzweig. grateful for the Ministry’s and Museum’s support, but mindful of these departments’ authority. So too are the residents of Tepe appreciative for the summer work, but cognizant of the archaeologists’ ability to wield disproportionate power and resources during their short, annual stays. The archaeologists have the means to procure a great deal of labor and supplies; the social capital to transcend traditional religious, gender, and kinship boundaries; and the political clout to negotiate with, and sometimes overrule, local leadership. For the people of Tepe, community archaeology meant just how much consideration the community would receive at the hands of archaeologists. The pronouncement on the funeral would determine the relations between the archaeologists and the locals.
In the end, the funeral took place upon the mound and over one hundred people attended. The interment of little consequence to the overall excavation; the 2 x 2 m grave constituted less than 0.00001 percent of the site’s surface. The ground ceded in this decision, trivial in its physical properties, yielded enormous significance. The archaeological director worked with state officials to conceive of the mound as something other than a state-owned property or a scientific space for excavation. In addition, the foreign team and the Turkish authorities made room for non-official, local practices that, as archaeologist Yannis Hamilakis explains, “treat[ed] material objects of the past as integral to the routines of daily life and the fabric of social space” among living communities. In that way, they achieved the aims of community archaeology and found common ground.
The decision, small in its scale, but large in its scope, paid deference to the religious and cultural claims of the mourners, who sought the right to continue their burial tradition. It accorded recognition to the people of Tepe, who sought proof that the archaeologists and attendant officials cared for the community that lived and worked beside them, even when their concerns did not respect those of the archaeologists. Their voices mattered, not just in the archaeological work, but in their daily, non- archaeological lives. Local leaders and community members likewise made compromises that secured the legitimacy of the archaeological project. The funeral attendees respected the boundaries of the excavation, and all parties agreed to limit future interments to the existing empty plots of the cemetery, where archaeological work is already precluded, so as to prevent further expansion of the burial ground. Collaboration achieved good will on all sides, even though the group had to confront competing claims and conflicting commitments. The concession to non- archaeological concerns did not undermine the scientific project, and in fact garnered a greater respect for the excavation and its team The funeral taking place on the high mound of Ziyaret Tepe. Photograph by M. W. Monroe. members. By valuing the local community’s relationship with Ziyaret Tepe, the archaeologists gained perspective on their own work. Acknowledging the mound as something other than an archaeological space increased, rather than decreased, the meaningfulness of the place, and successfully crossed the past/present divide that inevitably accompanies all fieldwork. Consideration of local non-archaeological perceptions of the mound made these cross- community connections and insights possible.
Melissa Rosenzweig is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Laurent Dissard is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Penn Humanities Forum. Chapter Three The Past Performative: Thinking through the Azraq Community Archaeology Project The Past Performative: Thinking through the Azraq Community Archaeology Project
By Alison Damick and Ahmad Lash
Aerial view of South Azraq and the Azraq Wetlands. Photograph taken by D. Kennedy, courtesy of APAAME.
The Azraq Basin in eastern Jordan is a 13,000 km2 limestone basin between the arid steppes to the west and the volcanic “Black” Deserts to the east and south. With one of the largest and most reliable fresh water sources in the area, the oasis has been an important stopping point for animals and humans throughout history. The first recorded human occupation in the Azraq Basin dates to more than 300,000 years ago. The basin area hosts many documented archaeological sites, including prehistoric, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic era material.
The town of Azraq is located in the middle of the oasis at the last highway intersection in Jordan and on the crossroads of the highways to Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Modern Azraq is made up of roughly 12,000 individuals living in two villages: North Azraq, also known as Azraq al Durzee, along the Iraq highway, and South Azraq, also known as Azraq al Shishan, along the Saudi highway. North Azraq is primarily made up of Arab Druze of the Bani Ma’roof tribe, most of whom emigrated from Syria and Lebanon at the end of World War I. South Azraq has historically been inhabited by Chechen Sunni Muslim immigrants who arrived in the immediately before World War I. Many of the local Bedouin, mostly of the Bani Sakhr tribe, but also Ruwalla, Sirhan, and Howeitat, are the self-identified “native people” of the area. They have camped in the oasis Location of Azraq within Jordan. for centuries and settled more permanently around the town as it became established on the trade routes and offered more resources. Beginning in the 1950s, the Jordanian government also actively encouraged Bedouin settlement, which included a housing project in central Azraq. The Bedouin now make up a significant percentage of the resident population, primarily in South Azraq. Rising numbers of seasonal and itinerant workers are also present in both North and South Azraq.
