Ex Novo Journal of Archaeology

Volume 2, December 2017 Editorial Panel

Editors in Chief Direttore editoriale Maja Gori – Ruhr University of Bochum ([email protected])

Direttore responsabile Paolo Fallai – Corriere della Sera

Editors Alessandro Pintucci – Sapienza University of Rome ([email protected]) Martina Revello Lami – Leiden University ([email protected])

Advisory Board Kenneth Aitchison (University of York), Marcello Barbanera (Sapienza University of Rome), Rita Borioni (CDA Rai), Peter Campbell (University of Southampton), Filippo Carlá Uhink (University of Heidelberg), Jasper Chalcraft – University of Sussex; Rachele Dubbini (University of Ferrara), Gabriele Gattiglia (University of Pisa), Patrizia Gioia (Sapienza University of Rome), Alfredo González-Ruibal (Institute of Heritage Sciences (Incipit) of the Spanish National Research Council), Alessandro Guidi (University of Rome 3), Enrico Giannichedda (ISCUM – Ethnographic and Archaeological Museum of Masone), Matthew Harpster (University of Birminghan), Valerie Higgins (The American University of Rome), Richard Hodges (The American University of Rome), Francesco Iacono (University of Cambridge), Eduard Krekovič (Comenius University in Bratislava) Heleen van Londen (University of Amsterdam), Arkadiusz Marciniak (Adam Mickiewicz University), Davide Nadali (Sapienza University of Rome), Silvia Pallecchi (DAFIST University of Genoa), Dimitris Plantzos (National & Kapodistrian University of Athens), James Symonds (University of Amsterdam).

Subscriptions The journal is published once a year. For all subscription-based enquiries please contact: [email protected]

Instructions to authors Authors who consider submitting an article to the journal are requested to contact the editor in chief M. Gori before sending in manuscripts. They can download a copy of the Editorial Style Guidelines to which they must conform as closely as possible. All manuscripts will be reviewed by external referees before acceptance. Manuscripts may be submitted to: [email protected]

Cover Image Metropolis (ink, watercolors), courtesy of Daniel Egneus ©Daniel Egneus (2011)

Published by ASSOCIAZIONE EX NOVO in association with ARCHAEOPRESS www.archaeologiaexnovo.org www.archaeopress.com Ex Novo Journal of Archaeology Volume 2, December 2017

CONTENTS

Maja GORI, Alessandro PINTUCCI & Martina REVELLO LAMI Editorial: Who Owns the Past? Archaeological Heritage between Idealisation and Destruction...... 1

Caroline A. SANDES Remembering Beirut: lessons for archaeology and (post-)conflict urban redevelopment in Aleppo...... 5

Nour A. MUNAWAR Reconstructing Cultural Heritage in Conflict Zones: Should Palmyra be Rebuilt?...... 33

Augusto PALOMBINI The rights of reproducing Cultural Heritage in the digital Era. An Italian Perspective...... 49

Emily R. HANSCAM Frontiers of Romania: Nationalism and the Ideological Space of the Roman Limes...... 63

Ivan MARINOV & Nicolas ZORZIN Thracology and Nationalism in Bulgaria – Deconstructing Contemporaneous Historical and Archaeological Representations...... 85

Reviews

Museo Federico II Stupor Mundi. Palazzo Ghislieri, Piazza Federico II, 3, 60035 Jesi (AN) Reviewed by Rachele DUBBINI...... 113

UNESCO Experts’ Meeting on the Safeguarding of Syria's heritage. Berlin, 2-4 June 2016 Reviewed by Nour A. MUNAWAR...... 123

Print: ISBN 978-1-78491-763-0 Online: ISSN 2531-8810 EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2, December 2017: 1-3 1 Published Online: Dec 2017

Who Owns the Past? Archaeological Heritage between Idealisation and Destruction Maja Gori, Alessandro Pintucci, Martina Revello Lami

Ex Novo Journal of Archaeology

On the 23rd of August 2015 Daesh blew up the 2,000-year-old Baal-Shamin temple in the world-famous Greco-Roman site of Palmyra. This event triggered a profound emotional reaction in society at large, and the ruins soon became an iconic symbol of world heritage in danger. The appalling images of the ruins of Baal Shamin reinforced the perception, especially among western observers, that protecting cultural and natural heritage is yet another duty in the fight against terrorism. A similar international outcry occurred in 2001, when the Buddhas of Bamiyan fell to Taliban dynamite in Afghanistan, and when Iraqi museums and sites were ransacked and looted providing two of the most recent and vivid examples of destroyed heritage in the so- called War on Terror which was launched by the U.S. government after 9/11. Following the destruction at Baal-Shamin, UNESCO declared that the deliberate destruction of Syria's cultural heritage was a war crime, and put into motion several projects and actions aimed at preserving endangered Syrian archaeological heritage. At the same time, alongside income gained from the sale of drug and weapons, the trafficking of antiquities from Syria and Iraq worldwide provided a major source of revenue for Daesh1.

The dichotomy that is inherent in antiquities – which are either perceived of as the embodiment of freedom, democracy and other values that western society considers too often its own domain, or as a very profitable commodity to be traded illegally– calls for a more accurate reflection upon the notion of cultural appropriation and ownership of the past and its material remains, as well as on the role that globalised scientific archaeology plays in this process.

Certainly, discussions on ownership of the past, its traces and their connection to different identities do not apply only to Syria and Iraq. Among the most well-known cases of controversial heritage, one related to the Palestine-Israeli conflict holds a particular position.2 A few months ago, in July 2017, Israel rejected once again the presence of Palestine at the UNESCO council, stating that this was an outrage in terms of its ownership of the Holy Land. To be sure, membership of UNESCO certainly implied that Palestine had been internationally acknowledged as a state in its own right. Most recently Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has generated on the one hand Palestinians and Arab outrage, and on the other concern

1 S. Heißner, P.R. Neumann, J. Holland-McCowan & R. Basra, Caliphate in Decline: An Estimate of Islamic State’s Financial Fortunes, Report 17/02/2017. http://icsr.info/2017/02/icsrey-report-caliphate-decline- estimate-islamic-states-financial-fortunes/ accessed 13 December 2017 2 M. Gori, The Stones of Contention: The Role of Archaeological Heritage in Israeli–Palestinian Conflict. Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress 9 (1) 2013: 213-229. 2 M. GORI, A. PINTUCCI & M. REVELLO LAMI

among Washington’s western allies. As a result, UN Security Council felt compelled to vote in favour of a resolution calling for Donald Trump to rescind his declaration.

Tensions concerning heritage ownerships and its symbolic value manifest in several different forms. Following the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, heritage places that materialised conflicting ethnic identities during the conflict, such as the Mostar Bridge or the Sarajevo Gazi-Husrev-beg Library, were transformed into reconciliation symbols. This change occurred mainly as bottom-down process and in the overwhelming majority of cases did not succeed in replacing the significance as ethnic markers that these heritage places acquired during wartime.

In October 2017, the Hindu Government of Uttar Pradesh in India decided to remove the Taj Mahal from the official leaflets for tourists, as the world-famous monument had been built by a Muslim emperor during the seventeenth century. This decision reflected the pivotal role played by heritage in the long-standing tensions between Hindu and Muslims that dramatically characterize India’s recent history.

Figure 1.The arch of Palmyra's Temple of Baal-Shamin reconstructed by the Digital Archaeology Department at the University of Oxford (London, May 2016, iStock Getty Images ID532270230).

The Colosseum is another iconic heritage site that can be best understood as an archaeological feature used to stimulate collective and individual memory, as well as to promote multi-layered historical associations. In September 2017, the Muslim community of Rome organized a public prayer to be held in the centre of the city, with the intent of raising their voice against the terrorist attacks in Barcelona. Significantly, the area chosen by the Muslim community for the public gathering was located next to the Colosseum, as a way to manifest materially their sense of belonging to the Italian State and their affinity to the political and social values of western countries. The public EX NOVO Journal of Archaelogy, Volume 2 (2017) 1-3 3 prayer, however, never took place. Due to security issues officially raised by Italian police authorities, the ban seemed to be rather an unofficial response to the right-wing parties’ strong criticism of the event. In their eyes, Muslims gathering around the Colosseum represented an inacceptable appropriation of Italian symbols and the Italian identity held by that community.

In the light of these events, when applied to the past the word ownership takes on multiple shapes and meanings. Is it thus possible to draw a line between different owners, be they private or public, of cultural heritage? What about the property that is seen today in the myriad of images at our disposal which depict sites and monuments? The spread of 3D and other digital technologies has greatly contributed to making monuments more accessible and democratize heritage. Potentially, everybody can now reproduce cultural objects, own a copy and exploit it for different purposes. In this sense, the photo portraying Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph crafted using cutting-edge 3D printing and carving techniques – here on display outside the National Gallery of London (Fig. 1) - brings us back to where we started. Who owns the past and its replicas?

The present issue of Ex Novo contains five papers that explore the various ways in which the past is currently being appropriated, remembered, recovered, (re)created, and used. Caroline Sandes and Nour Munawar discuss the Syrian conflict and issues of reconstruction, adopting two very different points of view. Emily Hanscam, Ivan Marinov and Nicolas Zorzin address processes of creation and appropriation of past narratives in identity construction along the eastern border of the European Union, in Bulgaria and Romania. Augusto Palombini tackles the difficult connection between authenticity andthe (re)production of cultural heritage, and the implications that this raises for archaeological research and museum studies. The appropriation of the past in identity building processes is also addressed by Rachele Dubbini in her review of the Museo Federico II in Jesi. Lastly, the political value of heritage is assessed by Munawar in his review of the UNESCO Experts Meeting held in Berlin in 2016.

Acknowledgments We would like to express our gratitude to the authors who contributed to this issue, the colleagues who reviewed the papers and our advisory board. We are grateful to James Symonds for his support and for the proofreading. Special thanks go to Daniel Egneus, who kindly shared his art with us. As cover image for the second number, we chose his evocative Metropolis that lines up a collection of western heritage icons and allows us to continue the tradition - inaugurated with the first issue - of hosting the work of contemporary artists on our journal. 4 Print: ISBN 978-1-78491-763-0 Online: ISSN 2531-8810 EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2, December 2017: 5-32 5 Published Online: Dec 2017

Remembering Beirut: Lessons for Archaeology and (Post-) Conflict Urban Redevelopment in Aleppo

Caroline A. Sandes

University College London

Abstract The reconstruction of central Beirut after the Lebanese civil war by Solidere is not generally considered a success. It has resulted in a soulless, expensive and exclusive area aimed at tourists and wealthy overseas business people who have generally failed to ma- terialise; local people tend to go elsewhere, except when protesting (Ilyés 2015). Despite the fact that Beirut was known to be an ancient city with occupation stretching back to prehistoric times, the initial post-war plans were for a modern city centre built on a tabu- la rasa. Little thought was given to any cultural heritage. Subsequent protest at this planned destruction ensured changes to the original redevelopment plans to incorporate historic building conservation and some archaeological investigation but it was far from ideal, and often became tangled in the ongoing politico-religious conflicts (Sandes 2010). Aleppo is another such city; occupation can be traced back to the 10th century BCE, and its old city has World Heritage status. The ongoing Syrian war has caused dreadful destruction of the city and its peoples, but in the rebuilding how important will this cultural heritage be considered? This paper examines the role of the built heritage, particularly archaeology, in the (post-) conflict urban reconstruction process and with reference to Beirut, examines what archaeology has the potential to offer to the rebuilding and rehabilitation of Aleppo and its communities.

Keywords: Aleppo, Beirut, sustainable redevelopment, cultural heritage, conflict/post- conflict, archaeology.

Introduction Aleppo and Beirut are some of the oldest continuously occupied urban areas in the world. Situated on the ancient trade routes from the east, Aleppo in particular was at a cross roads. The legacy of these long and distinguished histories is a wealth of cultural heritage and multi-cultural and -denominational inhabitants. Tragically something they also now share is division and complete devastation due to civil war. Beirut during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1989) became divided between east and west Beirut, with its

CONTACT Caroline Sandes, [email protected] 6 CAROLINE A. SANDES

centre a destroyed no-man’s land that became known as the Green Line. Aleppo too is divided between the more wealthy government-supporting west and the more poor, rebel-supporting east with central and eastern Aleppo in particular bombed to the point of devastation (Abboud 2016; UNESCO 2017a; Ruck 2016). There seems, at the time of writing, no end in sight of the Syrian civil war that, much as with the Lebanese civil war, has multiple groups of combatants and international intervention that have inflicted ter- rible destruction and brutality on Syria’s civilian population and the tangible and intangible assets of the country, not least its cultural heritage.

This paper is concerned with the built cultural heritage, with a focus on archaeology, and its place within conflict/post-conflict rebuilding and rehabilitation. Despite the many socio-political and economic complexities of cultural heritage, it is crucial that it, in particular archaeology, is a major component of all conflict/post-conflict redevelopment plans.

This paper begins with a brief introduction to the war, and to Aleppo’s history and built cultural heritage. It then, via sections on cultural heritage and development and on destruction, taking into account myriad complexities and using Beirut as a case study, demonstrates how crucial, both for archaeology and for communities, its inclusion as a principal component of post-conflict redevelopment plans is.

The Syrian Civil War and Aleppo The Syrian civil war ostensibly started as a consequence of poor handling of a protest in Dera’a in the first half of 2011 (Glass 2016: 1). Some teenagers were arrested and tor- tured for anti-regime graffiti; public protest at their treatment was greeted by security forces opening fire and killing several protesters. From that, Syria began its descent into hell. As with all civil wars, its causes and progress are far from simple and it is much complicated by external factors – the collapse of Iraq and the rise of ISIS to the east; and the involvement of Russia, Iran, US, Europe, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kurdish militias and Hizbollah, amongst others, all with their own agendas. This morass has been further aided and abetted by an ethnic and religious mix that should really be, and has been, one of the Syria’s crowning glories, but historically toyed with and weakened by colonial violations and ineptitude, and poor government (Watenpaugh 2006: 139) . In further suffering the consequences of globalisation, neoliberalism and inequalities, Syria finally frac- tured and exploded under the strain (Glass 2016).

Aleppo, initially, did not become involved with the war. The uprising against the government was not universally popular. Aleppo, with its cosmopolitanism and relative prosperity, felt it could avoid the violence and up to early 2012 it had done so (Glass 2016: 114). On the 19th July 2012, fighting broke out between government and rebel forces in the southwest of the city. From then on the city was subjected to severe bomb- ing, battles, besiegement that left tens of thousands dead, injured or displaced, caught between rebel and government forces and their various supporters. EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 7

The toll on Aleppo’s built cultural heritage has been equally catastrophic. The initial ‘Battle of Aleppo’ of July 2012 left central Aleppo with considerable destruction, and this destruction has been ongoing. The souqs, the Umayyad (Great) Mosque, the Citadel have all suffered. The whole central old town of Aleppo was inscribed on the World Heritage list ‘in recognition of its “rare and authentic Arab architectural styles” and its testimony to the city's cultural, social, and technological development from the Mame- luke period(UNESCO 2012); its destruction is considered universally tragic.

History, archaeology and built heritage of central Aleppo As mentioned, Aleppo vies for one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Cross-roads is the adjective most commonly used when describing Aleppo’s past. It is situated between the northern stretch of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, making it an intrinsic part of the trade routes from the east. It was only in 1938 that it lost its seaboard hinterland and port when France ceded the ‘Sanjak of Alexandretta’ (Iskenderum) to Turkey (Mansel 2016: 50), extending Turkey’s border in a loop south- wards to claim that northeast corner of Syria. Aleppo was first mentioned in the tablets of Ebla at Tell Mardikh (2250 BCE) as ‘Halab’ (Hadjar 2000: 1). Since that time the Hit- tites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mongols, Mamluks, Ottomans and French have all ruled over the city (Busquets 2005). The Hellenistic period is still somewhat evident in the gridiron plan in the walled southwest corner of the old city extending around Al- Aqaba and al-Jallum between the citadel and Bab Antakya. Al Aqaba and al-Jallum are some of the oldest parts of the city within the walls, dating from the Seleucid period of the third century BCE. The city was known as ‘Beroea’ during the Roman and Byzantine periods; the Via Recta ran from the citadel west to Bab Antakya. The Agora and temple were the subsequent site of the Umayyad Mosque and Madrassa Halawiya; the latter still contains evidence of the Byzantine cathedral, originally built in the fifth century (Hadjar 2000: 2, 138; Gonnella 2008: 13). The Souqs likewise developed from the Agora, later the Umayyad Mosque, towards Bab Antakya.

Aleppo’s destruction during the current war is not the first time. The Byzantine emperor Nicephorus Phocas burnt Aleppo and the souqs in CE 962 but they subsequently redeveloped, prospered and expanded. The Mongols under Hulagu also caused much destruction in 1260. Tamerlane destroyed the city in 1400 but the Mamluks rebuild it almost immediately. A savage earthquake in 1822 killed 15000 people and destroyed two- thirds of the housing, though once again Aleppo was rebuilt.

The old town, prior to the current conflict was still walled and full of architectural gems dating from the Ottoman period back to medieval and earlier periods, as Hadjar’s (2000) guidebook, Historical Monuments of Aleppo, demonstrated. The old town, along with the citadel was designated a World Heritage Site in 1986 in response to the threat of development that had already caused some destruction in the Bab al-Faraj district in the northwest corner of the walled town. Conservation work has been carried out elsewhere in the old city and in the Citadel. Two areas of old Aleppo that have been excavated are the Citadel and Bab al-Faraj. 8 CAROLINE A. SANDES

The Citadel is a colossal monument, about 550m x 350m at its base, and about 38m ‘over the city level’ (Tawakalna & Sharaf 2005: 7) larger than that of either Cairo or Da- mascus, and has produced archaeological remains that date back to the middle of the third millennium BCE in the early Bronze Age. Evidence of a temple of the Storm God, Hadda, as mentioned on the Ebla Tablets, has been uncovered within the Citadel (Kohlmeyer 2009: 191), and the Citadel has been in use in one form or another virtually ever since. Most recently the Citadel was part of a large citadels renovation project (along with those of Masyaf and Salah al-Din) carried out by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture under a Memorandum of Understanding with the Directorate General of Antiq- uities and Museums in Syria signed in 1999, and with additional funding from the World Monuments Fund (Jodidio 2011: 254). This work, begun in 2000, was unfinished in 2011 when the Syrian civil war broke out. Since then, the Citadel has suffered bomb damage, and has been used as base by snipers (Porter 2016). The excavations lost their protective coverings and the museum on the site was broken into (Franceinfo 2016).

One of the other areas that has been excavated is Bab al-Faraj. Bab al-Faraj is an area in the northwest corner of the walled city, named after one of the gates in the wall at this point. A feature of the area is the Bab al-Faraj clock tower – a ubiquitous element of Ot- toman urban architecture – built in 1898-1899 by an Austrian, Aleppo city’s architect, Charles Chartier, and Syrian engineer Bakr Sidqi (Archnet 2016). In the late 1960s a plan was put forward to develop high rises in the area, in conjunction with other modernist- influenced developments that were going on in the city, such as the construction of wider roads, often to the detriment of the historic fabric. After some controversy, the calling in of specialists from UNESCO and elsewhere, and several revisions a third Bab al-Faraj plan was decided upon, not least because in the process of some demolition in that quarter in 1983 as part of the redevelopment, foundations of the old city wall had been found. The Department of Antiquities got there in time to save some of it and it was decided to conserve this in situ (Bianca 1987: 28). The subsequent development of Bab al- Faraj, based on this third UNESCO-influenced plan was considered to reflect a ‘significant change in attitude’ and mark an ‘end of crude redevelopment policies, which used to imply the total demolition of complete historic districts and their replacement’ (Bian- ca 1987: 26). It also led to a successful campaign by the Department of Antiquities to get the old town of Aleppo listed as a World Heritage site in 1986. Nonetheless, some demolition still happened, and tall buildings did still blight some of the old architecture, such as the eighteenth century Beit Rajab Pasha and the Al-Dabbagha al-‘Atiqa mosque with its twelfth century and later features, of the area (Hadjar 2000: 60).

Cultural Heritage and Development Research has consistently demonstrated the importance of cultural heritage to people in terms of sense of place, history, memory and identity, and as a means of facing the future (Ashworth et al 2007; Wedgwood 2009). In conflict/post-conflict situations, the importance of cultural heritage as a vital ‘thread of continuity’ between the past and an un- certain future is especially important (Stanley-Price 2007, 1; Ascherson 2007; De Jong & Rowlands 2008). Furthermore it is considered as an ‘essential element of a community’s EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 9 identity in the building of lasting peace and reconciliation’ (UNESCO, UNPF & UNDP 2015: 77). Specifically, the values of urban heritage are no less. In 2011, UNESCO published its Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, opening with the facts that, first- ly, historic urban areas are ‘among the most abundant and diverse manifestations of our common cultural heritage’ constituting primary evidence of generations of our ‘endeav- ours and aspirations through space and time’. Secondly that urban heritage is a social, cultural and economic asset defined by and representing layers of historic values and cultures, and accumulations of traditions and experiences, recognizable in their diversity (UNESCO 2011).

In some ways, these values have been understood and have been recognised since at least the end of the second world war when, in the aftermath of the destruction of War- saw by the Nazis, a sociologist commented that if Warsaw and its community were to be re-established, then they had ‘to be given back their old rebuilt Warsaw to some extent’, and that ‘ individual attachment to old forms is a factor of social unity’ (Stanislaw Os- sowksi in Jankowski 1990: 84).

In conflict and post-conflict situations, however, the focus tends to be on nationally and internationally important cultural heritage that is considered to represent the collective identity and which is usually centred on objects of ‘high art’, in other words major historic and religious buildings, works of art and monuments. This can often be driven by international interest in and therefore potential funding for, for example, World Heritage sites. This is demonstrated in, for instance, in the funds to rebuild the Stari Most, Mo- star, coming from the World Bank, UNESCO, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, and the World Monuments Fund (Armahly, Blasi & Hannah 2004: 7).

These major monuments and objects of ‘high art’ often overshadow the cultural heritage of social or anthropological identity or ‘the culture of daily life’ (Ascherson 2007: 17), and as a consequence a division can develop between the two, with the latter often ac- corded little if any importance in rebuilding. Cultural heritage, particularly urban heritage, is often overlooked, dismissed as a luxury, or considered a hindrance to redevelopment plans in the rush to stabilise and rebuild post-conflict societies (Barakat 2007), as clearly seen in the redevelopment of central Beirut (Sandes 2010); local urban cultural heritage suffers considerably in this.

Ideally, post-conflict redevelopment is a developmental process requiring long-term commitment and investment, where the priority is not so much physical reconstruction but the restoration and growth of the capacity of people and institutions, and the recovery of society economically, socially, politically and psychologically (Barakat & Chard 2010: 174; Barakat 2010: 269). The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Devel- opment’s guidelines for the prevention of violent conflict also argue for the importance of thinking long-term; for the reinforcement of local capacities, which should be supported, not supplanted, by international aid, and for security where security is not just military security but an overall security that ensures and protects the well-being of people (OECD 2001: 24, 26, 37). 10 CAROLINE A. SANDES

In the same vein, and following on from the Millennium Goals, is the Post-2015 Dialogues on Culture and Development, a report produced jointly by UNESCO, the United Nations Population Fund and the United Nations Development Programme (UNESCO, UNPF & UNDP 2015). It draws upon a 2013 UN resolution (A/RES/68/223; UN General Assembly 2013) that acknowledges the direct link between culture and the three components of sustainable development – i.e. economic, social and environmental – and that culture can both drive and enable sustainable development. It also, importantly, acknowledges the role culture plays in inclusion and reconciliation. The Post-2015 report is based on national consultations in 2014 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ecuador, Mali, Morocco and Serbia. In addition it includes the results from a call for papers and e- discussions that provided 139 papers and 72 e-discussions from a variety of NGOs, universities, governments, professionals and the private sector from all over the world and covering all the required themes (UNESCO ,UNPF & UNDP 2015: 10). One of its key points is how culture (which it defines as ‘the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of a society or a social group’, as per the UNESCO Uni- versal Declaration on Cultural Diversity of 2 November 2001; UNESCO, UNPF & UNDP 2015: 8, fn 2) aids in strengthening capacities and inclusion. Many of the ‘dialogues’ received stressed that because of the ‘huge amount’ of cultural diversity among people, ‘blanket approaches’ to development were not effective, failing in particular in regions across the world that appear to lag behind, and that there needed to be a move away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach not only to ensure local realities be taken into account and that the many different and sometimes marginalised stakeholders be included but to ensure that the multifaceted requirements of sustainable development are met. The research demonstrated ‘how culture contributes to more inclusive and sustainable urban development and how traditional knowledge and management practices greatly contribute to enhanced environmental protection and more resilient communities’ (UNESCO, UNPF & UNDP 2015: 16).