Lash’s map of the Druze families according to the rooms they originally occupied in Qasr Azraq. The 2008 excavation team with Ahmad Lash at Qasr Azraq.
How to protect Azraq’s sites from various threats, including environmental degradation and erosion, increased vehicle traffic, construction projects and illicit digging, is a growing concern. Coupled with this is increasing awareness of the close relationship between archaeology in the contemporary world and the narrative of the past. While the Azraq Basin has long been known for its research significance, until recently very little attention has been paid to the relationship between archaeology, archaeologists, and the modern resident communities.
Ahmad Lash began ethnohistorical research in Azraq in 2006. The Community Engagement Program for the Epipalaeolithic Foragers in Azraq Project (EFAP) was initiated in 2008 by Alison Damick and Lisa Maher and expanded into the Azraq Community Archaeology Program (ACAP) in 2009, in partnership with the British Institute in Amman, the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, and the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN). Our activities have included Lash’s oral histories project and reconstruction of ancestral Druze homes in Azraq Castle, educational programs for school children from across the different areas and communities of Azraq (including on-site mock excavations and other trainings), seminars, site visits, and outreach events for adults (including some where alumni children participated as “educators”), and collaborative video and news programs. Outside of the oasis, the archaeological sites of the Azraq Basin are remote and dispersed, and the few contemporary villages have limited infrastructure. As a result, traditional tourism development is unlikely to bring much economic benefit, nor is it a particularly attractive scenario for any of the parties. We have therefore directed our efforts towards different kinds of collaboration and development, to make our projects meaningful to people living in and around Azraq.
ACAP-sponsored visit for Azraq residents to Qasr Amra.
This required first understanding the local contexts of ‘past-making’ and valuation and how they are tied to the places of Azraq. Qasr Azraq, the multi-period basalt fortress in the middle of North Azraq, has long been protected by the Department of Antiquities and set aside as a tourist venue but it is also a central feature of the village, encountered and understood as part of the village topography. Lash’s early work to identify the ancestral homes of the Druze families within Azraq Castle included collecting oral histories and creating maps that linked these families to their own pasts and stories. This, combined with his recruitment of a local team to help excavate parts of the Qasr in 2006 and 2008, brought archaeology into a conversation with the personal histories of people living in the area.
It also began to establish archaeology as part of the living memory of the community. As part of the EFAP Community Engagement Project and ACAP, we drew the prehistoric sites into that conversation through the doing of archaeology. Working with children meant that we were also able to draw the past not just into the present, but into hopes and projections for the future. This came full circle in our last major event, Azraq Heritage Day in 2010, when one of the young Past, present and future: one of the student participants from the field students gave a talk to a days gives a presentation at Azraq Heritage Day in 2010. room full of adults, including his family, about prehistoric archaeology and his experiences working with us.
Archaeological projects interested in their broader communities must address the issues of presentation and representation. Site visibility is a practical and conceptual concern. Many sites in the Azraq Basin are remote and difficult to detect, lacking physical features such as visible architecture commonly associated with archaeological sites. Archaeology often takes place out of sight from visitors and resident communities.
By relocating the regional archaeological conversation within Azraq itself, and increasing opportunities for local residents to participate, we enhanced the visibility of both the archaeological process and the kinds of knowledge it produces.
Conceptually, visibility is Visibility: the Epipalaeolithic “mega-site” Kharaneh IV is visible only as a slight rise and a darker shade in the sun, due to the density of lithics. also how we talk about site and landscape as archaeological terms, and in conversation with heritage, tourism, and general public interests. What makes a site or a landscape visible as an archaeological entity, and to whom? For instance, prehistoric sites require very different types of mediation and imagination to bring them to life as archaeological places.
This mediation, however, can lead to positive and negative results – illicit digging and collecting often come hand in hand with broader understanding of “sites” and their value. There is also reluctance in both government and academic institutions to consider the more recent historical and contemporary material record as archaeological. Material later than 1750 CE is not protected under Jordanian heritage laws, but archaeologists at times work to preserve it in the context of its association with older ruins. This was the case at Qasr Azraq in 2009 when local Department of Antiquities representatives worked to preserve the Druze walls within intact, as part of the cumulative material history of the Qasr.
Producing places the archaeological way: students learn how to use the GPS to map sites during a field day at the Azraq Wetlands Reserve in South Azraq.
Visibility is one way of talking about accessibility. As noted, many sites in the Azraq Basin are distant from the town of Azraq, part of a broader landscape of mobility and seasonal settlement by different Bedouin groups. Where does one locate a local community, and how is access negotiated? Of the various interested stakeholders – the Jordanian and international publics, the archaeological community, tourists, and inhabitants of Azraq who have historically used the basin–the latter are the most underserved by archaeological practice. But importantly, they already participate in some way with archaeological projects in the area.
Accessibility: school children from Azraq visit Kharaneh IV for the first time, and learn about prehistory from archaeologists dressed as “ancient Kharanehans.”
Nonetheless, due to the remoteness of most prehistoric sites, many non-Bedouin Azraq residents had never visited any of them before our project. Without similar activities, many will likely not return. But there is significance to their having been able to go at all. Such visits help build trust, encourage more general participation in research projects and give Azraq residents direct experience of sites that existed only as imaginary points of interest for others passing through.
Simply increasing physical accessibility to specific sites, however, is problematic. Not only is this logistically challenging but it poses complex issues of property claims and potential destruction. To address this tension in our project, we attempted to create a much closer relationship between ACAP and the RSCN and to link the discussion of environmental sites and landscapes to those concepts as they are understood culturally.
Prehistoric archaeologists increasingly look to landscapes as more meaningful than traditional “sites,” and this perspective should be integrated into Fragility: the extremely dense prehistoric strata at Kharaneh IV are also very fragile. Photo courtesy of the EFAP archive. understanding how landscapes are imagined and addressed in the present. Interpretively, this means thinking about how remoteness and difficulty of access influence the understanding of Azraq. Distance, obscurity, and difficulty of access might actually be positive and meaningful to the construction of place and history. Practically, we might consider eco-tourism programs, such as the RSCN bike tours, that emphasize physically engaging with the landscape in more sustainable, responsible, and interconnected ways without sacrificing a sense of remoteness and distance. The sites will never get the same traffic, and income, as convenient bus-stop sites like the “Desert Castles.” But it may encourage longer stays in Azraq village, as opposed to day-trips from Amman that will benefit the economy and produce more sustained relationships.
Another solution is to bring the archaeological landscape to the people. This is usually achieved by a museum or visitors’ center. Plans to develop a museum in Azraq are ongoing, which also addresses the problem of fragility raised by site or landscape development. Many prehistoric sites cannot physically sustain the same traffic as monumental sites, and require creative thinking about how to safely make them visible and accessible.
Fragility, however, is also a conceptual term referring to archaeologists’ fear of losing particular kinds of information about “sites.” This represents valuing academic Storytelling: learning about knapping flint from one of the “ancient Kharanehans” brings team members and school children together around a moment of daily activity. knowledge over the kinds of loss that others might experience in these places. We need to be concerned with the fragility of sites and over-development, but we also need to think about why such fragile places are respected as economic assets.
Museums, moreover, produce narratives in a localized way. The distinction between narrative and storytelling is useful; narrative is historical and recounts series of events over time whereas storytelling can interrupt, expand, and mobilize the narrative. Storytelling describes particular places and times – what daily life, certain kinds of activities, or performances for other places and times might have looked like. Narrative is important, but it can also be more isolating and ideological than storytelling.
Most early community archaeology was conducted where descendent communities were both locatable and disenfranchised relative. This is not the case in Azraq where most inhabitants neither have nor claim direct ancestral links to the prehistoric societies in question. But issues of class, precedence and disenfranchisement are more complicated.