One of the report’s key messages is how culture reaches out to those not in education, and provides institutions and opportunities for lifelong learning. It mentions how libraries and archives can provide access to primary resources of historic information, and how by using these, this can help teach critical thinking, to recognise historiographical bias and interpret evidence, and help students to develop a balanced approach to history. The importance of this in conflict and post-conflict situations is crucial (UNESCO, UNPF & UNDP 2015: 34). Education and cultural awareness is a vital component in building cross-cultural understanding, tolerance and inclusion. Likewise museums and the built heritage, assuming they are accessible and provided with signage and information, are crucial in this role. In Northern Ireland the Northern Ireland Heritage Ser- vice has worked to present historically divisive sites, such as Carrickfergus Castle, Co. Antrim, in a way that includes, interests and encourages both communities by presenting the sites’ histories in a neutral and engaging manner (Hamlin 2000).

Cultural heritage, especially the built heritage, also has a major role to play in sustainable cities and in the counterbalancing of some of the issues of rapid urbanisation. One of the Post-2015 report’s key messages is that planning and development that integrates cul- EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 11 ture increase economic opportunities and enhances the quality of life in urbanizing areas; and that culture can transform public spaces into places of dialogue, and can contribute to reducing inequalities and to fostering social inclusion (UNESCO, UNPF & UNDP 2015: 48).

Such thinking and the social and economic benefits of urban cultural heritage and its restoration and maintenance have been successful demonstrated by projects such as those run by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture’s (AKTC) Historic Cities Programme in Africa, Europe and Asia, and by smaller projects such as the independent but similar Turquoise Mountain Foundation (TMF) programme in Afghanistan, and Riwaq in the West Bank, Palestine.

The AKTC’s Historic Cities Programme’s ‘integrated development area concept’ links socio-economic development initiatives to urban rehabilitation, conservation and adap- tive re-use projects in order to maximize long-term socio-economic benefits for the local communities (AKTC 2007a: 7). Their urban regeneration work in Kabul, for example, has benefited over 30,000 residents and provided 365,000 workdays of skilled and un- skilled labour. As part of this, over 150 young men have undertaken apprenticeships as carpenters, masons and plasterers, working alongside highly skilled Afghan craftsmen, and over 2200 local women have attended courses in tailoring, embroidery and kilim- weaving, along with literacy classes (AKTC 2012: 1).

The TMF does something similar; it works to revive traditional Afghanistan crafts such as pottery, calligraphy, woodworking and those needed to restore and build traditional architecture, which is mostly mud-brick and timber. In the process of restoring a very run down and threatened historic area of old Kabul, Murad Khane, they have put in running water and electricity, a primary school, health clinic and generated training and employment for both men and women. The products of the re-established crafts are now available for sale via the website or in places such as the shop in the British Muse- um, as part of the move towards sustainability (TMF 2016).

In the West Bank, Riwaq, set up in 1991 and also an NGO, has been doing something similar. It has established a national register and online archive of historic buildings, helped to restore community spaces and villages and in the process has generated jobs and future opportunities (Ju’beh 2009).

These projects are long-term and relatively low-key, and they involve the local people from the outset. They focus on the locality as a whole and use the rehabilitation of the cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, to aid both the rehabilitation and sustainable development of the local community, and not simply as a tourist attraction. They don’t subscribe to the kind of market-orientated, globalised neoliberal development that has been part and parcel of international development for some decades now, and support the change of thinking on neoliberalism that has begun. Most recently the Interna- tional Monetary Fund published a paper from their research unit pointing to some of the flaws in neoliberalism, arguing that it has increased inequality and consequently had a 12 CAROLINE A. SANDES

negative effect on sustainable growth (Ostry et al 2016: 39). The World Bank also argues that heritage is an economic asset, and is cultural capital, much as the environment is natural capital; that it contributes to urban liveability, and therefore attracts talent, and directly and indirectly provides job creation (Licciardi & Amirtahmasebi 2012). It does, however, highlight the problems of gentrification and the negative effects this can have on lower-income groups. One of the ways to counteract this to take into account the distributional effects at an early stage of the planning, and to involve long-term residents as stakeholders (Licciardi & Amirtahmasebi 2012: xxiv). More specifically, cultural heritage is now fully recognised at an international level by the UN and World Bank as being a fundamental part of sustainable development, particularly of urban areas.

Likewise, urban archaeology has a role to play in sustainable cities and in the supporting of social values and the provision of capacity-building, education and in the development of community. Archaeology has a crucial part to play in aiding the development of resilience both of cities and their inhabitants; it has a particular ability to engage with narratives of place and via these with community engagement (Williams 2015: 19, 21). Like archives, archaeology also provides primary sources of historical information, and if treated in an impartial manner, can also help in objective cultural and historical education.

In Beirut, once archaeology was included in the post-conflict redevelopment, the excavations achieved many positive things (Perring 2009: 309ff). It has been suggested that the archaeological work helped bridge the gap between the destruction and the rebuilding; that it encouraged people back to the city centre in the provision of work and in the general interest in new discoveries. It also helped people ‘reclaim’ their city centre and help to rebuild civic pride and sense of place. It allowed Lebanese students and work- men from different factions to work together, and provided opportunities for training and capacity building (Perring 2009). Archaeological investigation continued, virtually all done by and providing work for Lebanese archaeologists (Lawler 2011). Some of the sites excavated in the immediate post-war period were subsequently conserved in situ allowing for an historical identity and point of reference (Sandes 2010; Williams 2015: 22).

All of this is not to deny that archaeology encounters the same problems as other aspects of cultural heritage in terms of politicisation and misuse. It can be equally used to support or foster division, as is discussed in relation to Beirut later on. Archaeological remains may be actively interpreted or even destroyed to support a single usually nationalistic narrative and in the process deny or denigrate the existence of other legitimate narratives, as seen for example in the conflict between Serbia and Kosovo in relation to Kosovo’s historic existence (Defreese 2009: 260). It is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in Israel and Palestine, for example in the destruction at Tell el-Rumeida (ancient Hebron) in 2001 due to illegal Jewish settler activity (Rjoob 2009: 219). A notorious example is the site identified as the ‘City of David’ in Silwan in East Jerusalem. Silwan is a densely-inhabited primarily Palestinian area of which part has been expropriated by an archaeological excavation site managed and controlled by Elad, a Jewish settler organisation, and sanctioned by the Israeli state. The focus is exclusively on Jewish heritage and EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 13 on underpinning the narrative of being the original occupiers of the locality, while simultaneously denying the historic Palestinian habitation of the area (Mannergren Selimovic&Strömbomb 2015: 191, 197). Jewish settlements and amenities have been built right on the edge of the archaeological site and specific archaeological remains have been conserved and highlighted to suggest a continued connection to the biblical lands (Pullan & Gwiazda 2009: 33).

Archaeology in the Middle East is further complicated by having its roots in colonisation and western interest in classical and biblical archaeology that, historically have overrid- den that of, for example, Islamic-period archaeology; archaeology came to be considered as something of relevance to foreigners rather than local peoples (Silberman 1991; de Cesari 2010: 621; Gillot 2010: 4). This problem has been, perhaps inadvertently, perpet- uated by who is funding archaeological and other cultural heritage work, particularly if they are international funding bodies or NGOs, as has been argued by Hammami (2012) in looking at the work of such NGOs in Nablus and elsewhere in Palestine. In order to attract funding from international agencies, conservation projects often, ostensibly at least, focus on that heritage that is more attractive to such agencies – usually that which makes reference to western heritage (Hammami 2012: 245; de Cesari 2010: 628). This has led to complaints from Palestinians, both heritage specialists and local people, that the Occupation and colonisation eras should be documented, and that the focus has been on public buildings and tourists rather than on the homes of local people and more recent heritage (Hammami, 2012: 245, 248ff).

Cultural Heritage and Destruction All of the values and benefits of cultural heritage generally, and of archaeology specifically, along with the consequences of their loss are equally if not more so, understood by those who deliberately set out to destroy cultural heritage both during and after conflict most often as a form of ethnic or cultural cleansing, This applies as much to major monuments and important historic buildings as it does to local urban heritage. Urban cultural heritage suffers particularly from deliberate destruction for the precise reason that destroying buildings that represent a community and their identity is a means of at- tacking that community. It is often a component of ethnic cleansing or genocide (Bevan 2007: 8, 14), as was demonstrated in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, and indeed by ISIS in their treatment of, for example, the Yazidis (Sands 2016; Keller 2015). In the ongoing wars of Iraq and Syria, cultural heritage particularly of minorities has been deliberately targeted, most notably by ISIS. This intentional destruction has been labelled ‘cultural cleansing’, which is defined as ‘an intentional strategy that seeks to destroy cultural diversity through the deliberate targeting of individuals identified on the basis of their cultural, ethnic or religious background, combined with deliberate attacks on their places of worship, memory and learning’(UNESCO 2014: 3). Deliberately destroying cultural heritage is also a component of urbicide, defined as ‘the destruction of buildings not for what they individually represent (military target, cultural heritage, conceptual metaphor) but as that which is the condition of possibility of heterogeneous existence’ (Coward 2009: 39). The destruction of central Beirut happened almost immediately the war broke out; the majority of the destruction and the dividing of the city happened between April 14 CAROLINE A. SANDES

1975 and November 1976, and it has been argued that this was a case of urbicide (Fre- gonese 2009). Beirut, prior to the war, had developed an image of a Paris of the Mediter- ranean with its wealthy and comparatively liberal lifestyle enjoyed by a multi- confessional and multi-ethnic population. Central Beirut, in particular Martyrs Square with its cafes, cinemas and other places of entertainment, epitomised this heterogeneous existence, and seems to have been deliberately targeted. Historic structures such as the old souqs, the 12th century Al Omari Mosque (formerly a Crusader church), and other historic buildings were destroyed or badly damaged in the process, apparently deliberately so in at least some cases (Sandes 2013: 304).

But deliberate destruction, even urbicide, can be continued by the post-conflict redevelopment process both for the same reasons that it was carried out during the conflict and as a result of the failure to properly protect and manage cultural heritage within rebuilding and redevelopment. In examining an environmental catastrophe, it has been suggested that the ability of the effected community to resist unwanted development or intervention is considerably weakened (Pyburn 2014: 230). In fact, it has been argued that an environmental disaster can create an ‘aperture’ – a context in which ‘the state, foreign investors, and transnational corporations step into a post-disaster space and quickly re- make the damaged or threatened landscape to suit their purposes and desires’ (Rebecca Zarger in Pyburn 2014: 230). The same can be said for communities that have suffered intensive armed conflict, particularly in urban areas. Due to the vagaries of international donor and media interest, post-conflict redevelopment often replicates short-term refu- gee assistance projects that focus on ‘lower order deliverables and measurable outputs’ rather than long-term development programmes (Zetter 2010: 158, 160). There is no place for the immeasurable and the intangible, for example social recovery. As a consequence, the local community is often ignored and considered ‘a liability to be neutralised rather than an asset to be utilised’ by the international agencies involved in the reconstruction (Barakat 2010: 253). This is further compounded by the fact that many countries that have suffered conflict in the last twenty years or so have also had low levels of development. International assistance has been focused on a ‘development-as-usual- approach’ that is insufficient to tackle the complex needs of such situations (del Castillo 2011: 2). Furthermore, such development tends to be based on globalised neoliberal policies that favour gentrification (Slater 2009: 298): damaged and overcrowded historic urban areas have been denigrated as slums needing complete redevelopment while other built cultural heritage has been considered only as part of place- and tourist industry- promotion. This is exemplified in a 2007 UN Habitat Report on Iraq’s cities that referred to deteriorated historic areas, including Baghdad’s historic medina, as slums (UN 2007: 6, 95) and then to Baghdad’s ‘93 archaeological sites and 12 historic buildings’ only under ‘Tourism Potential’ (UN 2007: 126). The results of such policies are often severely detrimental to the uniqueness of a place’s cultural heritage, and to existing communities (Kaminer et al 2011: 12). One of the criticisms of the rebuilding of Sarajevo, for example, which has left it with massive unemployment, increasing ethnic division, corruption and cronyism, was the tendency, by both national and international organisations, to view the rebuilding of Sarajevo only in physical terms. Amongst the things ignored by this attitude was culture; there was little if any funding for cultural locations or events. EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 15

Monuments around the city became tied into memorialization of the war and subsequently added to the post-war segregation (Lamphere-Englund 2015: 7).

Between Idealisation and Destruction: Beirut’s Archaeology The redevelopment of central Beirut (BCD) demonstrates a lot of these problems. Planned as a neoliberal regeneration project, the result is an upmarket tourist, shopping and business ‘destination’ that has, it is argued, excluded most of its original inhabitants and has lost much of its cultural identity (Cooke 2002; Schmid 2006; Ragab 2011; Ilyés 2015). The Ta’if Accord that stopped the war put in place a policy of amnesty and am- nesia because politically there was a strong desire to move on from it. Facing the immediate past is something of a ‘politician’s phobia’ (Seif 2009: 289), and indeed Rafiq Hariri, as prime minister, at a ceremony commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the start of the war, in 2000, declared that not a single building should be kept that would remind people of the civil war as there should be no need to preserve such a painful memory (quoted in Becherer 2005: 18).

The rebuilding of central Beirut was a highly complicated affair politically, financially, socially, practically (Sandes 2010: 84ff; Gavin 2015: 51). The aim had been to restore it as the financial and commercial centre that it had been prior to the war, and there was great significance attached to its rehabilitation. It was thought that this would restore Beirut’s historical role as a centre for trade, skills and financial services, re-establish its international standing and act as a kind of magnet development for the rest of the country (Schmid 2006: 366; Al-Hayat 19/05/93 in Diab 1999: 1). For a variety of reasons, not least the region’s instability and conflicts, this has not happened.

Planning for central Beirut’s rebuilding begun as early as 1977 when the newly formed governmental body, the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) put forward a plan that aimed to re-establish the BCD as a place for all of Lebanon’s communities and to retain Beirut’s historic Mediterranean and eastern character. This, though, was followed in 1983 by a master plan commissioned by Hariri’s engineering company, OGER Liban. Hariri was Lebanese but had made his fortune in development in Saudi Arabia, and it was this company with Dar al-Handasah and Solidere (Société Libanaise pour le Développementet la Reconstruction du Centre-Ville de Beyrouth) that was to ultimately oversee the redevelopment of the BCD (Sandes 2010: 80-81).

The original CDR plan was soon forgotten, and indeed unofficial ‘cleaning up’ operations resulted in some important historic buildings, including some of the souks, in the BCD demolished as early as 1983, clearly ignoring the recommendations of the CDR plan (Makdisi 1997: 667). In fact post-war plans, beyond some twenty-six religious and government buildings, made no provision what so ever for the cultural heritage in any shape or form, not even for archaeology despite the knowledge from previous excavations and the general history of Beirut that the city almost inevitably sat on significant archaeological deposits. This is not the impression given if one reads anything subsequently about the BCD and its redevelopment written by Solidere, or from a pro- 16 CAROLINE A. SANDES

Solidere point of view (for example Gavin 2015). The initial plans were for some 80% of the BCD to be demolished and rebuilt, and although in the end this is about what was demolished in total, these plans caused outcry and as a consequence the number of historic buildings to be retained was increased to almost 300 (Hamdan 1994; Gavin 1998, 222). The majority of these buildings were, though, within a designated Conservation Area centred on the Place de l’Etoile and the streets of Foch and Allenby. Outside of this area, the emphasis was on clearance and rebuilding (Gavin and Maluf 1996: 53).

In an attempt to do something about the archaeology, international specialists were called in and UNESCO was asked for a report in 1991. After much consultation with Dar al-Handasah, OGER Liban, the CDR, the Department of Antiquities (DGA) and Solidere, archaeological investigation was incorporated into the plans, along with the potential to preserve any significant sites, and finances were made available (Schofield 1992; Sandes 2010: 88).

But the archaeological profession in Lebanon was not set up to deal with large scale developer-led urban excavations, and after fifteen years of civil war the DGA was extremely under-resourced and understaffed. Due to the large scale of the work ahead, the Min- ister for Culture and Higher Education, Michel Eddé, put out a call for international assistance with the archaeological project. Consequently teams from fifteen different institutions, from Lebanon and from Europe, worked on at least 133 excavations in the BCD area (Ortali-Tarazi 2001-02: 356). Many of the excavations initially doubled as training excavations, for example the American University of Beirut/Leverhulme excavations of the Souks (Perring et al 1996) and the Place Debbas excavations run by a team from the Universities of Freiburg and Berlin (Heinz & Bartl 1997). There was, though, no overall plan even to coordinate this work; the best that could be done was to establish an overall site numbering system. A UNESCO-commissioned report compiled in 1993 highlighted several issues. One seems to be the overall lack of co-ordination or harmonisation between sites and their directors, added to which there was already a certain amount of intra-archaeological rivalry/resentment developing, which did not help relations with Solidere (Schofield 1994: 6, 12). UNESCO itself also came in for criticism with complaints of being overly-bureaucratic, and of not facilitating communication between the Paris and Beirut offices, nor of any forward planning (Schofield 1994: 13-14).

There are very mixed opinions on Solidere’s provision for the archaeological work. Solidere claim that the archaeology, and certainly any sites they considered worth saving, once it became clear that they had no option but to deal with it, were all rapidly incorporated into its plans; areas were made available for archaeological exploration and what they termed a ‘strategic approach’ was adopted to ensure that every site would be evalu- ated before redevelopment so that no ‘significant’ archaeology would be destroyed (Gavin and Maluf 1996: 28; Gavin 2015: 52; Solidere 2016). Indeed, some of the Solid- ere team were nominally interested, principally Jean-Paul Lebas, then Deputy General Manager, who was supportive from an early stage (H. Seeden pers. comm.). A number of Solidere staff were taken to the Viking centre of Jorvik in York, UK, to demonstrate to them what could be done with archaeological finds in terms of developing a tourist EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 17 attraction, which generated some enthusiasm. Solidere also appointed their own in- house archaeologist, Dr Hans Curvers. On the other hand, it is suggested that Solidere only took on the archaeological work because not to would be a huge public-relations issue and cause further delay (Sader 2001: 225).

In addition to the practical and professional complications, the archaeology also became caught up in the many political and religious issues. Lebanon is home to about seventeen different socio-religious groups, all of which have their own take on Lebanon’s history. It has been argued that one of the causes of the Lebanese civil war, beyond the great disparities of wealth, was a failure to develop a common history (Salibi 1988). Even prior to the war, archaeology and heritage was used to promote a supposed Phoenician identity, and there has been a tendency for some communities to appropriate elements of Lebanon’s history and heritage to the exclusion of others; an example being the Maro- nite Christian claiming of the Phoenician past as exclusively theirs (Seif 2009: 284, 285). These kinds of confessional politics played out in protests about what archaeological remains should be saved or destroyed, and the various factions usually only cared about what they considered to be their heritage, while not caring for anyone else’s (Sandes 2010: 89). So protests and the Phoenician element were used to ensure the preservation in situ of, for instance, the Iron Age remains discovered during excavations of the souks site, and of the Ancient Tell and Glacis site, even though settlement of the latter dated to an earlier period (Sandes 2010: 95). The small sixteenth-century Mamluk ribat that survived the demolition and clearance of the original souks buildings is another such example. It was built by Sufi Ibn ‘Iraq al-Dimashqi and it was initially considered to be a Shia shrine. Beirut is generally considered to be a Sunni city so it was very important to the local Shia population to have a shrine in the BCD, but the local Sunnis were not happy, and based on their own research decided Ibn ‘Iraq was in fact a Sunni from Syria, and claimed it as their own, fencing it off and adding a sign with the ‘correct’ history (Bercherer 2005: 27). The Mosque Al Omari, originally the twelfth-century Crusader cathedral of St John, was enlarged due to a Sunnite -endowment, which involved deep excavations with no archaeological recording that led to the destruction of Romano- Byzantine remains in what has been suggested as a kind of ‘purification’ of a sacred space (Seif 2009: 286). Something similar happened at the Greek Orthodox St George’s Cathedral, where Byzantine remains were carefully conserved but Ottoman and Mamluk archaeological remains were cleared away (Seif 2009: 286). So, rather than there being a commonality of the past, the archaeology was sometimes destroyed by or used to accen- tuate the socio-religious divisions.

Furthermore, many simply saw archaeology and conservation as political weapon to be used against Solidere and Hariri. There was a tendency to assume the archaeologists were against the development, and that they would support any attempts to halt it, but this was not the case (Seeden 2000: 181). Public support for archaeology and conservation was therefore not straightforward, and many complained bitterly that archaeologists were in fact destroying the heritage, and the usual debates raged as to whether one should work with the developers as better than nothing, or not at all so as not to give them any sense of legitimacy (Perring 2009: 305). Public opinion ranged from the sug- 18 CAROLINE A. SANDES

gestion that the archaeological discoveries created a new type of exciting and challenging public space (Kabbani 1998: 257), to others arguing that it was the archaeological excavations that were the final element in a systematic erasure of modern Beirut (el-Khoury 1998: 260).

In the end, mostly due to the sheer dedication of the archaeologists involved aided by those who were sympathetic, including some local developers, some archaeology was done and some of the sites were left to be conserved for display, allowing for a sense of Beirut’s past, but also a considerable amount was destroyed before anyone could get to it. Some of the conserved in situ sites have been incorporated into a walking trail (Solid- ere 2016). An area of about a hectare between Martyrs Square and Place de l’Etoile of multi-period archaeological remains was left open to be conserved as part of a Garden of Forgiveness to commemorate the civil war, though that has caused its own contro- versies and its landscaping and completion is on hold for the foreseeable future (Sandes 2010: 97; Gavin 2015: 60).

Solidere’s rebuilding of central Beirut is often considered an attempt to erase Beirut’s history (Schmid 2006: 375), and may in some ways be considered an extension of the urbicide inflicted on central Beirut during the war (Sandes 2013: 305). For all intents and purposes, and despite protest, some 80% of the city centre was demolished in the process of rebuilding, and it was also aimed at a rather homogenous wealthy elite, rather than recreating the heterogeneous space it was before the war. With the exception of the twenty-six religious and government buildings that were to be retained from the beginning, the majority of buildings conserved are Ottoman and French Mandate buildings.

The buildings demolished included much of the architecture of Lebanese architects built between 1940s and 1970s – in other words that which had helped to construct an identity for a young post-colonial republic (el-Dahdah 1998: 73), and very little to remind any one of the civil war beyond the inadvertent ‘monuments’ of the heavily damaged Murr Tower and Holiday Inn (though the latter is due to be redeveloped). All of the ‘memory’ has been placed on the non-related archaeological remains of the Garden of For- giveness, and there is much criticism that the historical image of the BCD is ‘saccharine’ (Ragab 2011: 110). Some of the uses of the past within the BCD suggest a deliberately selective memory, and also remind one that ‘destruction’ can be more subtle than a bull- dozer. Throsby (2012 118) has defined ‘disneyfication’ as ‘turning the heritage location or site into a consumer-oriented entertainment package – a Disneyland – in pursuit of greater economic profit’, and this in itself can hollow out the cultural heritage to nothing more than a mildly attractive and pseudo-traditional/-heritage backdrop.

The BCD has been described as a ‘polished mix of restored buildings, ancient ruins and glass towers… and a very costly monument to vanity and self-delusion’ (Ilyés 2015), but it is comparatively easy to disparage the BCD redevelopment under Solidere’s direction. Regardless of the outcome, it is important to remember that in 1989, a weak Lebanese government had, after fifteen years of a savage war, a thoroughly destroyed and by no means reconciled country to restore and no money to do so. Central Beirut was an over- EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 19 grown wasteland of ruined buildings and rubble; a public private partnership was quite possibly the only way to do it, particularly when being pushed by a successful and wealthy businessman, as Rafiq Hariri was, and there seemed little by way of real alterna- tives, or rather any opposition to the plans soon disappeared as the media was forced in- to compliance (Schmid 2006: 376). Angus Gavin (2015: 63), Solidere’s head of Urban Development, has acknowledged that redevelopment strategy of the BCD has priced ordinary Lebanese out of the BCD, leaving it the realm of the wealthy, but he suggests that this should not be seen as a failure as many cities develop high-end ‘downtowns’ which are considered a success. Maybe in time it will be a success, but for a war-torn and socially-divided country and city, the BCD redevelopment was what del Castillo (2011: 2) identified as a ‘development-as-usual-approach’ that failed to take into account the many social and economic complexities of not only Beirut but of Lebanon as a whole.

Aleppo and Post-Conflict Recovery There is no need for this to be repeated in Aleppo, or Homs, or Syria as a whole for that matter. Since the 1990s, and as demonstrated above, cultural heritage has come to be widely appreciated as a fundamental social value, even right, and an asset, combined with an understanding that its sustainable rehabilitation as a whole, rather than just prominent sites and buildings, comes part and parcel with the local people and their rehabilitation and sustainability. Projects such as the AKTC Historic Cities projects referred to previously are a positive demonstration of this.

Furthermore, while in the 1980s when Beirut was a war zone, Aleppo was repelling the Bab al-Faraj redevelopment project that was threatening to demolish a significant amount of this quarter of the historic city. By 1986 the Syrian Department of Antiquities and others had succeeded, mostly, and had got the old town listed as a World Heritage Site. Since then there have been other conservation projects in the city, not least the Cit- adels programme. In other words, Aleppo already has some history of protecting archaeology and conservation in the face of aggressive development. Furthermore, the Syrian Directorate-General of Antiquities still has a staff of 2,500 with 500 architects and engineers (Abdulkarim 2016: 10). Lebanon’s DGA in 1990 had four members of staff (Sadar 2001: 224). That is not to say help is not needed; restoring Aleppo’s cultural heritage alone will be a colossal job, not to mention that of the rest of the country, and the Director-General of Antiquities and Museums of Syria, Dr Maamoun Abdulkarim has urgently called for international help (2016: 9).

What perhaps is the same as the Beirut situation is that powerful urban development companies are already circling Aleppo, recognising huge potential for profit in its rebuilding (Fisk 2016). This level of destruction will have created one of Zarger’s (in Py- burn 2014: 230) ‘apertures’ into which foreign investors, corporations and other agencies will pour, but with their profit margins and/or soft power being of primary concern to them. Talks in May 2017 between Syria’s minister for culture, Mohammad al-Ahmad, and his Chinese counterpart, Luo Shugang, as part of China’s One Belt One Road programme to develop trade and relations in countries along the old Silk Routes have al- 20 CAROLINE A. SANDES

ready been reported, with Aleppo’s cultural heritage being specifically mentioned (Milhem 2017; al-Frieh & Said 2017). It is likely that the allies of the Assad regime will be most involved in the country’s reconstruction, including of Syria’s damaged cultural heritage. It has been reported, for example, that Chechnya, who supported Russia and the Assad regime in regaining Aleppo, are providing funding for the restoration of Aleppo’s Umayyad Mosque (Geopolmonitor 2017; Suchkov 2017; Fisk 2017). Experi- ence suggests that while large World Heritage and other such important sites may not suffer too much, even gain, from international investment, the more locally-important heritage and in particular the urban heritage will suffer, particularly that which may be considered politically sensitive.

The problem is that the quantities of financial investment required will be staggering. In Spring 2016 the World Bank had already estimated that some US$180 billion will be needed to bring back Syria to a pre-war level of GDP (World Bank 2016a), and that in a report of the 1 October 2016, the damage assessment was between US$5.9-7.3 billion, with Aleppo accounting for almost 60 percent of the damage costs (World Bank 2016b). This is in the face of catastrophic human tragedy – estimates range of the numbers dead to be between 250,000 and 470,000 (World Bank 2016b), not to mention those injured, displaced and who have fled the country all together, and that’s before the long-term cost and consequences of collective post-traumatic stress, loss of education and employment and other social problems are taken into account. Resistance to aggressive redevelopment plans that work from the top down will be difficult, but as Dr Abdulkarim (2016: 9) argued, “We refuse to have new hotels, new buildings in this site because, of course, if we do so, the people will ask us: it’s finished, you have destroyed everything, why did you rebuild new buildings? It’s not an archaeological issue, it’s an issue of identity of the city. We cannot leave Aleppo to businessmen.”

That the Beirut model should not be followed is also argued by many others, not least the Aleppo Project (Ilyés 2015). The Aleppo Project is run from the Shattuck Center on Conflict, Negotiation and Recovery at the Central European University’s School of Pub- lic Policy in Budapest. Its aim is ‘to gather as much as we can about the past of the city, document the horrors that have befallen it and think about what sort of future might lie ahead’. It is an open, multi-disciplinary collaboration that, thanks to the internet and social media is able to include Syrians, including those still in Aleppo, in its planning for post-conflict Aleppo (Aleppo Project 2016).

At least one redevelopment plan for Aleppo already exists in the form of Aleppo Di- verse|Open City: an urban vision for 2025, a pre-war report on the work of a joint undertaking by the Municipality of Aleppo and the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ / BMZ), as part of the Syrian-German Program for Sustainable Urban Development and published in 2010. Its vision was of Aleppo ‘as a place that displays the authenticity of a contemporary Middle Eastern city, a place where modernity and a rich cultural heritage do not conflict with each other, but merge into a mutually enriching relationship. The unbowed tradition of openness and coexistence of the local people [is] to be witnessed all over the city’ (Saad & Stellmach 2010: 5). It was coordinated by a German planning EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 21 practice, Uberbau. Mindful of the historic tendencies of western planners imposing their own values onto cities of developing countries and to avoid influencing or defining the objectives of Aleppo's development from the perspective of a foreign practice, Uberbau based the project on the Local Agenda 21 of 2009 and worked from the critical issues then facing the city as identified by working groups of Aleppo’s city council (Saad & Stellmach 2015: 117). From this eight ecological, economic and cultural benchmarks for sustainable development in Aleppo were identified of which the third was ‘Preserving and reviving heritage to consolidate the individual's belonging to the environmental and cultural surroundings’ (Saad & Stellmach 2015: 118). While they appreciate importance of cultural heritage and the dangers of disneyfication, they do slip into this unimaginative tendency to see cultural heritage primarily as a tourist attraction (Saad & Stellmach 2015: 127).

This report was well received by both local and international partners, and seems to offer an example of how foreign specialists and local professionals and stakeholders can successfully work together. The inclusiveness of the project in involving the local communities marked a major positive change in the approach to planning in Syria, and even offered a potential template for other urban centres (Saad & Stellmach 2015: 128). How- ever, the reasons given for the project not being implemented are telling: the project ultimately failed to be even partially implemented, most likely because of the resistance of powerful landowners. The Strategy questioned the over provision of developable land, which was apparently driven by speculation interests. Uberbau's clear recommendation to reduce the amount of developable land would have reduced the potential profitability of many properties, probably rendering the public ratifica- tion of the amendments to the masterplan impossible. Later in 2010, some of the local actors involved in the Aleppo spatial planning process were detained and questioned concerning illegal land speculation. In an atmosphere of such uncertainty, it very quickly became politically undesirable to be involved with Aleppo's spatial planning in any way, bringing the process to a standstill up until the current civil- political crisis emerged. (Saad & Stellmach 2015: 128).

These kinds of problems so evident before the war (as for example also mentioned by Al-Sabouni (2016)) will not have disappeared with the war. If anything, in the weakened if not destroyed social and physical environment of the post-war situation, they will become worse. In 2015 such concerns were voiced by Mamoun Fansa, a Syrian archaeologist and native of Aleppo now resident in Berlin: ‘We cannot stand by until the last em- bers of the war have died down … If we don’t start with a reconstruction plan now, we’ll pay for it for the rest of our lives, because the moment there’s a peace agreement, international investors, especially from Saudi Arabia and Lebanon along with corrupt officials from the Syrian government, will pounce on the city and guarantee that Aleppo loses its historical face once and for all’ (Connolly & Bloch 2015). Corruption and post- conflict redevelopment is a much discussed subject (for example Cooley & Marguette 2015).

Beyond the major sites and buildings, it is too easy for cultural heritage to be swept away in such situations, and this is particularly so if it has not been included as a principal 22 CAROLINE A. SANDES

component of redevelopment plans. The greatest problem for archaeology and cultural heritage in Beirut was the lack of provision for it in the overall plans for the redevelopment of the BCD. By the time it was realised that central Beirut’s historic fabric and archaeology were in grave danger, the master plan had already been completed. Although changes were made, there was never going to be sufficient temporal and financial resources to manage the excavations properly, let alone allow archaeology to contribute more fully to capacity building, employment and social rehabilitation.

Discussion In January 2017, after Syrian government forces had recaptured the city, UNESCO produced an emergency assessment on the extent of damage to Aleppo’s cultural heritage and to its educational institutions, reporting that about 30% of Aleppo’s old town had been totally destroyed, while a further 60% of it severely damaged (UNESCO 2017a). This assessment was followed by an international coordination meeting convened by UNESCO in Beirut and involving representatives of the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM), the Aleppo City Council, the Ministry of Tourism, the Directorate of Aleppo Awqaf (Ministry of religious endowments), NGOs and universities to discuss safeguarding and first-aid measures for Aleppo’s cultural heritage; the Director of the UNESCO Regional Office in Beirut, Hamed Al Hammami, stressed that ‘Syria’s national and local stakeholders have successfully started working in a tremen- dously difficult context, and future recovery and rehabilitation efforts must advance in order, with extreme care and precision.’ (UNESCO 2017b).

All this focus seems, however, to be on the World Heritage Site of the Old Town. This, combined with the problem of heritage of certain periods being considered more important than others due to the need to attract international involvement, and due to the potential overemphasis on tourism as a primary reason for conservation, will almost certainly lead to surrounding and more locally important cultural heritage being lost. These problems were referred to earlier in relation to Beirut and Palestine but Wyndham in her work on cultural heritage in Afghanistan has also highlighted these issues. In relation to work in the Bamiyan valley, with an exhibition at the National Museum in Kabul, and at Mes Aynak, there has been an international focus on Afghanistan’s pre-Islamic past while simultaneously neglecting the Islamic heritage with seemingly no appreciation of the latter’s greater relevance to the Afghans themselves (Wyndham 2015: 122, 128, 132). She notes the lack of ‘Afghan agency’ in determining conservation priorities and the evident shortcomings of this, though this is something that at last has been realised by UNESCO and is being addressed, for example by work on Islamic sites in the Bamiyan valley (Wyndham 2015: 139).

Despite the precedent of Beirut, there is also a very real danger that archaeology, which tends to get overlooked even if there is a genuine interest in conservation and restoration (there is little mention of archaeological investigations by the Turquoise Mountain Foundation or any of the AKTC projects, for example), will not be fully included. As discussed there are, however, two major problems with the inclusion of archaeology in EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 23 post-conflict rebuilding. The first is well established – that cultural heritage, including archaeological remains, is political, and in terms of economics is often recognised only for its tourism benefits. While both of these aspects can ensure the survival of some material, it can equally lead to destruction of other material, either directly in its removal, or indirectly via neglect or disneyfication.

This leads to the second problem of managing archaeology so that both its core values and is social and economic potential are protected and appreciated but do not come into conflict. Archaeology is primarily about knowledge creation and understanding the past, but this cannot be considered in isolation from local conditions and communities in their widest senses. Archaeological professionals can sometimes exclude or disregard local communities’ values of the site, which can range from folklore to economic, seeing them of lesser value to the scientific/academic value, leading at best to a lost opportunity to engage local interest and support and at worst to potential conflict (Orbaşlı 2013: 241; Gillot 2010: 11). In getting the balance right between development at any cost and being against development, it has been argued that heritage professionals in general need to ‘reinvent the field of public heritage as a revival of peoples’ sense of belonging and participation in a living cultural community, not just the preservation or safeguarding of symbolic heritage elements’ (Silberman 2012: 440).

Nor can the practice of archaeology often be separated from archaeologists’ and others own priorities and politics. It has been argued that the discipline of archaeology operates almost exclusively within the framework of the nation state which in turn exercises its sovereignty over the archaeological record and therefore over the representation of the past via state departments of antiquities, national museums, education curricula etc., which is difficult to break free of to ensure that what’s best for the archaeology is at the core of any work (Stritch 2013: 153, 161). Stritch (2013: 163) argues it is only through long term workable plans that have the archaeological remains at their heart, that the concerns of other interested parties can be protected also. Likewise Orbaşlı (2013: 251) argues that the tangible economic and social benefits of archaeological sites are best achieved when there is an active excavation, research or conservation plan, with a corresponding management presence, for the site in question. But this requires an objective, egalitarian approach that Stritch (2013) acknowledges is hard to reach within the political confines of the nation-state; this is even more so in the conflict/post-conflict situation as this intensifies these issues.

Conclusion As demonstrated, there is no doubt that involving cultural heritage, particularly archaeology, in conflict/post-conflict rebuilding is a highly complex matter, fraught with politics, economics and dilemmas over social, financial and cultural heritage priorities. But what is also demonstrated is the fundamental importance of cultural heritage to society and what cultural heritage, specifically archaeology, can offer in the conflict/post- conflict situation. 24 CAROLINE A. SANDES

It is crucial, however, that from the outset archaeological assessment and investigation be a key component of all restoration and redevelopment plans, whether for, in the case of Aleppo, restoring the Old Town or rebuilding beyond it. There is time, despite the obvious urgency of the situation, to factor in archaeological work: not all sites or areas are going to redeveloped at once or at the same time. Likewise, it can take many months even years to get the larger scale rebuilding programmes off the planning board and into action. It is crucial that archaeological plans and resources be ready to fit into these timescales, so to identify potentially important sites and to make use of sites waiting rebuilding. There is plenty of transferrable experience of successful developer-led archaeological investigation from cities worldwide that could be adapted and utilised. Training programmes, such as that being provided by the British Museum for Iraqi archaeologists (British Museum News 2017), or to that for stonemasons in Aleppo announced by the Syrian Directorate of Antiquities (Heritage for Peace 2017) can be put in place. They in turn could train and involve other local people both to know what to look out for when they are rebuilding their homes or clearing rubble, and to work on excavations and survey. Archaeological excavation is something that can be learned, with skilled supervision, on the job and as well as getting local people involved with their heritage, can generate much needed employment, both for the short and long-term on post-excavation work, as demonstrated in Beirut.

Rather than seeing archaeology as a drain on resources, it should be considered financial investment in job -creation and skills -development, and for all the socio-cultural reasons detailed previously. The challenge is ensuring that archaeology and its core values are a principal part of any reconstruction plan from the outset, and in the case of Aleppo, that applies equally to the plans to restore the Old Town and to rebuilding plans for the wider city.

References ABBOUD, S. 2016. Syria Civil War: ‘the sky is falling’ in: Aleppo. Al Jazeera, 3 May 2016. Accessed 10 May 2017 http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/05/syria-civil-war-sky-falling-aleppo- 160503102848888.html. ABDULKARIM, M., 2016. Challenges facing cultural institutions in times of conflict: Syri- an cultural heritage, in: Post-trauma reconstruction: colloquium at ICOMOS Headquarters, Cha- renton-le-Pont – France, 4 March 2016, volume 2, 9-11. Paris: ICOMOS. AKTC (Aga Khan Trust for Culture), 2007a. Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme: an integrated approach to urban rehabilitation. Geneva: Aga Khan Trust for Culture. AKTC (Aga Khan Trust for Culture), 2012. Restoration projects in Afghanistan: project brief 2012. Accessed 3 November 2016. http://www.akdn.org/press-centre/publications. ALEPPO PROJECT, 2016. Accessed 3 November 2016 http://www.thealeppoproject.com/home-inn/. AL-FRIEH, M. & SAID, H. 2017. Culture Minister discusses cooperation within Belt and Road initiative with Chinese ambassador. SANA 25 May 2017. http://sana.sy/en/?p=106941 EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 25

AL-SABOUNI, M., 2016. The Battle for Home: the memoir of a Syrian architect. London: Thames and Hudson ARCHNET, 2016. Bab al-Faraj, Aleppo, Syria. Accessed 3 August 2016. http://archnet.org/sites/2875/media_contents/98960, ARMAHLY, M., BLASI, C. & HANNAH, L., 2004. Stari Most: rebuilding more than a historic bridge in Mostar. Museum International 56(4): 6–17. ASCHERSON, N., 2007. Cultural Destruction by War, and its Impact on Group Identities, in: N. STANLEY-PRICE (ed.), Cultural Heritage in Postwar Recovery. Rome: ICCROM Con- servation Studies 6, 17–25. ASHWORTH, G.J, B. GRAHAM & J.E. TUNBRIDGE, 2007. Pluralising Pasts: Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural Societies. London and Ann Arbor, MI, Pluto Press. BARAKAT, S., 2007. Postwar reconstruction and the recovery of cultural heritage: critical lessons from the last fifteen years, in: N. STANLEY-PRICE (ed.), Cultural Heritage in Postwar Recovery. Rome: ICCROM Conservation Studies 6, 26–39. BARAKAT, S., 2010. Seven pillars for post-war reconstruction, in: S. BARAKAT (ed.), After the Conflict: Reconstruction and Development in the Aftermath of War. London & New York: I.B. Tauris (second edition), 249–70. BARAKAT, S. & M. CHARD, 2010. Building post-war capacity: Where to Start?, in S. BARAKAT (ed.), After the Conflict: Reconstruction and Development in the Aftermath of War. Lon- don & New York: I.B. Tauris (second edition), 173–90. BECHERER, R., 2005. A matter of life and debt; the untold costs of Rariq Hariri’s new Beirut. The Journal of Architecture 10 (1): 1–42. BEVAN, R., 2007. The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War. London: Reaktion Books. BIANCA, S., 1987. The Bab Al-Faraj project, in HASAN-UDDIN KHAN (ed.), Mimar 24: Architecture in Development. Singapore: Concept Media Ltd, 26–35. BRITISH MUSEUM NEWS, 2017. Blog: The Iraqi archaeologists saving their heritage 3rd March 2017. http://blog.britishmuseum.org/the-iraqi-archaeologists-saving-their-heritage/. BUSQUETS, J. (ed.), 2005. Aleppo. Rehabilitation of the Old City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Design. CONNOLLY, K. & BLOCH, W., 2015. The war is still raging but the race to rebuild Alep- po has already begun’. The Guardian 12th March 2015. Accessed 3 November 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/12/war-rebuild-aleppo-syria- architects-reconstruction COOLEY, L. & MARQUETTE, H., 2015. Corruption and post-conflict reconstruction, in: P. JACKSON (ed.), Handbook for Security and Development. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 329– 69. COOKE, M. 2002. Beirut reborn: the political aesthetics of auto-destruction. The Yale Journal of Criticism 15 (2): 393–424. COWARD, M. 2009. Urbicide: the Politics of Urban Destruction. London & New York: Routledge. DEFREESE, M., 2009. Kosovo: cultural heritage in conflict. Journal of Conflict Archaeology 2009 5(1), 257–69. DE JONG, F. & ROWLANDS, M., 2008. Introduction: postconflict heritage, Journal of Mate- rial Culture 13(2), 131–134. 26 CAROLINE A. SANDES

DEL CASTILLO, G., 2011. The Economics of peace: five rules for effective reconstruction. United States Institute of Peace Special Report 286. Accessed 19 January 2012 http://www.usip.org/files/resources/SR286_The_Economics_of_Peace.pdf DE CESARI, C., 2010. Creative heritage: Palestinian heritage NGOs and defiant arts of government. American Anthropologist 112 (4), 625–37. DIAB, H., 1999. Beirut: Reviving Lebanon's Past. Westport, USA: Praeger Publishers. DISSARD, L. & HARMANŞAH, O. 2016. IAS Materialities and Technologies Workshop: Archaeology as Salvage Operation in the Middle East - Ethics, Politics and Methods. 10th December 2016. Accessed 11 December 2016 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/ias-events/ias-materialities-and- technologies-archaeology-as-salvage-operation-in-the-middle-east-ethics-politics-and- methods. EL-DAHDAH, F., 1998. On Solidere's Motto, “Beirut: Ancient City of the Future”, in: P. ROWE & H. SARKIS (eds.), Projecting Beirut: episodes in the construction and reconstruction of a modern city. Munich, London, New York: Prestal, 68–77. EL-KHOURY, R., 1998. Beirut sublime, in P. ROWE & H. SARKIS (eds.), Projecting Beirut: episodes in the construction and reconstruction of a modern city. Munich, London, New York: Prestal, 260–62. FISK, R., 2016. Who will fund the dream of rebuilding Syria back to its former glory? In- dependent 11th June 2016. Accessed 3 November 2016 http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/who-will-fund-the-dream-of-rebuilding-syria- a7076436.html FISK, R., 2017. Syrians aren’t just rebuilding an ancient mosque in Aleppo – they are rebuilding their community. Independent 25th July 2017. Accessed 30 July 2017 http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-great-mosque-of-aleppo-ummayad-rebuild- the-city-a7858846.html FRANCEINFO, 2016. Document France 2. Syrie: au cœur de la vieille ville d'Alep, ravagée par la guerre 25 January 2016. Accessed 25 July 2016 http://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/revolte-en-syrie/document-france-2-syrie-au-coeur- de-la-vieille-ville-d-alep-ravagee-par-la-guerre_1284019.html FREGONESE, S. 2009. The urbicide of Beirut? Geopolitics and the built environment in the Lebanese civil war (1975-1976). Political Geography 28, 309–318. GAVIN, A., 1998. Heart of Beirut: making the Master Plan for the renewal of the Central District, in: P. ROWE & H. SARKIS (eds.), Projecting Beirut: episodes in the construction and reconstruction of a modern city. Munich, London, New York: Prestal, 217–233. GAVIN, A., 2015. The corporate discourse: learning from Beirut’s central area renewal, in: R. SALIBA (ed.), Urban Design in the Arab World: reconceptualizing boundaries. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 51–64. GAVIN, A. & MALUF, R., 1996. Beirut Reborn: the restoration and development of the Central Dis- trict. London: Academy Editions. GEOPOLMonitor staff, 2017. Chechan government to restore Aleppo’s Great Mosque. GEOPOLMonitor 24th January 2017. Accessed 27 January 2017. http://www.geopolmonitor.com/chechen-government-restore-aleppos-great-mosque/ EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 27

GILLOT, L., 2010. Towards a socio-political history of archaeology in the Middle East: the development of archaeological practice and its impacts on local communities in Syr- ia. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 20(1), 4–16. GLASS, C., 2016. Syria Burning: a short history of a catastrophe. London: Verso. GONNELLA, J., 2008. The Citadel of Aleppo. Geneva: Aga Khan Trust for Culture. HADJAR, A., 2000. Historical Monuments of Aleppo. Aleppo: Automobile and Touring Club of Syria. HAMDAN, K., 1994. Smart patches, shame about the coat. New Internationalist 258. Ac- cessed01 December 2006. http://live.newint.org/issue258/smart.htm; HAMLIN, A., 2000. Archaeological heritage management in Northern Ireland: challenges and solutions, in F. P. MCMANAMON & A. HATTON (eds.), Cultural Resource Management in Contemporary Society: perspectives on managing and presenting the past. London and New York: Routledge, 66–75. HAMMAMI, F., 2012. Conservation under occupation: conflictual powers and cultural heritage meanings, Planning Theory & Practice 13 (2), 233–56. HEINZ, M. & BARTL, K., 1997. BEY 024: “Place Debbas”: Preliminary report. BAAL (Bulletin d'Archéologie et d'Architecture Libanaises) 2: 236-257. HERITAGE FOR PEACE, 2017. Damage to Syria’s Heritage, 21st August 2017. Accessed 21 August 2017. http://www.heritageforpeace.org/syria-culture-and-heritage/damage-to-cultural- heritage/previous-damage-newsletters/damage-to-syrias-heritage-21-august-2017/ ILYÉS, I.I., 2015. Rebuilding Downtown Beirut. Accessed 12 May 2016. http://www.thealeppoproject.com/papers/reconstructing-downtown-beirut/ JANKOWSKI, S., 1990. Warsaw: destruction, secret town planning, 1939-44, and postwar reconstruction, in: J.M. DIEFENDORF (ed.), Rebuilding Europe's Bombed Cities. London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 77–93. JODIDIO, P. (ed.), 2011. The Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme: strategies for urban regeneration. London: Prestel. JU’BEH, N. 2009. Cultural heritage in Palestine: RIWAQ new experiences and approaches. Accessed 23 January 2015. www.jerusalemsverein.de/downloads/Texte/Cultural_Heritage_in_Palestine.pdf KABBANI, O.R., 1998. Public Space as Infrastructure: the case of the postwar reconstruction of Beirut, in: P. ROWE and H. SARKIS (eds.), Projecting Beirut: episodes in the construction and reconstruction of a modern city. Munich, London, New York: Prestal, 240–59. KAMINER, T, ROBLES-DURÁN, M, & SOHN, H. (eds.), 2011. Urban Asymmetries. Studies and projects on neoliberal urbanization. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. KELLER, J., 2015. Why ISIS’s destruction of ancient art is more than a war crime. The Daily Dot, 17th March 2015. Accessed 11 May 2017 https://www.dailydot.com/via/isis-war-crimes-genocide-ancient-art/ KOHLMEYER, K., 2009. The Temple of the Storm God in Aleppo during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages. Near Eastern Archaeology 72(4), 190–202. LAMPHERE-ENGLUND, G., 2015. Rebuilding Sarajevo. Budapest: Centre for Conflict, Ne- gotiation and Recovery, Central European University. LAWLER, A., 2011. Rebuilding Beirut. Archaeology 64 (4). Accessed 18 November 2016 http://archive.archaeology.org/1107/features/beirut_lebanon_urban_archaeology.html 28 CAROLINE A. SANDES