For instance, Druze are generally privileged in Azraq and were among the first “sedentary” settlers of the village, but they are an underrepresented minority population in Jordan. On the other hand, the main Bedouin families claim ancestral precedence and have standing within the Jordanian class structure. But their traditional livelihoods are increasingly threatened by limitations on mobility and the transformation of grazing territories. The recent history of Azraq is shaped by human movements related to industrialization, urbanization, and regional conflict rather than traditional paradigm of settler colonialism, out of which post-colonial community archaeology developed.
Promoting a past stretching back to “deep” prehistory in Azraq is therefore politically meaningful in different ways than elsewhere. The richness and diversity of occupation in the Azraq basin generate pride of place and the necessity for people throughout history to negotiate its unique environmental situation has contemporary significance. As such, we have been able to produce conversations and activities that emphasize the importance of place and its continuity of occupations, identifying with it and its stories, rather than on any single narrative. Places contain stories, mundane or fantastical such as fishing off the roads during flood seasons, and the hypnotic power of hyenas. Archaeological research can engage with its own story-making, through its access to the intimate moments of making a meal, notching a blade, or laying an ancestor to rest. Doing so, it opens spaces for sharing stories from one type of knowledge to another.
We advocate an approach to producing and sharing the archaeology of Azraq that takes account of how it is enmeshed in the lives of its modern residents. This means paying attention to the strengths of archaeology itself and taking seriously the ways of knowing produced locally, from storytelling to grand narratives. The strength of a community-based and driven project is that it is generated through the experiences of archaeological practice and place-making; they are our only resources. For the future we hope to continue collaborative efforts to expand ACAP’s local involvement and long- term presence, and hopefully eventually produce locally-based ecotourism. We also hope that we will see an Azraq museum come to fruition, in a way that emphasizes resources local people actually engage with, as opposed to just what “looks right” for tourism.
Alison Damick is undertaking Ph.D. studies in the Anthropology Department at Columbia University in New York. Ahmad Lash is the Head of the Archaeological Loans Sector in the Excavation and Survey Directorate at the Department of Antiquities of Jordan.see the their blog at “The Tepe Telegrams.” Chapter Four A Call for the Preservation of Heritage Landscapes in the United Arab Emirates A Call for the Preservation of Heritage Landscapes in the United Arab Emirates
By: Ronald Hawker
I always say that the best semester of my academic career was my sabbatical, when I spent six months combing through the dusty abandoned farms and hamlets of Ras al-Khaimah on a research project funded by Zayed University and an Emirates Foundation grant in the winter of 2011.
My forays into the dying date gardens on the emirate’s alluvial fans were punctuated with shared parathas –flatbreads- with my friends at the National Museum of Ras al- Khaimah or tea with my student and her family in Wadi Sha’m, all of whom helped facilitate field research for my students.
By that time, I had lived in the United Arab Emirates for fourteen years and had forced busloads of Emirati university students to various archaeological sites and abandoned villages – an experience that probably taught me a lot more than it did my students. I never got tired of Ras al-Khaimah.
Map showing location of Ras al-Khaimah. Nonetheless, my students always asked (with a hint of complaint), why Ras al- Khaimah? There are other options and wide swathes of the land and seascapes of the other emirates offer similar opportunities for holistic interpretation of cultural history. Ras al-Khaimah, though, was a paltry hour and a half bus ride from the university’s gates. There, productive agricultural lands, proximity between environmental zones, and access to shipping lanes, deep water fisheries near the coast and the pearl banks of the southern Abu Dhabi embayment, led to relatively high density settlement. No oil, and therefore slower late twentieth century urbanization, mean large stands of traditional architecture still remain.
Unlike Abu Dhabi and some of the other Gulf cities, the Ras al-Khaimah hasn’t yet been transformed into a late 20th century metropolis of concrete and glass. Here more than anywhere else in the United Arab Emirates the possibility of preserving not only buildings, but also their physical context, remains viable.