LICCIARDI, G. & R. AMIRTAHMASEBI (eds.), 2012. The Economics of Uniqueness: investing in historic city cores and cultural heritage assets for sustainable development. Washington DC: The World Bank. MAKDISI, S., 1997. Laying Claim to Beirut: urban narrative and spatial identity in the age of Solidere. Critical Inquiry 23 (3): 660–705. MANNERGREN SELIMOVIC, J. & L. STRÖMBOM (2015) Whose place?: Emplaced narratives and the politics of belonging in East Jerusalem's contested neighbourhood of Sil- wan, Space and Polity, 19 (2), 191-205. MANSEL, P., 2016. Aleppo: the rise and fall of Syria's great merchant city. London: I.B. Tauris. MILHEM, R. 2017. Syria and China discuss means of boosting cultural cooperation. SA- NA 17 May 2017. Accessed 20 May 2017. http://sana.sy/en/?p=106047 OECD, 2001. The DAC Guidelines: Helping Prevent Violent Conflict. Paris: OECD. ORBAŞLI, A., 2013. Archaeological site management and local development. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 15 (3-4), 237–53. ORTALI-TARAZI, R., 2001-02. Loi et pratique dans la conservation du patrimoine cul- turel: le case des fouilles archéologiques dans le centre-ville de Beyrouth. ARAM Periodi- cal 13-14: 355–358. OSTRY, J. D, P.LOUNGANI & D. FURCERI, 2016. Neoliberalism oversold. Finance & De- velopment June 2016, 38–41. PERRING, D., 2009. Archaeology and the postwar reconstruction of Beirut. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 11:3-4, 296–314. PERRING, D., SEEDEN, H., SHEEHAN, P. & WILLIAMS, T., 1996. BEY 006, 1994-1995: The Souks Area: interim report of the AUB project. BAAL (Bulletin d'Archéologie et d'Ar- chitecture Libanaises) 1: 176–206. PORTER, L. 2016. Photos reveal great damage to the mighty Aleppo. Telegraph 5 February 2016. Accessed 3 November 2016 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/middle-east/syria/articles/Photos- reveal-great-damage-to-mighty-Aleppo-Citadel/ PULLAN, W. & M GWIAZDA, 2009. ‘City of David’: urban design and frontier heritage. Jerusalem Quarterly 39, 29–38. PYBURN, K.A., 2014. Preservation as ‘disaster capitalism’: the downside of site rescue and the complexity of community engagement. Public Archaeology 13:1-3, 226–239. RAGAB, T.S. 2011. The crisis of cultural identity in rehabilitating historic Beirut- downtown. Cities 28: 107–114. RJOOB, A.A., 2009. The impact of Israeli Occupation on the conservation of cultural heritage sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territories: the case of ‘salvage excavations’. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 11(3-4), 214–35. RUCK, J. 2016. Destruction of Aleppo: then and now – in pictures. The Guardian, 21st December 2016. Accessed 22 December 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/21/aleppo-syria-war-destruction-then- and-now-in-pictures; accessed 10/05/17 SALIBI, K., 1988. A House of Many Mansions: the history of Lebanon reconsidered. London and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. SANDES, C.A., 2010. Archaeology, Conservation and the City: Post-Conflict Redevelopment in Lon- don, Berlin and Beirut. Oxford: Archaeopress. EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 29

SANDES, C.A., 2013. Urban cultural heritage and armed conflict: the case of Beirut Cen- tral District, in: J. D. KILA & J. A. ZEIDLER (eds.), Cultural Heritage in the Cross-Hairs: Pro- tecting Cultural Property during Conflict. Leiden: Brill, 287–314. SANDS, P., 2016. On Genocide and Trauma. Financial Times, 15th April, 2016. Accessed 11 May 2017. https://www.ft.com/content/2ce55dee-01c7-11e6-ac98-3c15a1aa2e62 SADER, H., 2001. Lebanon's Heritage: will the past be part of the future?, in: A. NEU- WIRTH & P. PFLITSCH (eds.), Crisis and Memory in Islamic Societies. Beirut: Ergon Verlag Würzburg in Kommission, 217–30. SAAD, A. & T. STELLMACH, 2010. Aleppo Diverse|Open City: an urban vision for 2025. Berlin: Uberbau. SAAD, A. & T. STELLMACH, 2015. Aleppo 2025 City Development Strategy: a critical reflection, in R. SALIBA (ed.), Urban Design in the Arab World: reconceptualizing boundaries. London & New York: Routledge, 115-140 SCHMID, H. 2006. Privatized urbanity or a politicized society? Reconstruction in Beirut after the Civil War. European Planning Studies 14 (3): 365–81. SCHOFIELD, J., 1992. Recommendations concerning the future management of the archaeology of Beirut. Unpublished report, April 1992. SCHOFIELD, J., 1994. Report of mission to co-ordinate archaeological work on the centre-ville Beirut Project (17th September – 27th September 1993). UNESCO, unpublished report. SEEDEN, H., 2000. Lebanon's archaeological heritage on trial in Beirut: what future for Beirut's past?, in: MCMANAMON F. P. & A. HATTON (eds.), Cultural Resource Management in Contemporary Society: perspectives on managing and presenting the past. London and New York: Routledge, 168–87. SEIF, A., 2009. Conceiving the past: fluctuations in a multi-value system. Conservation and Management of Archaeology Sites 11(3–4), 282–95. SILBERMAN, N.A., 1991. Desolation and restoration: the impact of a Biblical concept on Near Eastern archaeology. The Biblical Archaeologist 54 (2): 76–87. SILBERMAN, N.A, 2012. Changing visions of heritage value: what role should the experts play? Association francophone pour le savoir (ACFAS). Accessed 19 May 2017 https://works.bepress.com/neil_silberman/48/ SLATER, T. 2009. Missing Marcuse: on gentrification and displacement. City 13 (2), 292– 311. SOLIDERE, 2016. Archaeology. Accessed 15 November 2016 http://www.solidere.com/city-center/history-and-culture/archeology STANLEY-PRICE, N. (ed.), 2007. Cultural Heritage in Postwar Recovery. Rome: ICCROM. STRITCH, D., 2013. Contested archaeologies: archaeology in politics and identity formation, in C. RUSSELL, L. HOGAN & M. JUNKER-KENNY (eds.), Ethics for Graduate Re- searchers: a cross-disciplinary approach. London: Elsevier, 147–65. SUCHKOV, M., 2017. What’s Chechnya doing in Syria? Al-Monitor 26th March 2017. Ac- cessed 26 May 2017. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/03/russia-syria-chechnya-ramzan- kadyrov-fighters.html TAWAKALNA, I. & SHARAF, N., 2005. Citadel of Aleppo. Damascus (publisher not identified). 30 CAROLINE A. SANDES

TMF, 2016. Turquoise Mountain. Accessed 15 November 2016 https://turquoisemountain.org/about THROSBY, D., 2012. The Economics of Cultural Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press UNESCO, 2011. Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape. Accessed 19 May 2016. http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php- URL_ID=48857&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html UNESCO, 2012. UNESCO Director-General deplores destruction of ancient Aleppo markets, a World Heritage site. Accessed 12 May 2016. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/anti- doping/sv15/news/unesco_director_general_deplores_destruction_of_ancient_alep/ UNESCO, 2014. Heritage and cultural diversity at risk in Iraq and Syria. UN Report. Accessed 12 May 2016. http://en.unesco.org/ UNESCO, 2016. Ancient City of Aleppo. Accessed 12 May 2016. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/21. UNESCO 2017a. UNESCO reports on extensive damage in first emergency assessment mission to Aleppo, Thursday, 19 January 2017. Accessed 20 January 2017. http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1619/ UNESCO 2017b. UNESCO hosts First International Coordination Meeting for the recovery of Aleppo’s heritage, Thursday, 9 March 2017. Accessed 10 March 2017. http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1639/ UNESCO, United Nations Population Fund & United Nations Development Pro- gramme, 2015. Post-2015 Dialogues on Culture and Development. Paris: UN. UN, 2009. Agenda 21 Sustainable Development. Accessed 3 November 2016. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/outcomedocuments/agenda21 UN Human Settlement Programme 2007. The State of Iraq Cities Report 2006/2007: cities in transition. Nairobi: UN. UN General Assembly 2013. A/Res/68/223. Culture and sustainable development. Ac- cessed 3 November 2016. http://research.un.org/en/docs/ga/quick/regular/68 WATENPAUGH, K.D., 2006. Being Modern in the Middle East: revolution, nationalism, colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class. Princeton: Princeton University Press WEDGWOOD, T., 2009. History in two dimensions or three? Working class responses to history. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 15(4), 277–97. WILLIAMS, T., 2015. Archaeology: reading the city through time, in: F. BANDARIN & R. VAN OERS (eds.), Reconnecting the City: the Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the Future of Urban Heritage. Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 19–46. WORLD BANK, 2016a. Syria’s economic outlook – Spring 2016. Accessed 1 December 2016. http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/syria/publication/economic-outlook-spring- 2016 WORLD BANK, 2016b. Syria Overview, 1st October, 2016. Accessed 1 December 2016. http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/syria/overview. WYNDHAM, C., 2015. Reconstructing Afghan identity: nation-building, international relations and the safeguarding of Afghanistan’s Buddhist heritage, in: P. BASU & W. MOD- EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 5-31 31

EST (eds.), Museums, Heritage and International Development, London & New York: Routledge, 122–42. ZETTER, R., 2010. Land, housing and the reconstruction of the built environment, in: BARAKAT, S. (ed.) After the Conflict: Reconstruction and Development in the Aftermath of War. London & New York: I.B. Tauris (second edition), 155–72.

32 Print: ISBN 978-1-78491-763-0 Online: ISSN 2531-8810 EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2, December 2017: 33-48 33 Published Online: Dec 2017

Reconstructing Cultural Heritage in Conflict Zones: Should Palmyra be Rebuilt?

Nour A. Munawar

University of Amsterdam

Abstract Cultural heritage has fallen under the threat of being of damaged and/or erased due to armed conflicts, and destruction has increasingly become a major part of daily news all over the world. The destruction of cultural heritage has escalated in Syria as the ongoing armed conflict has spread to World Heritage Sites, such as Palmyra and the old city of Aleppo. The devastation of Syria’s war has deliberately and systematically targeted archaeological monuments dating from the prehistoric, Byzantine, Roman, and Islamic periods, with no distinction being made of the cultural, historical, and socio-economic significance of such sites. The violence of this conflict is not, of course, limited to the destruction of cultural property, and has first and foremost served to introduce non- state radical actors, such as Daesh, who targeted local people, archaeological site, museum staff and facilities. The destruction and re-purposing of monuments in Syria, such as Daesh’s attempts to turn churches into mosques, are heavy-handed attempts to re-write history by erasing physical evidence. In this paper, I explore the semantics of continuous attempts to reconstruct cultural heritage sites, destroyed by Daesh, during the ongoing war, and how the destruction and reconstruction of Syria’s heritage have been deployed to serve political agendas.

Keywords: Palmyra, Syria, Conflict, Reconstruction, Cultural heritage

Introduction The World Heritage Site of Tadmur – the Arabic name of Palmyra – or as it is known in Syria “the bride of the desert” has been in danger ever since the crisis in Syria turned into an armed conflict at the end of 2011. Palmyra has been part of the World Heritage List since 1980, and was included in the list of World Heritage sites in danger in 2013, alongside five other World Heritage Sites in Syria. In September 2015, the United Nations confirmed that jihadists of Daesh had blown up the Bel-Temple of Palmyra, which dates back to 32 CE. Shortly after this the official Syrian army confirmed that Palmyra had, after weeks of intense combat, been recaptured, and that the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums in Syria had begun preparing plans to restore and reconstruct what had been destroyed. Although the destruction of Palmyra has been well-documented by activists since the beginning of Syria’s armed conflict, the speed at which Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph was restored has astonished many archaeologists and observers of cultural heritage. In the meantime, a replica of Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph CONTACT N.A. Munawar, [email protected]

34 NOUR A. MUNAWAR

of Palmyra has been erected in Trafalgar Square in London, and has garnered mixed reviews in the media.

In this paper, I seek to answer the questions opened by these reactions, and the symbolic character of this specific monument. The heritage gaze is partial and selective (Harrison 2010). Some have asked, why Aleppo’s Umayyad Mosque minaret – which was destroyed in April 2012 – or the ancient gates of Nimrud and Nineveh in Iraq, which suffered at the hands of Daesh, have not been reconstructed? This question triggers larger questions regarding the parameters of heritage reconstruction as practice; is it not through the process of decay and loss that monuments are incorporated into the archaeological record? Furthermore, is not damage and/or destruction just another phase in the life-history of a monument, albeit a less than positive one in terms of long- term preservation?

This paper explores the different stakeholders and what their interests in Palmyra are, such as from local people, and how each stakeholder values and perceives the World Heritage Site. The interests of the stakeholders are studied based on how each stakeholder has dealt with Palmyra’s ruins and what tools and methods have been deployed to gain the legitimacy of controlling the site. This paper aims to investigate how the destruction of Palmyra’s heritage – during Syria’s conflict – has been represented in the media reports and academia, and how the destruction affected Palmyra and the reconstruction plans.

Finally, I will discuss the issues that need to be considered when attempts are made to restore monuments in a place of ongoing conflict, such as the perimeter of Palmyra. In my view, no rebuilding or restoration plans can be safeguarded at this stage of Syria’s unfinished war and it is wrong to believe that even state of the art modern restoration technologies can in some way replicate or recreate the authenticity of a contested heritage.

Palmyra and Syria’s Conflict Cultural cleansing, destruction, demolition, deterioration, damage, ruination and several other negative terms that indicate the erasing of parts or complete heritage sites have become the keywords which characterize cultural heritage discourse in the early twentieth-first century. This trend has been confronted by optimistic – and sometimes naïve – reactions that were led by “positivist” scholars and the international community to promote a responsive language, such as the reconstruction, rebuilding, restoration, protection, and preservation of cultural heritage sites (for further discussion see Kealy 2016). Amidst this negative and positive collection of terms, cultural heritage sites are still being destroyed and conflict does not show mercy towards cultural heritage. Skimming through the history of cultural heritage destruction after the Second World War shows that the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq, alongside the Balkan Wars (Abazi 2004), are those most characterized by cultural annihilation. Since the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts have shared the old/new enemy of human tolerance Daesh, these

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 31-48 35 conflicts became asymmetric and showed the weakness and ineffectiveness of the international community and the West in particular in dealing with such conflicts on several levels (Pecht 2016).

Figure 1. Baal-Shamin, The Guardian, 25 August 2016.

Fears and concerns have rapidly grown after Daesh seized control over the World Heritage Site of Palmyra, or as it is known “The Venice of the Sand”,1 in May 2015 and after two weeks of fighting with the Syrian government army. Social media platforms started to recirculate videos and pictures of the jihadi militia destroying the artifacts of the Mosul museum to bring the attention to the fact that Palmyra might shortly face a similar fate. 23rd August 2015 is the date that has been engraved in the memory of all of humanity and particularly the memory of the Syrian people. On that day, the series of “iconoclastic” destruction of monuments started when Daesh blew up the 2,000-year- old Baal-Shamin (Fig. 1) temple of the World-famous Greco-Roman site of Palmyra (Macfarlan 2015; Melvin, et al. 2015). This destruction was followed by the destruction of one of the most significant temples in the Middle East, Temple of Bel, which dates back to the 1st century CE. Less than two weeks later, the radical jihadists destroyed Palmyra’s Roman monument, Arch of Triumph (Fig. 2), which dates back to the 3rd century CE. Besides that, Daesh vandalism has extended to the staff who work(ed) on protecting Palmyra’s museum and buildings. In a move which shocked the international audiences they also beheaded Khaled al-Asaad, who was formerly the enthusiastic Head of Antiquities in Palmyra for 40 years, because he refused to lead Daesh fighters to Palmyra’s hidden antiquities (Hubbard 2015; Shaheen 2015a).

1 Both The Venice of the Sand and “the bride of the desert” have been used in literature to describe Palmyra. While the Venice of the Sand is more popular in the West, the “the bride of the desert” is popular in Syria.

36 NOUR A. MUNAWAR

Media reports promptly surfaced to cover all these incidents which occurred in less than 4 months of Daesh control of Palmyra; ignoring – together with the international community – that Palmyra had been threatened before the Daesh offensive attack to control the city according to several UNESCO, ICOMOS, etc. condemning statements to stop the violence in the perimeter of the World Heritage Site (Nakasis a&nd Lianos 2015, UNESCO 2013; 2014).

Figure 2. Arch of Triumph of Palmyra, Joseph Eid-Getty Images, 31 March 2016

Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict, Palmyra has sustained several types of damage, such as looting, collateral damage, army occupation, and damage from weapons fired by the opposed fighters (Cunliffe 2012). The United Nations has urged all parties to protect Palmyra and to immediately stop the military actions in the heritage sites. A statement issued by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova reads:

(…) World Heritage sites have suffered considerable and sometimes irreversible damage. Four of them are being used for military purposes or have been transformed into battlefields: Palmyra; the Crac des Chevaliers; the Saint Simeon Church in the Ancient villages of Northern Syria; and Aleppo, including the Aleppo Citadel…” (United Nations 2014).2

2 See also Statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova and UN and League of Arab States Joint Special Representative for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi: The destruction of Syria’s cultural heritage must stop. UN online, accessed 09 Nov 2016, http://www.un.org/sg/statements/index.asp?nid=7521

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 31-48 37

AFP (Agence France-Presse) reported the destruction of Palmyra and confirmed that machine gun fire had directly affected the area of Palmyra (AFP 2012). Similarly, Maamoun Abdulkarim, director of Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) in Syria has stated that the Syrian official army had troops in the archaeological site of Palmyra (Holmes 2013).

Figure 3. Temple of Bel, Joseph Eid-Getty Images, 31 March 2016

In a later stage of the conflict, the media promoted the recapture of Palmyra by the Russian-backed Syrian army as a “liberation” of the World Heritage Site. This incident triggered significant debates, starting with the question of how objective the media was when they had only chosen to report the damage that had been inflicted by Daesh fighters on heritage sites in Palmyra, Nimrud and Nineveh. Are Daesh the only “bad guys” in the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts? What are the implications of the Syrian’s government vow to “rebuild” Palmyra immediately after the jihadi group withdrew and even though the war in Syria is still escalating? And can the state-promises or the modern-art restoration technologies in some way replicate or recreate the authenticity of a contested heritage? And if so, who should decide what and when? And to what extent should the promised “reconstruction” happen?

Who Cares About Palmyra, and Why? The significance of Palmyra comes from its long history as a cultural heritage attraction, which has granted the city a special status among the archaeological sites that have been

38 NOUR A. MUNAWAR

selected to represent the cradle of civilizations in the Middle East. Palmyra has witnessed periods of occupation and rule by several foreign kingdoms and empires which have ruled the Levant and Mesopotamia. The site of Palmyra is one of the few oases in the Syrian desert, and this allowed Palmyra to gain wealth and to rise to prominence as merchants ran trade caravans through the Silk Road. The construction of monumental buildings increased the splendour and grandeur of Palmyra, starting with the Temple of Bel (Fig. 3), the Great Colonnade, Baal-Shamin temple, etc. These monuments were influenced by the Greco-Roman civilization and they have distinguished Palmyra with distinctive art and architecture which combines western and eastern traditions (For further discussion, see also: Teixidor 2015).

My main aim in this paper is to clarify the importance of Palmyra from the point of view of different stakeholders who each claim a right to share the ancient monuments of Palmyra3. The multicultural, economic and socio-cultural values (Mason 2002) of Palmyra encouraged invaders to seize the city and claim its stewardship in order to benefit from its wealth, prosperity and geo-political dimensions. Palmyra’s advantages ,(كعكة الملك) ”caused it to become what an Arabic metaphor describes as the “king’s cake and it is certain that there will be continuing efforts by regional, national, and also international powers to control this high status site. But from my perspective I believe that the immediate stakeholders in Palmyra are the local people – the Syrians - who were born in, and lived, and participated in constructing Palmyra’s fame throughout history.

Viejo-Rose and Stig Sørensen (2015) consider that conflict and social disorder result in severe damage and the loss of irreplaceable and unique things in addition to psychologically affecting people who are linked to such sites. The importance of Palmyra for local people lies in it being part of their ancestors’ heritage and memories, regardless of their religion or ethnicity. Palmyra is a place that all Syrians feel proud of and its remembrance has enhanced a sense of cultural identity (Holtrof 2015) which is one of the few things that unifies Syrians during the current war, which has torn Syrian society apart. In addition to this deeply rooted national significance, Zenobia, the Queen of Palmyra, represents the strength of the Syrian women and her leadership, will and wisdom have made her a symbol of feminism in the Arab World (Booth 2011). The central and strategic location of Palmyra – midway between Syria and Iraq – has encouraged armed opposition groups to attempt to control the city ever since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, in 2011. Concurrently, the Syrian government sought to protect the capture of the city by all possible means, despite the fact that such military actions were themselves considered to be violations which threatened the World Heritage Site of Palmyra (Cunliffe 2012). The fact that both parties in the conflict wished to gain control over the site – prior to the emergence of Daesh – is not an indication that they wished to protect the archaeological heritage, but rather a sign that

3 Tadmur is the native name of Palmyra and it was first attested during the beginning of the Second millennium BCE. Scholars are still arguing about the origins of the name Tadmur whether it is Semitic or Hurrian. When Palmyra became part of the Roman Empire the site was named Palmyra during the first century CE, which came originally from the palm trees that were surrounding Palmyra (see also, O'Connor 1988).

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 31-48 39 they believed that control of Palmyra would boost their popular support and would allow then to present themselves as protectors of Syria’s fragile heritage (For further discussion about motives for targeting cultural property during armed conflict, see Brosché, et al. 2017).

The escalation of the war in Syria’s war introduced non-state radical combatants (for further discussion about non-state armed groups, see Hausler 2016) – such as Al-Nusra Front and Daesh - who in a later stage also sought to control Palmyra. Palmyra was eventually taken by the self-proclaimed Islamic State in May 2015 (Shaheen 2015b). The radical fighters of Daesh focus primarily on the cultural cleansing of the areas that they control – they raze ancient sites as a whole even though such sites are often considered to be holy places for Islamic groups who oppose Daesh ideology and beliefs4, such as Sufi and Shia shrines and cemeteries (Zorich 2016).

Daesh has produced several videos and images of the destruction of monumental buildings in Palmyra, claiming that the buildings had been used to promote infidelity and therefore should be demolished (for further discussion about the links between terrorism and heritage destruction, see Meskell 2005). Scholars have seen Daesh videos and photos (BBC 2015; Tharoor 2015; Hall 2015; Wintour 2016) as documentary materials in which radical fighters were identified as iconoclasts (Harmanşah 2015). Daesh’s interest in Palmyra was not based solely on ideological perspectives of destroying any non-Muslim heritage, however. Their interest lies in several factors, such as gaining more popularity and legitimacy by “reviving” the historical enactment of the destruction of idols when Muslims destroyed all the 360 idols that surrounded Kaaba when they conquered Mecca during the 7th century CE (Donner 2014). By visibly destroying “idols” in Palmyra, Hatra and Mosul museum Daesh were attempting to gain attention and recruit further volunteers to their ranks. Another factor that needs to be taken into consideration is that Daesh were attempting to erase the extraordinary collective identity and memory of Palmyra in a way that would facilitate creating a new identity and memory of the place to represent the new population of Daesh. The latter can be evidently seen in the enslavement and massacring of Yazidis in Sinjar (Ridge 2015; Newton 2016; Salih 2016). Palmyra was the perfect target that Daesh was keen to control and brutally destroy to show demonstrate their power as Whitmarsh (2015) has commented, “[Palmyra] offers antiquities’ best counterexample to Isis’s fantastic monoculturalism” (Whitmarsh 2015).

On the other hand, the tragedy of the last five years is that heritage destruction has appeared to focus on the self-image of the West, Russia and China, and how these global powers have managed this conflict on the political, humanitarian and even cultural sides. After Daesh controlled Palmyra, people started to whisper about a possible Russian military intervention to support the Syrian government army in the combat against “terrorism” in general and Daesh in particular (Lister 2015; Luhn 2015;

4 For further discussion about types of targeted heritage by Daesh, see de Cesari 2015.

40 NOUR A. MUNAWAR

Nissenbaum 2015). Four months later, Russia declared that backing the Syrian government to “liberate” Palmyra from Daesh hands was one of their priorities.

Figure 4. Russian Orchestra and Putin's Speech - Vasily Maximov AFP, Getty Images - 06 May 2016

On March 27th 2016, the Syrian army captured Palmyra and liberated it from Daesh (Dearden 2016; Russia Today 2016), but another type of occupation took place by the Syrian and Russian soldiers. Nevertheless, the Syro-Russians celebrated the “liberation” of Palmyra by holding a concert of a Russian Orchestra (BBC 2016; Kramer and Higgins 2016) (Fig. 4). An online speech of Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, was broadcast in the same Roman amphitheatre that Daesh had used – less than 10 months previously – before beheading a group of prisoners. Sweeney (2011) believes that heritage is usually utilized during war periods as a weapon in propaganda battles. The latter point was evidenced when media reports in Russia and Syria started to create a huge amount of propaganda about the effectiveness of the Syro-Russian alliance and how the West stood powerless, propaganda that aimed - according to Tim Black (2016) – at asserting that Russia is not just a defender of a tyrant regime in the Middle East but is also the defender of Western civilization, and its values and traditions. It is worth mentioning that Daesh’s occupation of Palmyra and the subsequent recapture by the Syrian government forces were caused by the change of powers during the battles in Syria. As Amr Al-Azm, a pro-opposition archaeologist, has worried, any new shift of power during the ongoing war could place Palmyra back in the hands of Daesh (Zorich 2016). By military standards, Palmyra is no more than a strategic location and a place that would provide a considerable amount of media reports and resonating propagandas, which is exactly what Palmyra has witnessed in the last five years of war, moving from one side to another. The site in itself has started to represent a new tendency in the West

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 31-48 41 which lately has emerged to try and justify European interest in protecting and reconstructing what Daesh destroyed by claiming that Palmyra’s heritage is part of a European heritage. The West – including Russia - sees the heritage of the Near East as being part of “Europe’s story” and the origins of the Western civilization (Munawar 2016). This idea has been reinforced by over a century of archaeological investigations by Western archaeologists. Also, Syrian government officials such as Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria's director of antiquities, stated during the ceremony of erecting the replica of the Arch of Triumph that “[Palmyra’s heritage] is not just for Syrian people” (Turner 2016). Today's Western academic writings present what may be termed “charismatic” archaeology - such as Palmyra - as the point at which “Europe ends”, ignoring that this heritage not only belongs to Europe, but is originally Syrian, and represents the identity and memories of the local population (for further reading concerning the use of the term “charismatic”, see: Ducarme et al. 2013).

Figure 5. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, looks on as the scale replica of Palmyra's Triumphal Arch is unveiled in Trafalgar Square - Frank Augstein AP - The Telegraph - 20 April 2016.

Reconstructing Palmyra: The Way Forward The hardest challenge of Palmyra is yet to come since the destruction – as I have argued before – is not all that is threatening Palmyra’s heritage. The real test for Palmyra lies in the plans which are being prepared for reconstruction (Harrowell 2016). Conflicts play a major role in changing the urban, social and power structures and meanings can be transformed (Viejo-Rose 2011). With this last point in mind plans for reconstruction offer an opportunity for transformations and new interpretations of heritage, particularly in the aftermath of war when new narratives, legends, and symbols are required to build the nation. Harrowell (2016) believes that destruction and reconstruction are two sides of the same coin, as they both have political goals and exercise powers through and over

42 NOUR A. MUNAWAR

the space. Equally, it is often said that history is written by the victors (Sweeney 2011), particularly in post-conflict contexts. Therefore, the one who has the right to control the reconstruction processes will be the one who decides how Palmyra will be remade.

During the offensive attack to recapture Palmyra, Mikhail Piotrovsky, the Director of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, declared his intention to “rebuild” Palmyra by using the Russian institution’s collection of artifacts from Palmyra (Kishkovsky 2016). This shows how significant the reconstruction of Palmyra is, and institutes around the world in places such as in Germany5, the UK6, and Russia, have started to make plans, even before the liberation of the World Heritage Site.

The Syrian war has not ended, but the reconstruction of some parts of Palmyra has already commenced. Less than one month after the retaking of Palmyra, a replica of the Triumphal Arch (Fig. 5) had been recreated from Egyptian marble and later erected in London's Trafalgar Square by Oxford’s Institute of Digital Archaeology (IDA). The recreation of Palmyra’s arch did not reproduce all of the original characteristics of the destroyed arch, such as its height and use of materials and this has generated concerns over the authenticity of monuments. Professor Bill Finlayson, from the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) stated that “the dangerous precedent suggests that if you destroy something, you can rebuild it and it has the same authenticity as the original” (Hopkins 2016).

The “reconstruction” of the Arch of Triumph is similar to the Russian attempt to harness the power of the ancient city by pushing propaganda about which side of the conflict would be best able to reconstruct and rebuild the cultural heritage in the aftermath of the war. Moreover, the replica project has missed several elements which are usually taken into consideration with physical reconstruction after wars. The reconstruction of Palmyra has been tied to issues that surrounded the process of destruction itself, such as cultural identity and collective memory. Harrowell (2016) thinks that the physical rebuilding of Palmyra’s monuments can be considered “an act of resistance of the community” which were affected by the conflict. This explains the swift reconstruction of Warsaw’s old town which is seen by some people as a “Disney fabrication” (Harbison 2015) and not everyone welcomed the way that Warsaw ultimately turned out. Physical reconstruction is part of post-war recovery and is deeply connected to politics, economy and culture. Simultaneously, reconstructing places in the aftermath of war cannot be separated from the physiological and social reconstruction of the wounded societies (Harrowell 2016).

5 See also, Reconstruction A Network For Archaeological Cultural Heritage. Archaeology Worldwide special issue 2016, German Archaeological Institute (DAI), accessed 21 April 2017, https://www.dainst.org/documents/10180/2082824/Archaeology+Worldwide+Special+Issue+2016/0e 33097d-1071-4c7b-b4dc-85b81a5cb7b2 6 See also, Triumphal Arch in the News - The Institute for Digital Archaeology in Oxford, UK, accessed 21 April 2017, http://digitalarchaeology.org.uk/media/

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 31-48 43

After the end of the war in the Balkans, reports indicated that the local population felt disconnected from the reconstruction of their heritage, since they were often not consulted about the reconstruction plans, and specifically, in the case of the Stari Most (the Old Bridge) in Mostar City in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Lostal & Cunliffe 2016, for further discussion about destruction and reconstruction of heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina, see Walasek et al. 2016). Furthermore, the conflict can be protracted on a social level and can continue for generations when there is a decision to be made about whether or not to rebuild symbolic sites (Viejo-Rose 2011). The aftermath of reconstruction of cultural heritage can be as destructive as the destruction itself and has the power to prolong violence even after the civil war ends.

Based on these considerations, rebuilding, recreating, restoring or even reconstructing must not be carried out when a war is still ongoing and should not be rushed or controlled by one party, such as the victorious side. Discussions about rebuilding, not only of physical buildings but also the psycho-social wellbeing of communities should only take place when a war ends. Concerns have been raised for Palmyra’s fate as people do not want to repeat the Beirut experience, when the reconstruction was mainly focused on the commercial space of Beirut’s old town (Nagel 2000). The post-conflict reconstruction of Palmyra should be incorporated into the reconciliation of Syrian society with all its divisions, ethnicities, sectors and religions. Simultaneously, the reconstruction should avoid misuse by people in power and have safeguards to ensure that previous examples of post-civil-war reconstruction which served to support a particular side of the conflict are not repeated, such as the case of Spain after its Civil War (Viejo-Rose 2011) or the Iraqi case (Isakhan 2011) when post-war reconstruction aimed at erasing the Baath identity after the US/UK invasion in 2003.

In my view, no rebuilding or restoration plans can be safeguarded at this stage of Syria’s unfinished war and it is wrong to believe that even state or the modern art restoration technologies can in some way replicate or recreate the authenticity of a contested heritage. Authenticity is not only a practical matter or theoretical principal, but requires the inclusion of local stakeholders – regardless of their political stances or geographical distribution – in making decisions as to whether or not to reconstruct. This is needed to ensure that communities feel that they are connected to the future heritage and will serve to enhance the social cohesion of the wounded society. Scholars are mainly concerned with the issue authenticity of space and time in post-conflict contexts and how the relationship between local communities and places can be (re)established. Therefore, the differences and multiple meanings that future heritage could transmit and the mechanisms for remembrance and reconciliation should be carefully included in plans when the time for post-war recovery comes. In this way heritage can have a healing effect and therapeutic influence in the aftermath of war.

Acknowledgements This article owes much gratitude to the constructive comments and the continuous support offered by Prof. James Symonds, Dr. Abdulrahman Mnawar and Flavia

44 NOUR A. MUNAWAR

Brunetti, as well as the anonymous reviewers. It is worth to mention that every single minute spent on writing and editing this article, has kept my memory alive and prevented me from forgetting the destructions that I witnessed in Syria. It is difficult to write on heritage ruination while the humanitarian catastrophe continues all over Syria, but perhaps this article can be the first step towards reconnecting locals to their heritage and later healing the war trauma.

References

ABAZI, E., 2004. The Role of International Community in Conflict Situation. Which Way Forwards?. The Case of the Kosovo/a Conflict. Balkanologie. Revue d'études pluridisciplinaires, 8(1): 9–31. AFP 2012, Syrie: Palmyre, la cité antique en état de siege. Accessed 09 Nov 2016. http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/syrie-palmyre-la-cite-antique-en-etat-de-siege-19-02- 2012-1432906_24.php BBC 2015. Islamic State militants “destroy Palmyra statues”. Accessed 09 Nov 2016. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33369701 BBC 2016. Russian maestro plays in Palmyra ruins. Accessed 09 Nov 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east- 36217853?intlink_from_url=http://www.bbc.com/news/topics/45d1e6e1-6001-4449- 801d-ba85eed04025/syrian-civil-war&link_location=live-reporting-map BLACK, T. 2016. Russia’s Palmyra Concert Reveals What The West Lacks. The Spiked. Accessed 09 Nov 2016. http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/russias- palmyra-concert-reveals-what-the-west-lacks/18342#.WBooH4MrLct BOOTH, M. 2011. Constructions of Syrian identity in the Women's press in Egypt, in: A. BESHARA, 2011. The origins of Syrian nationhood: histories, pioneers and identity. Routledge. BROSCHÉ, J., M. LEGNÉR, J. KREUTZ & A. IJLA, 2017. Heritage under attack: motives for targeting cultural property during armed conflict. International Journal of Heritage Studies 23(3): 248–260. CUNLIFFE, E., 2012. Damage to the soul: Syria's cultural heritage in conflict. Palo Alto: Global Heritage Fund. DEARDEN, L. 2016. Isis 'losing control' of Palmyra as Syrian troops backed by Russian air strikes approach ancient city. The Independent. Accessed 09 November 2016. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-losing-control-of- palmyra-as-syrian-troops-backed-by-russian-air-strikes-approach-ancient-city- a6953921.html DE CESARI, C., 2015. Post‐Colonial Ruins: Archaeologies of political violence and IS. Anthropology Today 31(6): 22–26. DONNER, F.M., 2014. The early Islamic conquests. Princeton University Press. DUCARME, F., G.M. LUQUE & F. COURCHAMP, 2013. What are “charismatic species” for conservation biologists. BioSciences Master Reviews 10(2013): 1–8.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 31-48 45

GERMAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, 2016. Reconstruction a Network For Archaeological Cultural Heritage. Archaeology Worldwide special issue 2016. Accessed 21 April 2017. https://www.dainst.org/documents/10180/2082824/Archaeology+Worldwide+Special +Issue+2016/0e33097d-1071-4c7b-b4dc-85b81a5cb7b2 HALL, J. 2015. ISIS ‘destroys’ famous lion god statue in captured Syrian city of Palmyra...just days after promising locals they would not obliterate ancient monuments. The Dailymail. Accessed 09 Nov 2016. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3101031/ISIS-destroys-famous-lion-god- statue-captured-Syrian-city-just-days-promising-locals-not-obliterate-Palmyra-s-ancient- monuments.html HARBISON, R., 2015. Ruins and Fragments: Tales of Loss and Rediscovery. Reaktion Books. HARMANŞAH, Ö., 2015. ISIS, Heritage, and the Spectacles of Destruction in the Global Media. Near Eastern Archaeology 78(3): 170–177. HARRISON, R. (ed.), 2010. Understanding the politics of heritage (Vol. 5). Manchester: Manchester University Press. HARROWELL, E., 2016. Looking for the future in the rubble of Palmyra: Destruction, reconstruction and identity. Geoforum 69: 81–83. HAUSLER, K., 2016. Culture under Attack: The Destruction of Cultural Heritage by Non-State Armed Groups. Santander Art and Culture Law Review (2): 117-146. HOLMES, O. 2013. Syria's ancient oasis city of Palmyra threatened in fighting. Reuters. Accessed 09 November 2016. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-palmyra-idUSBRE9320HL20130403 HOLTORF, C., 2015. Averting loss aversion in cultural heritage. International Journal of Heritage Studies 21(4): 405–421 HOPKINS, S. 2016. Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph Recreated In London’s Trafalgar Square in ‘Triumph of Human Ingenuity over Violence’. Huffington post UK. Accessed 25 August 2017. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/palmyras-arch-of-triumph-recreated-in- london_uk_57160ae1e4b0dc55ceeb0181 HUBBARD, B. 2015. Syrian Expert Who Shielded Palmyra Antiquities Meets a Grisly Death at ISIS’ Hands. New York Times. Accessed 22 August 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/20/world/middleeast/isis-palmyra-syria- antiquities-scholar-beheaded.html?mcubz=1 ISAKHAN, B., 2011. Targeting the symbolic dimension of Baathist Iraq: cultural destruction, historical memory, and national identity. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 4(3): 257–281. KEALY, L., 2016. Post-Trauma Reconstruction. Proceedings of the 1-day Colloquium at Icomos Headquarters, 4 March 2016. Volume 1 and 2 . Conference Volume. ICOMOS International Secretariat, Charenton-le-Pont, Franc. KISHKOVSKY, S. 2016. ‘This is living antiquity’: the director of the Hermitage wants to rebuild Palmyra. The art newspaper. Accessed 09 November 2016. http://theartnewspaper.com/news/museums/this-is-living-antiquity-the-director-of- the-hermitage-wants-to-rebuild-palmyra/?platform=hootsuite KRAMER, A. & A. HIGGINS, 2016. In Syria, Russia Plays Bach Where ISIS Executed 25. New York Times. Accessed 22 Aug 2017.

46 NOUR A. MUNAWAR

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/world/middleeast/syria-russia-palmyra-isis- classical-music.html?mcubz=1 LISTER, T. 2015. Why Russia is pressing the ‘accelerate’ pedal in Syria. CNN. Accessed 21 April 2017. http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/15/middleeast/russia-syria-hardware-lister/ LOSTAL, M. & E. CUNLIFFE, 2016. Cultural heritage that heals: factoring in cultural heritage discourses in the Syrian peacebuilding process. The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice 7: 1–12. LUHN, A. 2015. Russia sends artillery and tanks to Syria as part of continued military buildup. The Guardian. Accessed 21 April 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/14/russia-sends-artillery-and-tanks-to- syria-as-part-of-continued-military-buildup MACFARLAN, T. 2015. Wiping yet more history off the face of the earth: ISIS blow up 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel in Palmyra in latest outrage at the ancient Syrian city. The Dailymail. Accessed 09 November 2016. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article- 3216360/ISIS-blow-2-000-year-old-Temple-Bel-Palmyra-Syria.html#ixzz4PWz8sIsC MELVIN, D., S. ELWAZER, J. BERLINGER, 2015. ISIS destroys Temple of Bel in Palmyra, Syria, U.N. reports. CNN. Accessed 22 August 2017. http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/31/middleeast/palmyra-temple-damaged/index.html MASON, R., 2002. Assessing values in conservation planning: methodological issues and choices, in: M. de la Torre (ed.) Assessing The Values Of Cultural Heritage. Research Report, The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, 5–30. MESKELL, L. 2005. Sites of violence: Terrorism, tourism, and heritage in the archaeological present, in: L. MESKELL & P. PELS (eds), Embedding ethics. Oxford: Berg, 123–146. NEWTON, J. 2016. ISIS burn 19 Yazidi girls to death in iron cages after they refused to have sex with jihadists. The Dailymail, accessed 09 November 2016, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3627063/ISIS-burn-19-Yazidi-girls-death- iron-cages-refused-sex-jihadists.html O'CONNOR, M. P. (1988). "BCILL 42: Linguistic Happening, the etymologies of Tadmor & Palmyra", in: Y.L. ARBEITMAN (ed.), A linguistic happening in memory of Ben Schwartz. Studies in Anatolian, Italic, and other Indo-European Languages, Louvain-la-Neuve, 411–462. PECHT, M. 2016. International responses to ISIS (and why they are failing), accessed 23 April 2017, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute https://www.sipri.org/commentary/essay/2016/international-responses-isis-and-why- they-are-failing RIDGE, S. 2015. Mass graves of women ‘too old to be Isil sex slaves’ - this is what we're up against. The Telegraph, accessed 09 November 2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/12000148/Islamic-State-sex- slaves-Sinjar-mass-graves-show-what-were-fighting.html SALIH, M. A., 2016. The horrors of a Yazidi woman kidnapped by ISIS. Washington post, accessed 22 August 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the- horrors-of-a-yazidi-woman-kidnapped-by-isis/2016/08/18/0a7c655e-2edb-11e6-9b37- 42985f6a265c_story.html?utm_term=.e1ed088bcb5d

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 31-48 47

SHAHEEN, K. 2015A. Beheaded Syrian scholar refused to lead Isis to hidden Palmyra antiquities. The Guardian, accessed 09 November 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/18/isis-beheads-archaeologist-syria SHAHEEN, K. 2015b. Isis ‘controls 50% of Syria’ after seizing historic city of Palmyra. The Guardian. Accessed 09 November 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/21/isis-palmyra-syria-islamic-state TURNER, L. 2016. Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph recreated in London. BBC, accessed 09 November 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36070721 MUNAWAR, N. A. 2016. Can Local People Preserve Cultural Heritage? Paper presentation at the 22nd annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2016. NAGLE, C., 2000. Ethnic conflict and urban redevelopment in downtown Beirut. Growth and Change 31(2): 211–234. NAKASIS, A. & LIANOS, N. 2015. Syria: The Impact of the Civil War on the Cultural Heritage. In ICOMOS (ed.), Heritage at Risk: World Report 2011-2013 On Monuments and Sites In Danger, Berlin, 143–147. NISSENBAUM, D. 2015. Months of Airstrikes Fail to Slow Islamic State in Syria. The Wall Street Journal, accessed 21 April 2017. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-led-airstrikes- fail-to-slow-islamic-state-in-syria-1421271618 RUSSIA TODAY, 2016. Syrian army retakes Palmyra from ISIS. Accessed 09 November 2016. https://www.rt.com/news/337336-palmyra-syrian-army-isis/ SØRENSEN, M.L.S. & D. VIEJO-ROSE (eds.), 2015. War and Cultural Heritage. Cambridge University Press. SWEENEY, S., 2011. Book Review: Reconstructing Spain: cultural heritage and memory after civil war by Viejo-Rose, D. International Journal of Heritage Studies: 17(6), 629-631. TEIXIDOR, J., 2015. The pagan god: popular religion in the Greco-Roman Near East. Princeton University Press. THAROOR, I. 2015. Islamic State destroys priceless statues in ancient city of Palmyra. Washington post, accessed 22 August 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/07/03/islamic-state- destroys-priceless-statues-in-ancient-city-of-palmyra/?utm_term=.adb3223e98b1 UNESCO 2013. Syria’s Six World Heritage sites placed on List of World Heritage in Danger. Accessed 23 April 2017. http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1038/ UNESCO 2014. UNESCO Director-General condemns military presence and destruction at World Heritage Sites in Syria. Accessed 23 April 2017. http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1108/ VIEJO-ROSE, D., 2011. Reconstructing Spain: cultural heritage and memory after civil war. Apollo Books. WALASEK, H, 2016. Bosnia and the destruction of cultural Heritage. Routledge. WHITMARSH, T., 2015. Tolerant and multicultural, Palmyra stood for everything Isis hates. The Guardian, accessed 09 November 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/25/palmyra-tolerant- multicultural-isis-ancient-city-migrants-savagery

48 NOUR A. MUNAWAR

WINTOUR, P., 2016. Isis destruction of Palmyra antiquities revealed in new pictures. The Guardian, accessed 09 November 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/01/isis-destruction-of-palmyra- antiquities-revealed-in-new-pictures ZORICH, Z., 2016. Tallying the losses in Palmyra. Science 352(6282): 130-131.

Print: ISBN 978-1-78491-763-0 Online: ISSN 2531-8810 EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2, December 2017: 49-62 49 Published Online: Dec 2017

The rights of reproducing Cultural Heritage in the digital Era. An Italian Perspective

Augusto Palombini

CNR - Itabc

Abstract The spread of digital technology has led to a renewed phase within the debate on property rights in Cultural Heritage reproduction. This topic is addressed in different ways, but it is currently under discussion both in Europe and USA. Italy holds a particular position in this debate, due to its large concentration of ancient remains and the peculiar structure of its laws. The interesting experiments of total open access to Cultural Heritage reproduction on the one hand, and claims of the State Administration for control of Cultural Heritage exploitation and a consequent income (in any sense) on the other, are equally valid arguments. At the same time the blurred distinction between the concepts of ‘reconstruction’ and ‘reproduction’, of ‘personal’ and ‘commercial’ use, and the philosophical and mathematical difficulties in defining what is exactly a ‘copy’ in the digital context, make the matter harder. The paper aims to analyse this debate, and to make a contribution to a new method of considering the economic dimension of Cultural Heritage, taking into account international discussion, while focusing on the situation in Italy, and trying to sum up the needs of the different subjects involved while expressing a proposal to resolve the problem.

Keywords: IPR, 3D models, Cultural Heritage reproduction, digital assets.

Introduction Who owns the past? The question, stated in a political or symbolic way, may be given a concrete meaning when dealing with the tangible value (both intellectual and economic) of the property rights of Cultural Heritage objects’ reproduction. This debate, which is not new, has gained a renewed relevance in the Digital Era, because of the new business models it may foster.

As a matter of fact, in the traditional context of Cultural Heritage, the only kind of object reproductions which had some economic value were pictures (three dimensional moulded copies had a very limited distribution), and although such a market could be remarkable, it is absolutely not comparable to the perspectives of 3D digital models.

CONTACT Augusto Palombini, [email protected]

50 AUGUSTO PALOMBINI

Indeed, the digital revolution has opened the way to a series of initiatives based on 3D digital assets whose multiplicity and relevance is probably still far from being completely realised: virtual exhibitions (Hupperetz et al. 2013; Pescarin 2013; Ray et al. 2013; Castagni 2016), merchandising based on 3D printed items (Palombini 2013), gaming (Bellotti et al. 2012; Stuart 2010) and the film industry (2014), are just a few of the many contexts which will be touched by such a phenomenon.

The changing scenario requires a series of actors and relation models to be defined, tested and included in a common framework for the research and business environment. Probably we live in the early stage of such a changing world, but our effort to understand and possibly drive it, is crucial in order to shape the future of the Cultural Heritage domain. Such a process will also need to be ruled by a clear legal framework, which has not yet been defined. My analysis will deal with such a topic, taking into account the current situation (mainly in Italy, but through an international overview). Because of the variety of art and archaeological items, in this work I will use the expression Cultural Heritage object (hereafter CH object) meaning any tangible element having an historical/archaeological value, belonging to human culture (monuments, sites, furniture, arms, etc.).

Cultural Heritage exploitation models: direct or indirect income? Referring to the general framework for managing CH objects, the first distinction to focus on is the nature of the ownership of artworks, monuments, archaeological remains, and whatever may be considered as tangible expression of Cultural Heritage. Since the early days of museum collections, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through the age of the trade in ancient antiquities, up to modern object loans for exhibitions, Cultural Heritage, in its tangible dimension, has always had a specific economic value in terms of attracting people and interest. Nevertheless, the ways in which advantage can be taken of such a value may be different in time and space and may not necessarily imply direct fees (as museum tickets or reproduction royalties). For instance, the presence of a freely-accessible monument in a particular place may attract many visitors there, thus indirectly benefitting the local shops and the community although it does not produce a direct income.

To clarify such a concept we may take as an example of indirect income the UK approach, based on free access to museums, which represents a trigger for other initiatives and exhibitions yielding an income; or the recent experiment of the Rijksmuseum (see below for a detailed analysis), where the free release of high definition pictures for any kind of use (also commercial) resulted in an increase in the number of museum visitors. EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 49-61 51

We may well take the Italian system as an example of direct income, where access to museums is for the most part subject to tickets, and object reproduction is tied to specific authorization released each time for limited and specific purposes1. Indeed, both direct and indirect ways of taking advantage from Cultural Heritage represent two specific branches of the behaviour of modern states and institutions through time (Palombini 2013: 122). Although the general legal structure of some states on the topic can be generally ascribed to one of such main directions, they cannot be considered as two drastically opposed categories. On the contrary, specific initiatives, even by the same authorities, can be defined as belonging to one of the two main approaches. For instance, any initiative aimed to the production of open data (available to the whole community) entails an indirect income approach, as it gives up a direct income (royalties, fees) from the CH object, fostering an indirect one, through a wide reuse. Both approaches may have various aspects and shape different scenarios, but, when dealing with CH object reproduction, the direct income approach is challenged today by significant changes, closely connected to technological progress, which cannot be neglected.

For instance, focusing on the specific case of the photographic reproduction of a CH object for a publication, the expression publication may be misleading in comparison to the past. Some thirty years ago, publishing the picture of a museum object implied the deployment of a skilled photographer, the legal subject entity of a publishing house, and the resulting tangible presence of some printed copies. Today, on the other hand, even a child may take a very high resolution picture and make it available online to millions of people in a few seconds, with very few chances to identify specific individuals responsible for any single action. Such a situation drastically affects any rule definition for reproduction activities and their feasibility, even in the fairly old field of photography.

From 2D to 3D: reproduction vs. reconstruction For a long time, the definition of a three-dimensional reproduction or model, in museum contexts referred to a physical object generally (but not necessarily) obtained through a mould (physical negative copy of the original)2. Thus, laws and discussions on the topic were originally conducted referring to such a concept, and were then used – incorrectly, but being the only ones available – to address the creation and management of digital models, thus giving rise to difficult and sometimes odd contradictions, as concerning the “number” of specimens to be allowed through a single license3: once a digital model is used online, even in a locked context, it is simultaneously copied onto an undefined number of server disks.