Taking a rough 10 x 10 kilometre square section of the district from Ras al- Khaimah town east to the Hajar mountain range, one finds three distinct environmental zones. The surviving hamlets, canals, gardens, and other historic remnants demonstrate that even with a short distance of the city’s core, there are substantial architectural differences. Rather than perceiving these as independent, iconic objects, it is important that future preservation accounts for how the buildings function in both practical and symbolic terms, and how they relate to the Satellite Image of 10 kilometer by 10 kilometer section of the overall regional socio-economic emirate of Ras al-Khaimah. Courtesy Ron Hawker. networks – economic and social factors revolving around tribe, geographic location, climate and seasonal habitation patterns, and economic status and activity.
The first challenge for preservation is to maintain a sense of the complex factors that give these different structures meaning. Preservation Zayed University students photograph a canal for redirecting rainfall in and presentation need to the terraced farm network of Barama. Courtesy Ron Hawker. go beyond object-based architecture to include not only the ways in which the surrounding land and seascapes were manipulated – the fields, canals, wells, paths, pearl banks, backwaters, lagoons, anchorages and breakwaters – but how the built environment was configured within the natural world.
Agricultural villages and fields, for example, were laid out according to water salinity, quality of earth, and the direction of underground aquifers. The falaj system used gravity to feed water into date gardens, directing water run-off from winter flooding to large cisterns scattered strategically throughout farming networks. Ports were located in relation to sand banks, water depth Unidirectional windtower house, Ghubb. Courtesy Ron Hawker. for anchorage, and backwaters that provided protected corridors for shallow-draft boats. The notion of passive cooling, essential to human survival in the region, was to harness and work within, not transform, nature.
Ras al-Khaimah has urbanized less rapidly than the oil producing emirates of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah. Nonetheless, the city has spread from its original peninsula across reclaimed land in the lagoon with extensive industrial development. There are pockets of old masonry houses built from beach stone and coral in the old town of Ras al-Khaimah. These are still inhabited, mainly by a new underclass of expatriate Asian labourers. The buildings exhibit several phases of building, with reconstruction or additions added using compressed shell and sand bricks from the 1950s and breezeblock introduced in the 1960s. The landfill has erased the old anchorage sites and filled in the shallow backwater transportation corridor. Few old houses survive in Ma’airidh and the fishing fleet has been relocated to a dedicated harbour at the north edge. The palm gardens have been reduced by the combination of a water table emptied by mechanical pumps, introduced in the 1940s, and the development of mixed commercial, industrial and residential zones.
Fortified towers and houses, high status seasonal residences, and mosques exist in crumbling condition, scattered and abandoned in undeveloped pockets along the edge of the alluvial fan. A number of individual sites, typically belonging to the ruling Al Qasimi family, are preserved or restored A dead date palm garden with a falaj. The introduction of by the National Museum of Ras mechanical pumps in the 1940s drained the fragile water table. Courtesy Ron Hawker. al-Khaimah. Other sites and buildings have been all but destroyed by industrial development. The old village of Ghubb, for example, lies within a cement factory. The terraced farms in the wadis were mostly abandoned with the construction of villages on the alluvial fan for the mountain tribes in the 1970s. Some itinerant farming is still carried out and members of the Habus The restored fortified storehouse of the ruling Al Qasimi family in and Shihuh tribes who Hudaibah, on Ras al-Khaimah’s alluvial plain. Courtesy Ron Hawker. previously resided in the wadis are returning, constructing new houses on or near the old villages.
Preservationists can be defined as “a distinct social group with distinct beliefs acquired through specific training and practice.” In the United Arab Emirates specifically and the Gulf generally, this group is small, with indigenous institutions providing neither training nor practice. Professionals are often countries from outside the UAE, although this is now changing. Isolated from each other and often from decision-making processes, practitioners are, at best, a nascent social group. While development in the Gulf is based on adopting best practices, identified by international professional communities, contemporary approaches that link landscape and power are sometimes anathema to governmental hierarchies. The result is that buildings associated with the ruling family are preserved, often fenced off from public interaction, and other structures and elements of the land and sea are either left to be reclaimed by the climate and erosion or erased by modern urbanization.