1 Up to the end of 1980s, Italy had no well-defined direct or indirect orientation. The rise towards the current situation started probably with the issue of a series of laws in the period 1990-1995 (see below). 2 Regio Decreto 1913 n.363, art.7; Legge 1993 n.4, art.4; D.L. 2004 n.42, art.107; D.M. 20.04.2005. 3 D.M. 20.04.2005, art. 3. 52 AUGUSTO PALOMBINI

Nevertheless, even taking into account the physical dimension of the objects, there is a clear distinction between two important concepts: creation and reproduction. The copies obtained by a specific (moulded) impression of the original piece are reproductions), and the ones obtained by a free sculpting or shaping operation (creation) represent different actions. In the latter case, the work is certainly closer to an independent artistic action than to a copying act. Digital models share the same difference: any digital 3D model may be the result of the reproduction of an existing object (through laser scanners or the process of photogrammetry), or the result of a modelling (creation from scratch) operation. The distinction is very clear, not least because of the different types of tools (software) and actions needed (Remondino & Campana 2014).

From a legal point of view, such a difference is tied to an equally-clear consequence because, as the reproduction can be subject to legal restrictions, the modelled digital objects are instead free products of human creativity, totally belonging to their author(s) and not subject to any external restriction. In this sense, the digital context presents the same features of the real world before computers: using a camera to take a picture of a monument is a reproduction, making a drawing of it is a creative effort. Nevertheless, although such a difference is apparently clear, in practice it is hard to draw a line between the two concepts. Getting back to the analogical example, a picture (reproduction) may be corrected and painted as to become something completely different from its original4. A 3D model may as well derive from a reproduction and be modified, becoming increasingly different to the original, and the definition of the point where it stops to be the reproduction and becomes something else is arguable and probably useless (as, in practice, it would be continuously re-discussed in different contexts).

A further example to illustrate the difference between a reproduction and a creative operation refers to the most accurate reproduction process currently available: 3D models obtained by a very high-resolution laser scanner. Scanned outputs probably represent the closest geometrical copies of their originals. Nevertheless, in its raw form, such an output is a cloud of points, each one defined by its spatial coordinates. To obtain from the point cloud a continuously surfaced shape (technically, a mesh), an interpolation is needed, which may be performed on the basis of different algorithms. Although the difference in the resulting output will be hard to perceive, it means there is no absolute truth, but many different final versions of the model (Callieri et al., 2011), that is to say: the concept of reproduction of an object is philosophically impossible to be fixed.

This aspect hardly affects CH contexts, as one of the most frequent operations in the field of virtual museums is the digital restoration of damaged objects or monuments, thus blending scans of the original parts (copy) and modelled pieces (creation). This practice, in archaeology, has recently been formalized in a systematic approach linking

4 For instance, Andy Warhol’s artworks gave a strong artistic dimension to such an operation.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 49-61 53 real and virtual stratigraphic units (Demetrescu & Fanini 2017), based on a framework well-rooted in the history of the domain: the Harris’ Matrix (Harris 1979). The resulting front-end is a user interface capable of managing semantic and relational information regarding single archaeological items, which is in the first instance conceived for research purposes but whose structure is adaptable for dissemination and possibly commercial use.

In such a situation the reconstruction implies the tying of reproductions to newly- created models of the same object. How can we consider – in terms of property rights - such a mix?

Figure 1. In the current context, material (reproduced) parts of an archaeological remain and modeled (newly created) ones, may be blended as to create a new whole: a stratigraphic virtual unit “USV”, as the column on the right side (after Demetrescu & Fanini 2017)

It can be argued that the result is something similar to a collage, an original composition which has a proper identity and is no longer linked to the original one. But in a legal 54 AUGUSTO PALOMBINI

framework in which any CH object reproduction is authorized for a specific purpose is it licit to use it as a ‘brick’ of a new born object (Fig.1)? And is it licit to use it to ‘give birth’ to another reproduction (for instance, using pictures for producing 3D models through DSM techniques)? At the moment there seem to be no certain answers to such questions.

Where are we going? An overview Generally speaking, according to property laws, an owner of whatever object also owns the rights to its reproduction, and determines the conditions for allowing access to it through specific agreements, which may be different each time and don’t need to be determined by specific laws.

But, when dealing with states and CH objects which are public property, as we may imagine a lot of requests in different places and the presence of many single individuals responsible for different transactions, it is reasonable to have a general legal framework to rule such a process, in order to avoid different reactions and shorten the duration of any procedure. In this sense, as the ownership of Cultural Heritage 3D assets is going to represent a very relevant resource for the future economy, the general lack of specific laws is surprising, whereas the digitization and exploitation of CH objects is subject, in different countries, to specific legal agreements that need to be drawn up each time between the State, as object owner, and the author of the digitization.

In the general lack of standard national rules, France and Italy, represent interesting cases because – although lacking specific rules – they are witnessing ongoing processes which may lead to a meaningful change of the situation.

In France, a strong initiative started some years ago in the general frame of the National Plan for digitization5. The aim is to provide, in couple of years, to the digitization of a huge number of CH objects owned by the State and to make them available to the community. The plan also aims to use open source tools and to product totally-open data. Specific calls for projects to be funded are currently ongoing this framework6. The programme represents a relevant political event following an indirect income approach.

The Italian situation is particularly interesting in this context, for its historical setting. Italy is characterized in being strongly oriented towards a direct income approach. Indeed, such a dimension started to appear clearly some thirty years ago.

5 http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/Thematiques/Innovation-umerique/Archives- numerisation/Appels-a-projets-de-numerisation 6 http://www.gouvernement.fr/sites/default/files/contenu/piece- jointe/2016/12/ami_culture_patrimoine_et_numerique_161209.pdf EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 49-61 55

The earliest interventions for the constitution and ruling of a National Cultural law complex dates back to the late nineteenth - early twentieth century, along with the birth of the National State and the election of Rome as State Capital.

In that period, the new-born State, understanding the relevance of Cultural Heritage, started to confiscate a large proportion of private possessions in many places characterised by art and archaeological remains. Thus, the formation of the national “treasure” began and this today includes most of the Italian Cultural Heritage. Despite judicial interventions throughout the twentieth century, a crucial date for this process is the period 1990-1995. In August 1990 a law was issued7 establishing ticketed access for many monuments and sites previously free. This was the premise for a deeper choice towards direct income, realised in the year 1993, when law 4-1993 (the so- called Legge Ronchey) stated a specific regulation for the definition of the royalties for the reproduction of CH objects owned by the state; and a related price-list was then issued.

Such a law represented a significant step towards a direct income orientation, which gave rise to a general political trend (to some extent still present) in the same direction: as a matter of fact, it was followed by a reform in 2004 (Legge 42/2004 Codice dei Beni Culturali e del Paesaggio), which shaped the law structure currently obtaining in Italy (Sandulli 2012).

As already stressed, the definition of ‘three-dimensional reproduction’ up to some 20 years ago, was exclusively restricted to physical copies, generally obtained through a mould. In this sense, the price list for copies established by the previous law would have been clearly useless if applied to digital contents. Moreover, part of the fee applied to such an operation was justified as deposit because of the wear due to the mould-making operation, and as deposit for possible damages8, but digital scanning does not produce any wear.

As for CH reproduction, the main differences between the Codice and the previous Legge Ronchey are relevant to our analysis. The new law stated that criteria and fees for reproductions, have to be referred, not to the Central Administration that is to the Ministry, but rather to single local institutions, such as local museums for instance9, thus avoiding a general price list.

Such a change, although conceived in continuity with the old idea of ‘physical’ reproduction, resulted in a new formulation, which is paradoxically suitable for use within the frame of the Digital Era, even if lacking a specific law on digital models, as it does not rely on the definition of the “number” of copies, but stresses the need for evaluating – as main criterion – the purposes of the operation to be considered in each

7 D.M.03/08/1990. See also: Palombini 2014. 8 D.M. 20 April 2005. 9 D.L. 42-2004, art.108. 56 AUGUSTO PALOMBINI

individual case10. Giving such a power to local authorities allows the decision on specific policies (with or without the payment of fees) for different kinds of use of the resulting reproductions, and it is worth observing that this was exactly the aim of the authors of the law who wanted to de-centralize the decisions on the conditions to be applied for any single reproduction (Sandulli 2012: 833).

Recognizing different stakeholders The debate on the nature and management of property rights of 3D models, and the above-mentioned orientation towards direct/indirect income approach, is clearly tied to the wider discussion on openness/closeness of data in general. In such a context, it is important to consider the specific interests of all the subjects involved: the owning authorities, who want to keep a reasonable control on the assets’ utilization and – in case of significant earning – obtaining a part of it as a contribution to conservation expenses; those funding and authoring reproductions, who technically perform (on the owner’s account) the reproducing operation as an investment that should lead to an income; and the community, who claim by right open access to Cultural Heritage 3D assets.

Figure 2. The Rijksmuseum choice of making freely available high resolution pictures of its paintings increased museum’s visitors, but also resulted – as for the well-known case of Vermeer’s Milkmaid – in the prevalence of an official version of the artwork picture.

10 “I canoni di concessione ed i corrispettivi connessi alle riproduzioni di beni culturali sono determinati dall'autorità che ha in consegna i beni tenendo anche conto: a) del carattere delle attività cui si riferiscono le concessioni d'uso; b) dei mezzi e delle modalità di esecuzione delle riproduzioni; c) del tipo e del tempo di utilizzazione degli spazi e dei beni; d) dell'uso e della destinazione delle riproduzioni, nonché dei benefici economici che ne derivano al richiedente.” (D.L. 42-2004, art.108). EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 49-61 57

In addition, it is worth adding some considerations on the concept of open data. Beyond the general advantages triggered by such an approach (for an overview see Van Rijmenam 2017), there are many examples of the beneficial effects of openness in data managing. Some wider considerations may be drawn from the whole of human history, as the chances of survival for artworks and texts have always been proportional to the number of copies produced (Greek statues copied during the Roman Empire, classical texts copied in medieval monasteries, etc.), thus supporting the claim to an open right of reproduction.

Moreover, the rapid evolution of computers and software naturally leads to an increase of file formats and to a shortening of their life before obsolescence (Addison 2008), thus making crucial the opportunities of open access, distribution and reproduction. This said, recent experiments in open data approaches in museum contexts resulted in a clearly winning strategy, both in terms of visitor growth and information quality improvement. This was shown for instance by the decision taken in 2013 by the Rijksmuseum, to grant free access to its entire HR picture collection which enabled the museum to reach the highest attendance record with nearly 2,5 million visitors in 201411. Incidentally, such a decision resulted also in the establishment of an official version of the artworks’ pictures among the many available online which were often misleading in terms of colour and detail (Leon 2012) (Fig.2).

Furthermore, a more extreme transformation, driven by the digital revolution, is currently challenging the traditional approach. Commonly, on the authorization for reproduction, a distinction is generally made between personal and commercial use of the data. Such a distinction is absolutely reasonable, as it would be very unfair to manage in the same way a commercial operation, which generates income for entrepreneurs, and one which is to facilitate the private or study needs of individuals. Nevertheless, the general distinction between a profit and non-profit (personal) use of data is today weaker and less clear than in the past. In fact, today any person may act as a sort of advertising hub: social networks and various web entities make money thanks to the exchange of private information, chat discussions, and personal relationships. Within this picture, it is hard even to distinguish private and for profit use of a picture, either if an income is earned by the web platform or if it is directly cashed by single users12. To sum up, the drawing of a line between personal and for profit use of any data will become increasingly confused and impossible to state in the future13.

11 Rijksmuseum press office communication. https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/press/press- releases/rijksmuseum-sees-record-attendance-in-2014. See below for a more detailed explanation of Rijksmuseum case study. 12 Some new social platforms appeared, since a few years, following a pay-per-post or pay-per- friend approach, thus allowing users to directly earn part of the advertising income. For an overview: Walker 2017. 13 An interesting example on this topic is the Italian law 97/2013 (so called ArtBonus), which allows the diffusion of pictures by private citizens through the web, for personal and nonprofit use. But actually, social web platforms are profit enterprises, and the publication of any material implies a money income and a copyright cession. Thus, the law is currently self-contradicting. 58 AUGUSTO PALOMBINI

Finally, to further complicate the situation, another issue arises: authorship. An interesting debate is in fact ongoing, which resembles exactly the earliest stage in the history of photography. For a long time, photographic works were not subject to copyright since they were considered simple reproductions of the real world obtained through the chemical reaction to the light of a film. This implied that no creative effort by the operator was supposed to have taken place in the very act of shooting a picture (For a detailed discussion: Weinberg 2016: 4). Today, the same issue is open for discussion, and revolves around the following question: do 3D scans imply creative work (thus legitimising an authorship, and the related copyrights)? The matter is open but, at least for some cases, the answer seems to be positive, and this is of course another important factor to be taken into account for future, exhaustive approaches to the argument14.

Conclusions: a possible proposal for public policy on CH object reproduction in Italy. Some thirty years ago Italy started (more or less consciously) a path towards a direct income approach from Cultural Heritage exploitation. Whatever the opinions on such an approach, it is today seriously challenged by different obstacles, both theoretical (the complexity in marking a border between the concepts of “reproduction” and “creation”, of “private” and “public”, of “profit” and “non profit”, of “single” and “multiple” use of assets), and practical (the difficulty in limiting the use of cameras and the diffusion of information, and in identifying who is responsible for single actions in this chain).

Considering this complex picture and the reasonable interest of the many actors involved, in my opinion, the polarization of the discussion between open and closed approach does not favour the search for suitable models for managing the whole property rights issue. The spread of 3D digital technology may be seen as a good chance to draft a general proposal on the matter, taking into consideration the possibility of pursuing a midway approach.

In order to clearly explain the proposal, it is useful to move back to the mentioned Rijksmuseum path towards its total open data choice.

At the beginning of such a path, in 2011, the Rijksmuseum inaugurated its market strategy making freely available medium quality images and selling at reasonable fees the high resolution ones. A first observation is that:

It is interesting to compare the revenue of the image bank over the years. In 2010, when nothing was available under open conditions, there was actually less revenue than in 2011, when the first set was made available. It is even more interesting to see that in 2012, there is an even more substantial increase

14 The discussion is more complex than this brief analysis. Considerations on creative effort must distinguish the scanning shot from the following operations of interpolation and post- processing. Nevertheless, there may be aspects decided at the scanning moment which impact on the final result. Weinberg (2016: 8-11) uses the definition “expressive scans” addressing the cases which clearly imply a significant creative work. EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 49-61 59 in sales. This shows that releasing the medium quality images to the public in 2011 still allowed them to have a viable business model, and in fact increased the amount of image sales (Pekal 2014: 11-12).

About one year later, the Rijksmuseum chose to make freely available all images, because the administrative effort in handling and processing royalty-driven copies was likely to be greater than the money income. In his analysis of the Rijksmuseum case study, Joris Pekel points out that it is very likely that many institutions are not in the position to do this. For this reason the previous setup of the Rijksmuseum where they make good quality images freely available to popularise their collection, and charged for the master files can be a good solution for cultural institutions (Pekal 2014: 15).

Such a midway strategy seems to be a reasonable choice to meet the different demands of all parties involved. At least for those cases in which a state (through its local institutions) is the owner of CH objects, as in Italy for example, a possible proposal may be drawn up as follows:

- The state grants complete freedom of reproduction for any (including commercial) purpose both on pictures and 3D models building. - At the same time, the State may grant, at commercial conditions to be defined every single time by specific agreements (as already possible, in Italy, within the frame of the current law), the use of its high-quality pictures and 3D models, which come with a State Quality Label and a non-transferable licence of use. What would be the consequences of such an arrangement? By purchasing the right of use on institutional pictures, the user would obtain, at the same time, the State Quality Label thus implying a sort of Italian Cultural Heritage brand, which would be an upgrade for the market value of any kind of use or derivative product. - For pictures: it would be much easier for anyone to take a picture independently, and the purchase of institutional pictures would be therefore limited to particular cases (institutional relationships, or need of the associated brand) - For 3D models the situation is very different, as it is still much more difficult to create a 3D model independently, by freely moving into a museum, not because of technological limits (there are many ways to take some pictures and create in real time a 3D model by photogrammetric procedures), but for logistic issues: it is not always possible, in a museum, to manipulate in all directions an object in order to shoot it from all angles required to get a complete, good quality 3D model. Thus, in this case, the user would be almost obliged to buy an officially-licensed model not only for the brand, but every time a complete and good quality model is needed.

In addition to such a general model, of course, specific public programmes may be conceived on the basis of the cited French National Plan for digitization, aimed at the production of total open access 3D models. In this way it is possible to imagine a more varied scenario, in which all interested parties may be able to meet their requests. 60 AUGUSTO PALOMBINI

It is important to stress, as a final remark, how a correct way of managing the enormous work of a complete digitization of the Cultural Heritage, may represent a great chance to foster job opportunities and economic and cultural growth for a large part of the population, instead of being a source of income for only a few favoured subjects.

References ADDISON A.C. 2008. Digital Heritage 2.0: Strategies for Safeguarding Culture in a Disappearing World, in: T. A. MIKROPOULOS & N.M. PAPACHRISTOS (eds.), Proceedings International Symposium on “Information and Communication Technologies in Cultural Heritage”. Ioannina: Graphic Arts, 9–18. BELLOTTI F., R. BERTA, A. DE GLORIA, A. D’URSI & V. FIORE, 2012. A serious game model for cultural heritage. Journal of Computing and Cultural Heritage 5: 1–27. CALLIERI M., M. DELLEPIANE, P. CIGNONI & R. SCOPIGNO, 2011. Processing Sampled 3D Data: Reconstruction and Visualization Technology, in: F. STANCO, S. BATTIATO & G. GALLO (ed.), Analysis, Restoration, and Reconstruction of Ancient Artworks, Taylor and Francis 2011, 69–89. http://www.crcnetbase.com/doi/abs/10.1201/b11049-4 CASTAGNI N., 2016, Da Ebla a Palmira, tesori feriti al Colosseo. ANSA 07 October 2016. Accessed December 2017. http://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cultura/arte/2016/10/07/da-ebla-a-palmira-tesori- feriti-al-colosseo_1fe49ff7-81d3-4bae-a2fa-34cbbbcb8944.html DEMETRESCU E., B. FANINI, 2017. A white-box framework to oversee archaeological virtual reconstructions in space and time: Methods and tools. Journal of Archaeological Science 14: 500–514. DODGSON N.A., 2014, Going to the movies: Lessons from the Film Industry for 3D Libraries, in: M. IOANNIDES, E. QUAK (eds.) 2014. 3D Research Challenges in Cultural Heritage: a Roadmap in Digital Heritage Preservation. Berlin & Heidelberg: Springer. HARRIS, E.C., 1979. Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy. London & New York: Academic Press. HUPPERETZ W., O.E. KAPER, F. NAEREBOUT & M.J. VERSLUYS, 2013. Keys to Rome, Amsterdam: Allard Pierson Museum/WBooks. LEON, S. 2012, The Revenge of the Yellow Milkmaid: Cultural Heritage Institutions open up dataset of 20m+ items, Open Knowledge international Blog 17 September 2012, Accessed December 2017. https://blog.okfn.org/2012/09/17/the-revenge-of-the-yellow-milkmaid-cultural- heritage-institutions-open-up-dataset-of-20m-items/ PALOMBINI, A., 2016, Open Hardware, Open Space, Open Funding: dal mondo dell’informazione aperta nuovi modelli economici per il patrimonio culturale, in: F. STANCO & G. GALLO (eds.), Proceedings of Archeofoss free, libre and open source software e open format nei processi di ricerca archeologica VIII edizione, Oxford: Archaeopress 2016, 122–127. Accessed December 2017. http://www.archaeopress.com/ArchaeopressShop/Public/download.asp?id={14C6CF BD-3371-4DF0-8971-D4ABC24E661E} PALOMBINI A., 2014. Flussi turistici e pubblico museale: un tentativo di approccio analitico. Digitalia 9 (2): 38–45. EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 49-61 61

PEKEL, J., 2014, Democratising the Rijksmuseum. Europeana 27 August 2014. Accessed December 2017. http://pro.europeana.eu/files/Europeana_Professional/Publications/Democratising%2 0the%20Rijksmuseum.pdf RAY C., J. VOS & P. RETEL (eds.), 2013. Etruscanning: digital encounters with the Regolini- Galassi Tomb. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, Allard Pierson Museum. REMONDINO F. & S. CAMPANA, 2014, 3D Recording and Modelling in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage. Theory and best practices. BAR International Series 2598. Oxford: Archaeopress. SASSATELLI G. & A. RUSSO TAGLIENTE (eds.), 2014. Il viaggio oltre la vita: gli etruschi e l'Aldilà tra capolavori e realtà virtuale; Bologna: Bononia University Press. PESCARIN S., (ed.) 2013, Keys to Rome: roman culture and virtual museums, CNR-ITABC. Accessed December 2017, http://keys2rome.eu/downloads/CatalogK2R.pdf SANDULLI, M.A., 2012. Commentario del Codice per i Beni Culturali e del Paesaggio, Milano: Giuffré Editore. STUART K., 2010, Assassin’s Creed and the appropriation of history, The Guardian 19 November 2010. Accessed December 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2010/nov/19/assassin-s-creeed- brotherhood-history VAN RIJMENAM, M., 2017. How Open Data Portals Will Stimulate Innovation and Economic Growth. Datafloq 27 February 2017. Accessed December 2017 https://datafloq.com/read/open-data-portals-stimulate-innovation-economic-gr/94 WALKER, L., 2017. Social Networks that pay users for content. Lifewire (updated: October 2017). Accessed December 2017. https://www.lifewire.com/social-networks-that-pay-users-for-content-2653987 WEINBERG, M., 2016. 3D Scanning, a world without copyright. Shapeways May 2016. Accessed December 2017. https://www.shapeways.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/white-paper-3d-scanning-world- without-copyright.pdf

62 Print: ISBN 978-1-78491-763-0 Online: ISSN 2531-8810 EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2, December 2017: 63-83 63 Published Online: Dec 2017

Frontiers of Romania: Nationalism and the Ideological Space of the Roman Limes

Emily R. Hanscam

Dept. of Archaeology, Durham University

Abstract Modern Romania is a nation-state containing space which has long been considered marginal - first as part of the Roman Empire and now within the European Union. The national narrative of Romania highlights this liminality, focusing on the interactions between the Romans and the local Dacians on the northeastern border regions of the Empire. Romania still contains significant material remnants of the Iron Age, including the Roman Limes, a series of fortifications on the Danube River meant to protect the Roman borders. As such, the archaeological tradition of this geographic space is heavily entangled with Romania’s identity as a frontier region. This paper outlines the formation of Romanian national space, focusing on the period between the seventeenth century and 1918. It considers the relationship between the materiality of the Roman Limes and ideological frontiers in Romania, examining the role of archaeology in the sustainment of the Romanian nation space.

Keywords: Romania, Frontiers, Roman Limes, Ideological Space, Nationalism

Introduction The foundation of the Romanian nation-state in the nineteenth century was a declaration that the intellectual elite of southeast Europe chose to orient themselves towards the West rather than the Ottoman East. Romania (Figs. 1, 2) achieved international recognition of political sovereignty in 1881, escaping subjugation by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire as well as the Ottomans. This happened primarily because it suited the ‘Great Powers’ of France, Germany, and Great Britain to sponsor nation building in the Carpathians rather than permit the expansion of the aforementioned empires (Hitchins 1996; Boia 2001; Popa 2015). Romania has always been a multicultural space characterized by a need to distinguish itself from its immediate neighbors, and the country today has a prolific material past which is haunted by over a century of explicit politicization by the construction of particular archaeological narratives. This paper will begin by outlining the formation of Romanian national space until the end of the First World War in 1918, and then moves to compare the relationship between the materiality of the Roman Limes on the Lower Moesian Frontier, and the ideological frontier which I argue exists within Romania and Romanian archaeology.

CONTACT Emily Hanscam, [email protected]

64 EMILY R. HANSCAM

Popa (2015: 348) points out that presently,

[Romanian] scholars are not directly overtly politicizing their research”, but rather that “the situation has reached a point where the nationalistic discourse is so subtle, so embedded in everyday archaeological practices and writing, that it becomes invisible to the authors and academic readers of that environment.

There are myriad reasons why this has occurred in Romania, and Romania is not at all alone in this. Every nation has at times promoted one historical narrative over another.1

Figure 1. Romania highlighted within Eastern Europe (E. Hanscam) Nationalism and archaeology developed hand-in-hand; as Díaz-Andreu and Champion (1996b: 3) write, “the appearance of nationalism stimulated the very creation of archaeology as a science . . . [it] was a closed circle. The nation was at the same time the basis and the aim of research.” Archaeology was simultaneously flexible enough to support imperialism by providing scientific evidence for the evolutionary hierarchy of peoples, thereby proving the necessity of the colonial world order (Trigger 2006). Academics have established a considerable dialogue on the archaeological work of the nineteenth century, work that inspired myths like ethnic nationalism (see e.g. Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983; Kohl 1998; Thomas 2004; Lampe & Mazower 2004; Anderson 2006; Díaz-Andreu 2008). Cultural-historical archaeology as a theory encouraged a focus on ethnicity, accommodating nationalist interpretations “where specific archaeological cultures were unproblematically seen as ancestral to contemporary ethnic or national groups” (Kohl 1998: 231).

1 See e.g. Diaz-Andreu and Champion (1996) for a summary of nationalism and archaeology in Europe, Hamilakis (2007) for the relationship between the Greek national imagination and archaeological material, and Hingley (2000) for an example of the impact of the Roman past on British nationalism.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 63-83 65

Because of this, and in an attempt to “counteract the effects of unseen biases and inadequate research designs” (Trigger 2006: 546), archaeology is now a discipline intent on the pursuit of reflexivity, or the necessity of conducting socially aware research (e.g. Hamilakis 1996; Hodder 2005; McGuire 2008; Alberti et al. 2011; Watts 2013). Preucel and Meskell (2004: 16) define social archaeology as an approach that “engages with how different peoples inscribe meaning . . . and through this process of inscription, construct themselves.”

Figure 2. Historical regions of Romania (E. Hanscam)

The construction of self is key as it applies to those doing the research as well, we understand that archaeologists are actors creating the past through personal engagement with the material record, and we often criticize those who use this relationship to further political agendas. However some like McGuire (2008) advocate for archaeology as political action, while Yannis Hamilakis’ (2017) recent work in understanding the materiality of the migrant crisis definitively calls for politically engaged scholarship. A decade ago, Trigger (2007: 547) said that archaeology is becoming an “increasingly effective basis for understanding social change.” A great deal of social change has occurred in the past ten years, and archaeologists are a) engaging with extremely contemporary events (Gardner 2017), and b) struggling to understand how to research in a way that combats resurging nationalism without becoming overtly politicized.2 It is difficult, because we want to avoid creating a dichotomy between our own personal subjective views of how the past should be treated and those which further nationalist agendas.

2 A topic of much discussion following a session on social boundaries in the Roman world at the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference 2017 (Durham, 28-31 March).

66 EMILY R. HANSCAM

In some regions, like Romania, archaeology remains politicized in the old cultural- historical sense and scholarship continues to (at times explicitly) support the nationalist agendas of the state. Texts which are otherwise rigorous include statements like

The territory inhabited by Romanians has a well-marked individuality that, on the whole, and in spite of its large variety and complexity, has a remarkable homogeneity and symmetry. Indeed, one may confidently assert that the unity of the land has much to do with the unity of the Romanian people (Spinei 2009: 13).

There are an increasing number of local and international commentaries on Romanian archaeology, which highlight advances being made. Popa (2015) provides a detailed analysis on the relationship between the Late Iron Age and politics in Romania, building on the work of scholars like Kaiser (1995), Niculescu (2002, 2004), Lockyear (2004), Dragoman (2009), and Enea (2012). Boia (2001) is the authority on the ideological construction of Romanian national history, an area in which Deletant (1991), Verdery (1991) Hitchins (1992), and Iordachi (2004) have also made significant contributions. But attitudes within the discipline can be very similar to those towards the country as a whole. Romania is marginalized within Europe, just as the Romanian archaeological tradition is subject to dismissal and criticism.

On January 1st, 2014 the UK granted Romanians and Bulgarians free access to the UK labor market, inspiring a wave of xenophobia on the part of the British public, a wave which was reignited after Britain voted to leave the EU in June 2016.3 Romanians, despite their EU membership status, are continually seen as not quite European (and therefore undeserving of benefits such as access to jobs made available through the freedom of movement for workers). In a similar vein, Todorova (2009: 193–4) writes how discourses about the Balkans in general places the territory within a “cognitive straightjacket” propagating “aggressive, intolerant, barbarian, semi-developed, semi- civilized, and semi-oriental” stereotypes. Romania, located on the margins of Europe bordering the East, is included within the Balkan discourse. Boia (2001: 186) writes, “we Romanians represent the first circle of otherness, sufficiently close for our curious configurations and disturbing forms of behavior to be highlighted all the more strongly by contrast . . . ”. Romania is a liminal space. If we generalize the disparate voices of Europe into a pan-European identity or European denationalization (eg. Sassen 2010), then Romania acts as a borderland separating Europe and the East. It is also a borderland within archaeology, a place where the past is still presented through a

3 See eg. Petre, J & Walters, S. Exposed: What they DIDN'T tell you about new wave of migrants heading for booming Britain, accessed 2 May 2017, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530503/Exposed-What- DIDNT-tell-new-wave-migrants-heading-booming-Britain.html; The Guardian, Bulgarian and Romanian immigration hysteria 'fanned by far-right', accessed 2 May 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2014/jan/03/romanian-bulglarian-uk-immigration-hysteria-far-right; Agerholm, H. Brexit: Wave of hate crime and racial abuse reported following EU referendum, accessed 2 May 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-eu-referendum-racial-racism-abuse-hate- crime-reported-latest-leave-immigration-a7104191.html.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 63-83 67 continued reliance on antiquated archaeological theories like Kossinna’s cultural- historical archaeology (Trigger 2006). Romania is not alone in this, Maran (2017: 21) points out that “most archaeological cultures of the Southeastern European Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age are based on little more than the distribution of certain pottery features within the political borders of nation states;” and similarly, processual archaeology “is still a living tradition” for Mesolithic studies in Northern Spain (González Morales & Fano Martínez 2005: 25).

Romania was also a marginal region in antiquity. The Romans established the province of Moesia Inferior south of the Danube in the 1st century CE (Fig. 3) and built a series of fortifications on the Danube River, known today as the Roman Limes of the lower Danube (Hanson & Haynes 2004; Oltean 2008; Matei- Popescu 2010; Zahariade & Karavas 2015). They also tried, and failed, to hold the province Figure 3. Roman Dacia highlighted on map of the Roman of Dacia in the central Empire, By Shadowxfox - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Carpathian Mountains.4 This https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45059715 region resisted incorporation into the Roman Empire partially because of the continued pressure of migrating populations moving west from the Russian steppe. The Carpathian Gap, the lowlands between the Carpathian Mountains and the Black Sea, was a popular route into Europe for the steppe tribes of the 4th– 8th centuries (Ellis 1998; Curta 2001). The Roman fortifications and legions could not withstand the continued pressure, leading eventually to the complete abandonment of the region. From a Roman-centric viewpoint, the provinces of Dacia and Moesia Inferior were vulnerable, being out on the margins of civilization.5 It is perhaps ironic that Romanian nationalism initially fixated on the Romans as the heroic ancestors who could bring stability, when stability was something they continually struggled to provide in antiquity.

In this paper I will argue for a new way of understanding both the ideological development of regions such as modern-day Romania, and the archaeological traditions of these spaces. As is explained below, the foundation of the Romanian nation-state

4 Dacia was conquered by Trajan in 107 CE and held until 271-275 when Aurelian organized a withdrawal south of the Danube. 5 There are a number of similarities with the Roman Frontier in Britain to the northwest, for a study on the impact of the Roman past to modern day Britain, see Hingley (2015).

68 EMILY R. HANSCAM

drew heavily on the Iron Age to find what Popa (2015: 339) terms the “tangible distinctiveness” necessary for national legitimacy. This, combined with the significant Iron Age material landscape (including the remnants of the Roman Limes), and the continued view of Romania as marginalized within Europe, creates a geographic space which continues to be entangled with the frontiers of antiquity. We can understand the relationship between people and space with theories like differential inclusion, which argues that as people move across borders, they experience places which are open to some but closed to others depending on their cultural background and identity (Richardson 2013). Romania has yet to face migratory pressures like other nations in southeast Europe, but this is not a precluded eventuality – it stands to reason that the region will once again host migrating populations. This has happened at multiple times in the past – in addition to the migrations of the 4th- 8th centuries, the Carpathian Basin and lower Danube are also on one of the major proposed hominin migration routes (Mellars 2006). In 2002 Trinkaus et al. (2003) discovered the oldest (at the time) remains of anatomically modern humans in Europe in the Peştera cu Oase cave system, located in the southwest Carpathian Mountains. Given the likelihood of future migrations, we therefore need to question the creation and sustainment of ideological and cultural barriers in regions like Romania, in addition to promoting a more nuanced view of the archaeological traditions which contribute to the construction of this frontier space.

I will begin by detailing the formation of the Romanian national space focusing on the period between the seventeenth century and the establishment of Romania Mare (Greater Romania) in 1918. I will then consider the relationship between the materiality of the Roman Limes and ideological frontiers in Romania, aiming to theorize how border regions like Romania entangle themselves with the past. I will conclude with the need to understand nationalist archaeologies in terms of the cultural space they generate and sustain.

The Formation of Romanian National Space The idea that descendants of 2nd century Roman colonists still inhabited a region in southeastern Europe first appears in print in the seventeenth century, with the publication of two treatises written by pro-Polish Moldavian chroniclers. Grigore Ureche (ca. 1590-1647) and Miron Costin (1633-1691) both knew Latin and recognized the potential benefits of creating a lasting link between the Romanians and the Polish, who “formed a powerful potential ally for the 17th Century Moldavians, for as the self- styled ‘last bastion of defense for Roman Christendom,’ they might be expected to sympathize with the sons of Rome” (Verdery 1991: 324; cf. Hitchins 2001). Boia (2001: 129) agrees: “We find the ethnic unity of the Romanians, or at least their relatedness and common origin, affirmed as clearly as we could wish starting with Grigore Ureche.” Because Latin was the language of culture throughout Europe at this time (Russia even considered itself the ‘third Rome’) any link to the Romans conveyed a sense of prestige. Ureche and Costin therefore “claimed a Romanian origin for Trajan’s Roman colonists” (Verdery 1991: 324).

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 63-83 69

Yet the popular dissemination of such a link was controversial, especially among the Orthodox priests, who were trying to resist the incursion of Catholicism. As Verdery (1991: 32) suggests, “those struggling to oppose the incursions of the ‘Roman’ faith did not, it seems, find a Roman origin wholly convenient.” At this time the dispute remained was fixed within what Anderson (2007) calls “religiously imagined communities,” largely as a matter of religious identity, as it was too early in the development of national thought for the notion of borders fixed by language and ethnicity. It did, however, combine the “two major components of the European tradition – the imperial and the Christian” (Mishkova 2015: 137). Byzantium played an important role as the lawful heir to the Roman Empire and the keeper of the Orthodox faith (Mishkova 2015); Ureche and Costin “emphasized the role and the greatness of the early Romanians as a separate nationality, albeit one that had been part of the Byzantine world” (Tanașoca 2002: 47). Tanașoca (2014: trans. in Mishkova 2015: 138) elaborates: “in the spirit of the Romanian humanists of the 17th and 18th centuries the idea about Orthodox solidarity and the nostalgia for the Byzantine Empire goes along with a very strong feeling of national identity that acquires an important Byzantine dimension”. The emphasis on the Byzantine Empire, which had only relatively recently fallen to the Turks in 1453, created a tangible connection to Rome while simultaneously rejecting anything Ottoman in these formerly Roman lands.

Unlike the nationalism of the late nineteenth and early-mid twentieth century, the idea of a Roman heritage for the peoples of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania meant that they were specifically promoting a non-autochthonous origin. Autochthonism is an interesting concept, which is not widely known outside of the social sciences. It is a specific brand of indigenism (or indigenous nationalism) which was popular in the former Ottoman lands in Eastern Europe: the autochthonist population was the people who could prove they were the first to inhabit a territory. Zenker (2011: 65) defines autochtony as the proclaimed original link between “individual, territory, and group.” Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary all have their autochothonist narratives, Romania’s was found in the “application and negotiation of the alternative pasts of the Romans and Dacians” while Bulgaria worked with Thracian, proto-Bulgarian, and Slavic pre-history (Trencsényi 2010: 26; cf. Mishkova & Daskalov 2014). Hungary, on the other hand, had a narrative of identity that focused on the Huns, thus attempting to “undermine the classical pedigree of their competitors” (Trencsényi 2010: 26). Likewise, de Francesco (2013) details the calls within nineteenth century Italy for identities with privilege derived from Roman ancestry, or links to peoples from the pre-Roman era like the Etruscans. Smith (1986: 183) notes how “in the myths of the community its origins reach back into a mysterious and primordial time.” This lack of clarity, useful in the sense that it thereby makes it difficult to disprove, is particularly challenging when there is a corresponding lack of archaeological knowledge.

Returning to the Romanian autochthonist narrative, in which the Romans were the invaders and civilizers of the local tribes, we are still not entirely clear on what happened to the local Dacians after the Romans arrived (see Oltean 2007). It is certain, however,

70 EMILY R. HANSCAM

that an argument for a pure Roman heritage precludes any local element. This trend continued into the early nineteenth century, spreading to Transylvania, which was then ruled from Vienna by the Austro-Hungarians, where Greek Catholic intellectuals6 used the idea of Roman origin to argue for autonomy from Hungary. The grandeur of Rome so impressed Samuil Micu (1745-1806), Gheorghe Șincai (1754-1816), and Petru Maior (1756-1821) that they used “mastery histories and pioneering grammars [to define] the uniqueness of the Romanian ethnic community” as the heirs to the Roman Empire (Niculescu 2001: 92; cf. Deletant 1991). Micu in particular linked the origins of the Romanian history to the foundation of Rome by Romulus and Remus, arguing that the line of descent was continuous since Trajan must have exterminated the Dacians (Micu 1792, translated in Niculescu 2001). They all employed linguistics to support their theories, attempting to replace the traditional Cyrillic alphabet with Latin. Maior wrote the Lexicon de Buda in 1825, arguing that Romanian was derived from a ‘Vulgar Latin,’ whilst attempting to replace all foreign words with those of Latin origin (Niculescu 2001). This combination of history and language corresponded to the popular notion of the nation as a people, united on the basis of common origins, in a community with a shared language and history. The Transylvanian School considered the Romanians to exist as a unified people throughout Transylvania, Wallachia, the Maramures, Moldavia, and the Banat, separated only by externally imposed political boundaries (see Fig. 2).

The Latinist School followed the Transylvanian School in seeking the continued spread of this Romanian heritage. Between 1830 and 1860 interpretations of the Romanian past that do not uphold Latin purity are almost non-existent. Boia (2001: 87) describes the aims of the Latinists succinctly, “the excellence of the foundation myth guaranteed the excellence of the Romanian future, in spite of the mediocrity of the present. Through the Romans, the Romanians could present themselves as the equals of anybody.” In 1853, August Treboniu Laurian published his History of the Romanians which began with the foundation of Rome in 753 BCE. This idea of equating Romanian history with Roman was not without dissent from Romanian scholars, who became increasingly vocal after Laurian also tried to create a nonsensical “artificial language” out of Romanian, purified from non-Latin elements. Boia argues that Laurian’s work was both the “highest expression” of Latinism, while also its “swan song” (2001: 87).

The autochthonous element began to return in 1857, when Brătianu published his Historical Studies on the Origins of our Nationality, which argued that the Romanians descend from the Thracians, Celts, and the Romans. This had clear political motives, as the Thracians (and thus the Dacians) symbolized longevity in the land, while the Romans granted the aura of civilization, and Celts (or the Gauls) linked the Romanians to the culturally admired French. Scholars largely focused, however, on the role of the Dacians in comprising Romanian identity, and began to question the work done by the Latinists. In 1860 B. Hașdeu thoroughly debunked their efforts by proving they had built the

6 The Greek Catholics, also known as Uniates, were a separate sect of Orthodox Catholics who recognized the authority of the Pope and Catholic dogma, but likewise included Byzantine rather than Latin rites; their church was formally established in 1596.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 63-83 71 entire thing based on a forced interpretation of ancient sources (Boia 2001). His work Did the Dacians Perish? ascertained that the Dacians survived the Romans, which opened up a whole new world of possibilities for the Romanian national narrative. Trencsényi (2011: 23) describes Hașdeu as representing the “Romantic-liberal heritage” but turned it to a more “directly ethnicist direction”. This was an almost parallel contrast to M. Eminescu (1850-1889), the eminent Romanian poet of the nineteenth century who came from a Junimist critique of liberal nationalism (Trencsényi 2011). Trencsényi (2011: 22) writes that Eminescu’s “sociological insights crystallized around a single dichotomy: the conflict between the ‘positive classes’ and the ‘superimposed strata,’ that is, the autochothonous and the alien.” He is especially important in the entangled narrative of Romanian historiography and nationalism because his work “helps us understand how the political projects, the historical narratives and the normative discourse of the ‘national self’ mutually conditioned each other” (Trencsényi 2011: 23). Although he followed in the “intellectual tradition of Vico, Montesquieu, Herder…Hegel, and Comte,” Hașdeu also pioneered the intellectual engagement between Romania and the Slavic East Central Europe, referencing Slavic studies in his own work (Trencsényi 2011: 24). Hașdeu’s education provides clues as to why he took such an alternative view. He was from northern Bessarabia, which was then part of the Russian Empire, and was educated at Kharkiv University in Ukraine (Marinov 2015). His work embodies changing perceptions about the origins of the Romanians. Hașdeu initially rejected the idea of Dacian Latinization, but believed that “ethnic fusion was part of the formation of [the] Romanian nation” (Trencsényi 2011: 27). He later became more accepting of the ‘Dacian vision’ and as Trencsényi (2011: 27) writes, “turned to an autochthonist narrative of ethnogenesis.”

Scholars had considered the Dacians as possible ancestors of the Romanians in the previous century,7 but dismissed them for various reasons. One thought the Dacians were unsuitable because they were Scythians and worshipped the Slavic gods (Marinov 2015: 23). Verdery (2001: 36-7) notes that the Dacians, made greater headway once the creation of a Romanian state had diminished the need to gain European support for independence…unlike Latinism, Dacianism meant independence in politics, for pre- Roman Dacia had been powerful within its region and had even exacted tribute for a time from Rome.

Furthermore, the Dacians were seen to have had a deeper, more intangible and spiritual connection with the land, in line with Romantic nationalist thought (Zub 1981). There were specific political advantages to such a claim– Hungary had previously justified ownership of Transylvania by claiming it was empty when the Magyar nomads entered in 896 CE. The old theory that the Romans exterminated the Dacians did not give the Romanians much of an argument, as it was well known the Romans abandoned Dacia in

7 Actually, Greek intellectuals like D. Philippide, D. Fotino used ‘Dacia’ in the first half of the 19th century to refer to the modern Romanian space, and accepted the idea of Daco-Roman mixing (Marinov 2015: 23).

72 EMILY R. HANSCAM

271 CE.8 If, however, instead, the Romans and the Dacians interbred, then it was logical that a Dacian population would remain after the Roman retreat in their homeland of Transylvania (Verdery 2001). Furthermore, the Dacians provided a new aspect of longevity to Romanian identity. Through this mysterious people, scholars could trace a lineage back into the mists of history rather than relying on the concrete timeline of the Romans. As the Dacians began to appear in the national past, archaeological work also began to appear as a means of accessing a people who appeared far less frequently in written sources than the Romans. Such a trend is reflected upon in the work of Enea (2012: 94), who writes, “the emergence of archaeology in Romania is linked to the search, development, and affirmation of the national identity.” In 1858, C. Bolliac (1813- 1881) began an amateur archaeological quest to find the remains of the ancient Dacians, emphasizing that, “[Our] nobility is as old as the soil…” (as translated in Boia 2001: 92). Bolliac defined ‘Romanianness’ in terms of “climatic determination, stressing that the Romanians were fatally wedged between the poles of north and south, past and future, archaism and modernity.” (Bolliac in Boia 2001: 92). He situated Romania spatially between the West and the East, blaming the “capricious national character” on the “mixing of barbarism and civilization, Orient and Occident” (Trencsényi 2011: 6). For Bolliac, to be on the margins of Europe and susceptible to Eastern influences was at least partially to blame for the contemporary backwardness of Romania. The mission of Romanian archaeology was to stir up the Dacian substratum, previously overshadowed by the brilliance of the Romans, as a way of emphasizing the ‘pre-Ottoman’ Romanian past. Marinov (2015: 23) writes that Bolliac admired the Dacians because they were a “big and powerful nation, with a sublime religion based on a belief in immortality”, and because they were also apparently the first to convert to Christianity.9

Continuing Bolliac’s work, A. Obobescu taught the first course in archaeology at the University of Bucharest in 1874. Enea (2012: 94) writes that “he was the first to introduce scientific methods into the archaeological approach [in Romania].” G. Tocilescu published the first synthesis of Romanian historiography in 1880, stressing the Dacians over the Romans, or Dacia before the Romans (Enea 2012; O Riagain & Popa 2012; Marinov 2015). He scorned the idea that the Getae10 and Dacians were German/Gothic, Celtic, or Slavic, and asserted their Thracian character (Marinov 2015). Tocilescu specifically did not equate the Getae and the Dacians, preferring the later as they were “morally purer” (Marinov 2015: 25). Nonetheless, subsequent Romanian historiographical works treated the Getae and the Dacians as the same people. Despite the lack of clarity regarding the identity of Dacians, it was impractical for academics to wholly abandon the notion of Roman descent. The new theory henceforth became

8 271 CE is the common date for Aurelian’s abandonment of Dacia, it may have occurred up till 275 (Ellis 1998). 9 Herodotus (4.93) writes, “Their [the Getae] belief in their immortality is as follows: they believe that they do not die, but that one who perishes goes to the deity Salmoxis, or Gebeleïzis, as some of them call him.” 10 The Getae are a Thracian tribe which once lived in the region of the lower Danube, known from ancient sources like Strabo (7.3.13) who described them as a people separate from the Dacians. Romanian historiography, however, tended to treat the two as one in the same, creating the united ‘Geto-Dacian’s’ which provide the autochthonous connection to the national space (Niculescu 2004).

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 63-83 73 known as “Daco-Roman continuity,” which alleged the intermixing of Roman and Dacian and granted the Romanians the benefits of a less rigid identity, which nonetheless sustained their marginal European identity.

Romanian National Space post-Independence The shift from a pure Latin inheritance to varying degrees of Dacian only occurred after the Romanians began to achieve political independence. Despite a failed revolution in 1848, 1859 saw the formal union of Wallachia (modern Oltenia and Muntenia, see Fig. 2) and Moldavia in the “United Principalities of Romania,” with the “Kingdom of Romania” emerging in 1881 upon the addition of Dobrogea. These original forays into Romanian identity were all results of early attempts to appeal to an international audience. Initially the Moldavian Latinists sought Western aid for the ‘sons of Rome’ against Ottoman oppression, and the Latinists sought to solidify Romanian identity as older and more civilized than that of the Hungarians. Romanian scholars turned towards a Dacian origin only after Romania gained some political independence. Dacia was more of a ‘manifest destiny’, a call to the homeland in accordance with the contemporary idea that people’s souls are formed by the soil on which they are born (Verdery 1991). According to the principles of ethnic nationalism, if Romania wanted to claim territory from Hungary, they had to prove that their people had an older claim to that land. Since the time at which the Romans entered into the Carpathians is well documented, the Romanians had, instead, to use the less tangible longevity of the autochthonous Dacians to preempt the Hungarian Magyars.

Romania gained significant political power by the beginning of the twentieth century. Prior to First World War they controlled Moldavia, Wallachia, and Dobrogea,11 they were allied with Austro-Hungarian Empire, and they were on a broadly level playing field with other European nations. The emphasis on Romanian identity changed from Latin purity and continuity to a reflection of a time in the past when the ‘Romanians’ had political independence. In other words, the new Romanian state was the heir to the Dacian ‘nation’ that the Romans had encountered in the 1st century CE. This Dacian nation was, no mere agglomeration of a number of savage tribes with a shifting population, scattered loosely over extended territory with a complete lack of political and national cohesion such as the Romans had found in Dalmatia or Thrace or Pannonia or Moesia; here was a nation, organized, powerful, conscious of itself (Pârvan as translated in Boia 2001: 95).

Not only was Dacia supposedly more advanced than the other tribes in the region, it displayed a level of cohesion remarkable for Iron Age tribes in the Carpathian Basin. Vasile Pârvan (1882-1927), as quoted above, wrote the seminal work on Romania’s Dacian heritage, in which he outlined an image of Dacian civilization similar to the current perception of traditional Romanian culture. Pârvan went on to become “the

11 They annexed Southern Dobrogea in 1913 after allying with the Greeks and the Serbians to defeat the Bulgarians in the 2nd Balkan War.

74 EMILY R. HANSCAM

patriarch of the Romanian archaeological establishment,” conducting pioneering excavations at the Roman city of Histria on the Black Sea coast (Kaiser 1995: 101). His work, which according to Boia (2001: 95; see also Iordachi and Trencsenyi 2003: 428) was “unassailable from a methodological point of view,” suggested that the Romanian nation-state “has been a ‘natural’ and ‘objective’ historical outcome of the struggle for political union.” Pârvan is not alone for assuming a ‘natural’ national evolution. The nation as a “human constant” was a prevalent attitude among the scholarly community for much of the early-mid twentieth century, with scholars often deploring its harmful effects yet taking it for granted (Smith 1986: 7).