At the same time, the Gulf’s demographics and rapid urbanization over the last two generations makes historical remnants of great value to the population. With the indigenous population of the United Arab Emirates at around 20%, according to the 2005 census, the historical connections symbolized in these buildings, land and The remains of the old fort at Harat al-Ghubb, a small hamlet on Ras al-Khaimah’s alluvial plains. Courtesy Ron Hawker. seascapes are emotionally significant. The preservation of isolated buildings does not capture the memories of seasonal migrations between floors of the house, or the sighting of stars signalling the move to the date gardens. These ephemeral qualities are as part of the buildings’ significance as stone and mortar. Ras al-Khaimah acts as a microcosm for the complexities of the architecture and landscape and its relationships to memory, identify, seasonal residence, tribe, tribal hierarchy, economic function, and natural environment for the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf as a whole. It presents a set of challenges to preservationists that mirror larger issues facing the The Al Qasimi fort in the medina of Ras al-Khaimah, now the National region. Museum of Ras al-Khaimah. Courtesy Ron Hawker. An abandoned farm house in the terraced gardens of Wadi Malaha. Courtesy Ron Hawker.
Nobody is suggesting we turn back time and return Ras al-Khaimah to its 19th century state. However, the emirate is unique in not only its extant buildings, but its landscapes, lagoons and backwaters and supporting agricultural features, like wells, aflaj, terraced fields, and gardens. Since the sea, the stars, the seasonal climate and movements of the wind played such an important social and economic role in the buildings, their location, and the lives of their residents, attention needs to be paid to how this might be expressed to the larger public. It presents an opportunity that has passed elsewhere in the Gulf.
Preservation and heritage education need to be integrated into an overall plan that doesn’t rely exclusively on large-scale real estate development led by multinational construction companies, but which includes alternative tourism in a package of initiatives that facilitate sustainable development. In contrast to mass or large-scale tourism, alternate tourism involves “modes of tourism thought to be more benign with respect to their impacts upon the destination,” combining experiences “respectful of host community values and interests” with those expressing “a symbiotic relationship between tourism and the natural environment.” Such an approach balances the specific cultural concerns of Gulf residents with a policy shift of sustaining the surviving, fragile natural environment. This is not to criticize the admirable efforts of professionals who have successfully preserved and restored buildings and landscapes across the United Arab Emirates, friends and colleagues with whom I have often worked closely. If anything, it is a call to support their efforts by expanding the interested community, across not only the emirate but also the nation and region. This requires integrated planning utilizing a range of emirate and federal governmental officials, multiple ministries, educators, and tourist organizations as well as former owners and present residents in the buildings and gardens of the The watchtower at the north end of the Shimil palm gardens on emirate. Such planning hinges on Ras al-Khaimah’s alluvial plain, Sir. Courtesy Ron Hawker. a completely new attitude towards preservation and its active role in contemporary life in Ras al- Khaimah.
Ronald Hawker is an independent scholar. He previously taught at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary Canada and from 1999 to 2011 at Zayed University in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Chapter Five Preserving the Past: the Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments Project Preserving the Past: the Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments Project
By: Helen Malko
Since the appearance of the so-called Islamic State or Daesh in Syria and Iraq, the world has been faced with a vicious attack on cultural heritage aimed at erasing the rich and diverse history of the people in this region. Local and international scholars have been working to document and assess the damage inflicted on archaeological and historical sites through various projects that grew in response to Daesh’s activities.
However, the destruction and looting of cultural heritage sites and monuments in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, has a longer history rooted in the aftermath of the US invasion of the country and the complete destruction of its infrastructure in 2003. For many years, security worries and chaos prevented archaeologists and heritage specialists from onsite documentation of the heritage sites. It was not until a few
Amadiya, ca. 12th century A.D., Iraq. Monastery of St. Mar Audisho ca. 17th century A.D., Iraq. years ago when slowly Iraq became accessible once again for archaeologists, and documentation with a possibility for future conservation could begin. It was with this in mind that the idea of the project Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments was born.
Zainab Bahrani, the Edith Porada Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology at Columbia University started Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments in 2012 as a means of countering the erasure of the past and the continuous destruction of sites and monuments in the region. This project provides digital records for standing monuments and facilitates future conservation work to preserve Lalish ca. 12th century A.D., Iraq. Mesopotamian cultural heritage as Qyzqapan 6-7th century B.C., Iraq. All images courtesy of Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments. Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University. All rights reserved. both a local heritage and a significant part of the global cultural heritage.
Through onsite recording, photographing, and status and condition evaluations, this project hopes to preserve historical monuments of all eras, ancient to modern. Professor Bahrani directs an international team of archaeologists, art historians, and conservators that have already begun to document standing monuments and architecture across Iraqi Kurdistan in Dohuk, Erbil, and Suleymaniyeh and in South- Eastern Turkey. A work in progress, this monument survey hopes to include the rest of Iraq into the south in the next field season.
Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments is focused specifically on monuments and architecture, and by design has no historical, cultural or religious boundaries. The documentation is inclusive because the project aims to record the remarkable history of this region, a diversity of peoples and religions that is now being deliberately and violently erased. The first field season took place in 2013 in Iraq when Professor Bahrani and her team documented ancient Mesopotamian monuments and rock reliefs, early Christian and early Islamic architecture, churches and monasteries, mosques and madrasas, Yezidi sanctuaries and shrines, ancient bridges and aqueducts, The Great Mosque of Diyarbakir ca. 11th century A.D. (originally built in the 7th century A.D.), Turkey.
Ottoman era buildings and early twentieth century buildings. The second season of fieldwork, conducted in May-June 2015, focused on documenting rock reliefs, historical monasteries, and mosques in South-Eastern Anatolia. The team documented the extensive circuit walls and towers of Diyarbekir, the ancient mosque with its re-used classical capitals and columns. They also studied and documented several rock reliefs dating to the Neo-Assyrian era and some early Christian monasteries.
While mapping monuments and architecture geo-spatially, the team members use a range of technologies including photogrammetry, perspectival stills, and 360° immersive panoramic records. Images and panoramas are then processed and uploaded to the project’s website along with site description, history, and condition reports and preservation status. The website also provides historical images and drawings for each monument and building, enabling comparisons and analyses. Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments has to date an archive of thousands of images that the Columbia team has made on site which explore the multiple layers of the rich landscape of Mesopotamia. This work is funded and supported by a multi-year grant from Columbia University’s President’s Global Innovation Fund, awarded to Professor Bahrani in 2012. Although the initial proposal and plan for the project, and the first season of fieldwork preceded the recent targeting of museums, monuments and archaeological sites in Iraq and Syria, the work has now taken on a more urgent nature. The significance of the long-term project has been unfortunately borne out by the appalling recent events in Iraq, Syria and South- eastern Anatolia, all of which belong to the area archaeologists refer to as Greater Mesopotamia, the ancient lands of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Heritage sites, historical architecture and monuments are in grave danger throughout the region, but it is not only antiquity and archaeology that are in Rock relief of Tiglath-Pileser I ca. 12th century B.C., peril. Turkey.
As they continue to be destroyed as a means of erasing the presence of communities of people and their history, the project that began as an archaeological-historical survey, is now even more urgent record of endangered history. Cautious of the current circumstances in the areas covered by the project, all images and panoramas as well as historical and archaeological information related to the documented monuments are currently curated in a closed archive. However, the team welcomes collaboration with other projects that are working to preserve cultural heritage in the Middle East.
Helen Malko is a Research Associate Scholar in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. ARTICLES EDITED BY ALEX JOFFE
@DrAlexJoffe • [email protected]
Alex Joffe is the editor of the Ancient Near East Today. The publication features contributions from diverse academics, a forum featuring debates of current developments from the field, and links to news and resources. The ANE Today covers the entire Near East, and each issue presents discussions ranging from the state of biblical archaeology to archaeology after the Arab Spring.
MANAGING EDITOR CYNTHIA RUFO [email protected]
Cynthia Rufo is ASOR’s Archivist and Website Manager.
E-BOOK COMPILED BY WILLIAM BERKERY [email protected] INTERESTED IN AN ASOR Membership? ASOR memberships help foster original research and exploration, encourage scholarship in different cultures, uphold the highest academic standards in interdisciplinary research and teaching, and support efforts to protect, preserve, and present to the public the historic and cultural heritage of the Near East and the wider Mediterranean.
LEARN MORE