In the years immediately after First World War, Romania achieved its greatest territorial extent, adding the territories of Banat, Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transylvania. The country then became known as România Mare or ‘Greater Romania’. Despite the obvious success of the ‘heirs’ of the Dacians, not everyone agreed with a solely Dacian heritage; after all, the Romans were still the great civilizers, and fledgling Romania was not yet so powerful that it could abandon the notion of a common European heritage. The theory of Daco-Roman continuity therefore provided a common ground for emphasizing the Dacians, while still recognizing the positive influence of the Romans. Most importantly, it allowed for the continued perception that the Romanians were the “Romance Island set in the heart of a Slavic sea” (Light & Dumbraveanu-Andone 1997: 31). Ideological separation from the Hungarians remained important, as Romania had only recently received the territory of Transylvania which had a significant Hungarian population clamoring for autonomy (Brubaker 2006). Romania’s Roman past also received much international attention during this period, as Seton-Watson, a professor at the University of London wrote, “we are dealing with perhaps the most obscure corner of Western history . . .there is Figure 4. Geographic regions, map by E. Hanscam, data © OpenStreetMap simply no parallel contributors, CC-BY-SA 2.0 for the mysterious silence which surrounds the Romanians in the thousand years following the withdrawal of Aurelian and his legions” (Seton-Watson 1934: 192). These international academics also projected the Romanians backwards into history, attempting to understand the modern success of the Romanian nation through a long-term civilizing process that began in antiquity.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 63-83 75

The most important aspect of Romanian nationalism is its continued propagation of an ideology, which grounds the nation as a frontier. Romania is on the margins of Europe, defending the borders of the West from eastern incursions. Romania is also the center of Latinity surrounded by Slavic nations, and it must therefore defend its national borders just as the nation itself is in turn defended as a border of Europe. The geography of the region (Fig. 4) facilitated centuries of cultural interactions which used the natural features (the Danube, the Carpathian Mountains) to their advantage. In this sense the physical landscape is key to the frontier identity, with the river barriers that invited fortifying or the mountains and sea which channeled migrations along certain routes. In the 1920s V. G. Childe referred to the Balkans as the ‘bridge’ between Europe and the Near East during the Neolithic, and it is apparent that Romania along with Bulgaria will continue to play a key role in the relationship between Europe and the Near East, as well as the European Union and the Russian sphere; making it vital that we understand the intellectual process behind the creation of the modern nation.

The Roman Limes and Ideological Frontiers As outlined above, from the eighteenth century onwards, Romania has intentionally created itself as a border nation, taking advantage of the marginal identities of, first the Romans (marginal in respect to their more-recent Ottoman past), then the Dacians, and finally, a combination of the two in the Daco-Romans. Romania has a diverse, vibrant, and tenacious population, but the nationalist rhetoric continues to emphasize the Latin and native element over anything Slavic or Ottoman (Niculescu 2002). This is partially due to the overwhelming presence of the Roman-Dacian narrative on the physical landscape. Romania contains some of the most extensive Roman fortification networks in Europe (Oltean 2007). Levels of archaeological investigation vary from the well- studied Sarmizegetusa Regia and nearby settlements in the Dacian heartland of the Orăştie Mountains (Diaconescu 2004; Oltean 2007; Fodorean et al. 2013), to the Roman fortifications of Dobrogea, of which a few have extensive research histories,12 but many remain practically untouched. The Roman Limes fall into this latter category, but can offer insight into how the lower Danube frontier reinforces Romania’s defensive, border nation agenda.

The Roman frontier on the lower Danube, also known as the Moesian Limes (Fig. 5), consists of a series of fortifications stretching from Singidunum (modern Belgrade) to Halmyris in the Danube Delta (Whittaker 1994). The entire region is not actually a national boundary – a section of the Limes lies downstream from where the Danube and by extension the Limes form the Romanian-Bulgarian border. Most important is how archaeologists and frontiers continue to interact. I believe that the Roman archaeologist travelling to Dobrogea views the landscape as a military frontier, focusing on a relatively brief period of time in the past, connecting it to what they see in the present. Related to the concept of ‘being in the world’, which Thomas (2012) argues is fundamentally a

12 See Wilkes 2005 for a summary on the Roman Danube; Hanson and Oltean 2012 on the Valu lui Traian; Lockyear 2002 and Lockyear et al. 2005 for excavations at Noviodunum; Zahariade & Phelps 2002, Zahariade 2013, Zahariade & Karavas 2015 for excavations at Halmyris

76 EMILY R. HANSCAM

relational involvement, the physical remnants of the Limes are powerful symbols in otherwise foreign landscapes. Standing on unexcavated forts like that of Salsovia, looking across the Danube (see Fig. 6), a Roman archaeologist cannot help but relate their knowledge of antiquity to where they are in the present. They experience the Lower Moesian Limes through the lens of other Roman frontiers, exemplified by recent attempts to unite them all in one pan-continental UNESCO World Heritage Site (Hingley 2015). Frontiers are all about perspective, and archaeologists focusing on the Roman frontier look outward to see what the fortifications are defending against. In this region we know that the Roman legions focused primarily on the tribes north of the Danube (Zahariade & Gudea 1997). By experiencing the landscape through the aim to view, understand, or excavate the frontier as a conflict space, archaeologists are reinforcing Romania’s self-identification as a border region, still poised to defend from threats beyond the Danube. During 2014-2015, the early years of the conflict in Ukraine, the potential for a threat to Romania beyond the eastern Danube became a bit more real.

Figure 5. The principal Roman sites in Romania including the Lower Danube Limes (E. Hanscam). The present consensus is that frontiers must be understood as zones of interaction, places where cultures meet and form something new and unique, a hybrid in-between space (Naum 2010). Hingley (2012, 2015) has repeatedly called for recognition of the multivocality of Hadrian’s Wall, and recent scholarship has embraced the potential of the Hadrian’s Wall landscape for looking critically at cross-cultural interaction (see e.g. Nesbitt & Tolia-Kelly 2009; Witcher 2010; Hingley et al. 2012). The Lower Moesian Limes have similar potential to inspire the view of Dobrogea as a unique ‘Third Space’ (sensu Bhabha 2004), a place of “constant dialogue and remaking” (Naum 2010: 106).

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 63-83 77

This will not happen, however, until the Limes are reconnected to their contemporary social landscape and studied as living fortifications, which were also places of meeting and exchange, and not just for the military. Until recently, military history has been the primary focus for archaeological work done on the lower Danube frontier, although at Halmyris archaeologists are beginning investigations into the extensive civilian settlement, which will be useful as a potential reference for other studies in the region (Karavas & Zahariade 2017). The Lower Moesian Limes were built by the Roman Empire to aid in provincial defense, however, like Hadrian’s Wall, they became the material foundations supporting a Third Space landscape. They exist today as the living embodiment of the Romanian nationalist narrative, one that is militaristic and defensive, because there has been no research to highlight the multicultural aspects of this frontier. If we want to combat this, we must understand the Lower Moesian Limes as an ideological frontier from a postcolonial and globalist theoretical perspective.

Figure 6. Looking north across the Danube from Salsovia (E. Hanscam). Ideological frontiers are commonly understood as non-physical boundaries, like geographical frontiers, they are multidimensional and “places of manifold realities” (Naum 2010: 102). Postcolonial theory is one currently popular way to approach both frontiers and Roman archaeology, although as Hingley (2014) points out, while Roman scholars have, in recent years, begun to consider globalization theory (see e.g. Pitts & Versluys 2015); neither postcolonial theory nor globalization are mutually exclusive to the other, nor are they a linear theoretical progression. Both have equal potential for understanding multidimensional spaces such as the Lower Moesian Limes. Gardner (2013) argues for a holistic approach that includes both, noting that while Roman archaeology is theoretically lacking compared to many other periods of focus, there is nevertheless great potential for theoretical innovation. Postcolonial theory gives us the

78 EMILY R. HANSCAM

ability to “describe the diversity and shiftiness of inter-human and human-object interactions in the borderlands” (Naum 2010: 106). Globalization, on the other hand, “is a long-term historical phenomenon” that emphasizes pluralism and multiculturalism, while permitting a “diversity of responses to the Roman past” (Witcher 2015: 200, 215). We need to ground studies of the lower Danube frontier with local experiences, recognizing the uniqueness of the interactions taking place, but also understanding its role as a multicultural phenomenon with a living history.

Conclusion It is easy to dismiss overtly biased or agenda-filled archaeologies, but by doing so we fail to fully understand the nationalist context that often inspires such work. As Popa (2015) writes, archaeology in Romania and Romanian nationalism had a reflexive and reciprocal relationship which continues today. The lower Danube Roman frontier is ripe for archaeological work which will focus on its multivocal history, but the decades of Roman and Dacian entanglement with Romanian identity make it difficult for new theoretical perspectives to gain real momentum. Romania sees itself as a defensive frontier space rather than a frontier in the sense of a multicultural zone of interaction, and because of this, the archaeological work done on the Lower Moesian Limes takes a similar military-centered viewpoint. Romania is a frontier in many senses of the word: in terms of self-identity, cross-cultural interactions from antiquity to the present day, the materiality of the Roman landscape, and even as a place where archaeologists continue to confront embedded notions of how the past ought to relate to the present. Ideological space is complex, as it can pose as a real barrier to the movement of people. Consequently, we should make every effort to comprehend how it was created and how it functions today. Archaeologies and other narratives of the past play a critical role in this, and as shown with the lower Danube, ideological frontiers likewise support archaeological work congruent with the dominant ideology. The prospect of continued mass migration along with the disintegration of the European Union makes it increasingly important that we question such ideologies and the national spaces they sustain, focusing in particular on the entanglement of frontiers both in the past and the present.

References ALBERTI, B., S. FOWLES, M. HOLBRAAD, Y. MARSHALL & C. Witmore, 2011. “Worlds Otherwise”: Archaeology, Anthropology, and Ontological Difference. Current Anthropology 52(6): 896–912. ANDERSON, B., 2006. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. BHABHA, H., 2004. The location of culture. London: Routledge. BOIA, L., 2001. History and myth in Romanian consciousness. Budapest: Central European University Press. BRUBAKER, R., 2006. Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town. Princeton: Princeton University Press. CHILDE, V.G., 1958. The prehistory of European society. Nottingham: Spokesman Books.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 63-83 79

CURTA, F., 2001. The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region c.500-700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DELETANT, D., 1991. Rewriting the past: trends in contemporary Romanian historiography. Ethnic and Racial Studies 14(1): 64–86. DE FRANCESCO, A., 2013. The Antiquity of the Italian Nation: The Cultural Origins of a Political Myth in Modern Italy, 1796-1943. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DIACONESCU, A., 2004. The towns of Roman Dacia: an overview of recent archaeological research, in: HANSON, W. & HAYNES, I. (eds.), Roman Dacia, the making of a provincial society. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplemental Series 56. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 87–142. DIAZ-ANDREU, M., 2008. A World History of Nineteenth Century Archaeology: Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DIAZ-ANDREU, M. & T. CHAMPION, 1996a. Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe: an introduction, in: M. DIAZ-ANDREU & T. CHAMPION (eds.), Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe. London: UCL Press, 1–23. DIAZ-ANDREU, M. & T. CHAMPION (eds.), 1996b. Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe, London: UCL Press. DRAGOMAN, A., 2009. Ideology and politics in researching the (E) Neolithic in Romania. Dacia LIII: 167–189. ELLIS, L., 1998. ‘Terra deserta’: population, politics, and the [de]colonization of Dacia. World Archaeology 30(2): 220–237. ENEA, S.C., 2012. Romanian Prehistoric Archaeology, between tradition and innovation. Археологія і давня історія України 902(091): 93–102. FODOREAN, F., I. FODOREAN & C. MOLDOVAN, 2013. Recreating the landscape of the former Roman Dacia using modern 19th century cartography, digital data and GIS. e- Perimetron 8(1): 37–55. GARDNER, A., 2013. Thinking about Roman Imperialism: Postcolonialism, Globalisation and Beyond? Britannica 44: 1–25. GARDNER, A., 2017. Brexit, boundaries and imperial identities: A comparative view. Journal of Social Archaeology 17 (1): 3–26. GONZALEZ MORALES, M. & M. FANO MARTINEZ, 2005. The Mesolithic of Cantabrian Spain: a critical review, in N. MILNER & P. WOODMAN (eds.), Mesolithic Studies at the beginning of the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 14–29. HAMILAKIS, Y., 1996. Through the looking glass: nationalism, archaeology and the politics of identity. Antiquity 70: 975–978. HAMILAKIS, Y., 2007. The Nation and Its Ruins. Oxford: Oxford University Press. HANSON, W. & Haynes, I. (eds.), 2004. Roman Dacia, the making of a provincial society. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplemental Series 56. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology. HAMILAKIS, Y., 2017. Archaeologies of Forced and Undocumented Migration. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 3(2): 121-139 HANSON, W. & I. OLTEAN, 2012. The “Valu lui Traian”: a Roman frontier rehabilitated. Journal of Roman Archaeology 25(1): 297–318. HINGLEY, R., 2000. Roman Officers and English Gentlemen. London: Routledge.

80 EMILY R. HANSCAM

HINGLEY, R., 2015. Working with Descendant Communities in the Study of Roman Britain, in CIPOLLA, C. & K. HOWLETT HAYES (eds), Rethinking Colonialism: Comparative Archaeological Approaches, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 161–190. HINGLEY, R., R. WITCHER & C. NESBITT, 2012. Life of an ancient monument: Hadrian’s Wall in history. Antiquity 86: 760–771. HITCHINS, K., 1992. Historiography of the Countries of Eastern Europe: Romania. American Historical Review 97(4): 1064–1083. HITCHINS, K., 1996. The Romanians: 1774–1866. Oxford: Clarendon Press. HITCHINS, K., 2001. The Idea of Nation among the Romanians of Transylvania, 1700– 1849, in Nation and National Ideology: Past, Present and Prospects. Proceedings of the International Symposium at the New Europe College April 6–7, 2001, Bucharest, 78– 109. KOBSBAWM, E. & T. RANGER, 1983. The Invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. HODDER, I., 2005. Theory and practice in archaeology. London: Routledge. IORDACHI, C., 2004. “Entangled Histories:” Re-thinking the History of Central and Southeastern Europe from a Relational Perspective. Regio Yearbook: 113–147. IORDACHI, C. & B. TRENCSÉNYI, 2003. In Search of a Usable Past: The Question of National Identity in Romanian Studies, 1990-2000. East European Politics and Societies 17(3): 415–453. KAISER, T., 1995. Archaeology and ideology in southeast Europe, in: KOHL, P. & FAWCETT, T. (eds), Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 99–119. KARAVAS, J. & M. ZAHARIADE, 2017. Excavations at Halmyris: A Field Report of the 2014- 2016 Seasons. Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, Toronto, 5-8 January 2017. KOHL, P.L., 1998. Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Constructions of Nations and the Reconstructions of the Remote Past. Annual Review of Anthropology 27(1): 223–246. LAMPE, J. & M. MAZOWER, 2004. Ideologies and national identities. Budapest: Central European University Press. LIGHT, D. & D. DUMBRAVEANU-ANDONE, 1997. Heritage and National Identity: Exploring the relationship in Romania. International Journal of Heritage Studies 3(1): 28–43. LOCKYEAR, K., 2003. At the edges of empires: the Noviodunum project, Romania. Archaeology International 2002/3(6): 21–24. LOCKYEAR, K., 2004. The Late Iron Age background to Roman Dacia, in: HANSON, W. & HAYNES, I. (eds.), Roman Dacia, the making of a provincial society. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplemental Series 56. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 33–74. LOCKYEAR, K., T. SLY & A. POPESCU, 2005. The Noviodunum Archaeological Project 2000–2004: results and conclusions from the pilot seasons. Peuce (Serie Nouă)-Studii şi cercetari de istorie şi arheologie 3 (3–4): 121–158. MARAN, J., 2017. Later Balkan prehistory, a transcultural perspective, in: M. GORI & M. IVANOVA (eds.), Balkan Dialogues, Negotiating Identity between Prehistory and the Present. London: Routledge.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 63-83 81

MARINOV, T., 2015. Ancient Thrace in the Modern Imagination: Ideological Aspects of the Construction of Thracian Studies in Southeast Europe (Romania, Greece, and Bulgaria), in DASKALOV, R. & A. VEZENKOV, (eds.), Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Vol. III: Shared pasts, disputed legacies. Leiden: Brill, 10–118. MATEI-POPESCU, F., 2010. The Roman Army In Moesia Inferior. Bucharest: Conphys Publishing House. MCGUIRE, R., 2008. Archaeology as political action. Berkeley: University of California Press. MELLARS, P., 2006. A new radiocarbon revolution and the dispersal of modern humans in Eurasia. Nature 439: 931–935. MISHKOVA, D., 2015. The Afterlife of a Commonwealth: Narratives of Byzantium in the National Historiographies of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania, in R. DASKALOV & A. VEZENKOV (eds.), Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Vol. III: Shared pasts, disputed legacies. Leiden: Brill, 118–273. MISHKOVA, D. & R. Daskalov, 2014. “Forms without Substance”: Debates on the Transfer of Western Models to the Balkans, in: R. DASKALOV & D. MISHKOVA (eds.), Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Vol. Two. Leiden: Brill, 1–98. NAUM, M., 2010. Re-emerging Frontiers: Postcolonial Theory and Historical Archaeology of the Borderlands. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 17(2): 101–131. NESBITT, C. & D. TOLIA-KELLY, 2009. Hadrian’s Wall: Embodied archaeologies of the linear monument. Journal of Social Archaeology 9(3): 368–390. NICULESCU, G., 2002. Nationalism and the Representation of Society in Romanian Archaeology, in: Nation and National Ideology: Past, Present and Prospects. Proceedings of the International Symposium at the New Europe College April 6–7, 2001. Bucharest, 209– 234. NICULESCU, G., 2004. Archaeology and Nationalism in ‘The History of the Romanians.’ Dacia XLVIII: 99–124. O’ RIAGAIN, R. & C. N. POPA, 2012. Archaeology and Nationalism in Europe: Two Case Studies from the Northwest and Southeast of Europe. Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 27(2): 52–71. PITTS, M. & M. VERSLUYS (eds), 2015. Globalisation and the Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. POPA, C. N., 2015. Late Iron Age Archaeology in Romania and the Politics of the Past. Dacia LIX: 337–361. PREUCEL, R. & L. MESKELL, 2004. Knowledges, in: R. PREUCEL & L. MESKELL (eds.), A Companion to Social Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 3–22. RICHARDSON, T., 2013. Borders and Mobilities: Introduction to the Special Issue. Mobilities 8(1): 1–6. SASSEN, S., 2008. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Second Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. SETON-WATSON, R.W., 1934. A History of the Roumanians. London: Cambridge University Press. SMITH, A., 1986. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. SPINEI, V., 2009. The Romanians and the Turkic Nomads North of the Danube Delta from the Tenth to the Mid-Thirteenth Century. Leiden: Brill. STRASSLER, R., 2007. The Landmark Herodotus. trans. Purvis, A.L. London: Quercus.

82 EMILY R. HANSCAM

TANAȘOCA, N., 2002. L’image Roumaine de Byzance à l’époque des Luminères, in: THEODORESU, R. & L. C. BARROWS (eds.), South–East Europe: The Ambiguous Definitions of a Space. Bucharest: UNESCO–CEPES, 47–75. TANAȘOCA, N., 2014. Byzance dans la conscience historique des Roumains, in: O. DELOUIS, A. COUDERC & P. GURAN (eds.), Héritage de Byzance en Europe du Sud–Est, Athens: École française d’Athènes, 269–271. THOMAS, J., 2004. Archaeology and modernity. London: Routledge. THOMAS, J., 2012. Archaeologies of Place and Landscape, in: HODDER, I. (ed.), Archaeological Theory Today. Second Edition. Cambridge: Polity, 167–187. TODOROVA, M., 2009. Imagining the Balkans. Updated Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. TRENCSÉNYI, B., 2010. “Imposed Authenticity”: Approaching Eastern European National Characterologies in the Inter-war Period. Central Europe 8(1): 20–47. TRENCSÉNYI, B., 2011. History and Character: Visions of National Peculiarity in the Romanian Political Discourse of the 19th century, in: D. MISHKOVA (ed.), We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, Budapest: Central European Press, 3– 36. TRIGGER, B., 2006. A history of archaeological thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. TRINKAUS, E., S. MILOTA, R. RODRIGO, G. MIRCEA & O. MOLDOVAN, 2003. Early modern human cranial remains from the Peştera cu Oase, Romania. Journal of Human Evolution 25: 245–253. VERDERY, K., 1991. National ideology under socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania. Berkeley: University of California Press. WATTS, C., 2014. Relational archaeologies: humans, animals, things, London: Routledge. WHITTAKER, C. R., 1994. Frontiers of the Roman Empire. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. WILKES, J., 2005. The Roman Danube: An Archaeological Survey. The Journal of Roman Studies 97: 124–225. WITCHER, R., 2010. The fabulous tales of the common people, part 1: representing Hadrian’s Wall. Public Archaeology 9(3): 126–152. WITCHER, R., 2015. Globalisation and Roman cultural heritage, in: M. PITTS & M. VERSLUYS (eds), Globalisation and the Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 198–224. ZAHARIADE, I., 2013. From dava to civitas: Halmyris, a Getic, Early and Late Roman Settlement on the Lower Danube, in: G. TSETSKHLADZE, S. ATASOY, A. AVRAM, S. DÖNMEZ & J. HARGRAVE (eds.), The Bosporus: Gateway between the Ancient West and East (1st Millennium BC-5th Century AD), Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress on Black Sea Antiquities Istanbul, 14th-18th September 2009, BAR International Series 2517, 207–212. ZAHARIADE, M. & N. GUDEA, 1997. The Fortifications of Lower Moesia (AD 86-275). Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert. ZAHARIADE, M. & J. KARAVAS, 2015. A Fort of the Danubian Roman Frontier: Halmyris, in: L. ZERBINI (ed.), Culti e religiosità nelle province danubiane. Atti del II

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 63-83 83

Convegno Internazionale Ferrara 20-22 Novembre 2013. Bologna: Emil di Odoya, 575– 584. ZAHARIADE, M. & M. PHELPS, 2002. Halmyris, a settlement and fort near the mouth of the Danube: interim report. Journal of Roman Archaeology 15(1): 230–235. ZENKER, O., 2011. Autochthony, ethnicity, indigeneity and nationalism: Time- honouring and state-oriented modes of rooting individual-territory-group triads in a globalizing world. Critique of Anthropology 31(1): 63–81. ZUB, A. 1981. A scrie și a face istorie. Istoriografia română postpașoptistă. Iași: Editura Junimea.

84 Print: ISBN978-1-78491-763-0 Online: ISSN 2531-8810 EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2, December 2017: 85-110 Published Online: Dec 2017 85

Thracology and Nationalism in Bulgaria. Deconstructing Contemporaneous Historical and Archaeological Representations

Ivan Marinov* and Nicolas Zorzin**

*Université de Montréal, **Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Abstract It is now widely acknowledged that Bulgarian academic discourses of the country’s so- called communist era (1945-1989) were heavily politicized with the aim of nationalizing and ethnicizing the history of the Bulgarian people. This communist era phenomenon subscribes to a chronologically vaster process of nationalist continuum recognized to have spanned from the middle-end of the nineteenth century to at least the early 1990s. Despite this trend, Bulgarian academics, especially in the field of archaeology, have more recently presented their post-communist, transition period disciplines as ideology-free, objective, scientific research. In this paper, we provide examples of recent theoretical developments and interpretations in the sub-field of thracology – studies of ancient Thracian culture – that indicate that this claim to objectivity is unfounded. Based on the examples provided we argue that not only have Bulgarian academic discourses in the fields in question not severed with the ethnicizing practices of the so-called nationalist continuum of the pre- communist and communist eras, but they are now flourishing on the nationalist foundation of the preceding century and a half. As such discourses are reproduced unquestioningly in specialized publications, their influence on right wing populism is incontestable as they provide the latter, wittingly or not, with the scientific authority it needs to justify its ethnicizing of “historical” tenets of racial and social discrimination.

Keywords: ethnicizing discourses, Bulgarian academia, thracology, nationalist continuum

Introduction During Bulgaria’s so-called communist era (1945–1989) professionals in the humanities were explicitly required to adopt and apply Marxist-Leninist theory and ideology in their research (Todorova 1992: 1107). Research efforts were directed especially towards the reconstitution and reinterpretation of what were perceived as key periods or events in Bulgarian history, or the nation’s ‘golden era’. Such interpretations, together with Party policies regarding cultural and religious freedoms, pitted academics and the government against ethnic and religious minorities, the latter being perceived by the former as elements compromising national integrity and security (Büchsenschütz 1996, Detrez

CONTACT Ivan Marinov, [email protected] Nicolas Zorzin, [email protected]

86 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

2006: 167–168; Crampton 2007: 375–381, Marinov 2010). During this sociopolitical struggle spanning over almost five decades of state socialism in Bulgaria, history and archaeology were transformed into powerful tools of cultural and ethnic propaganda (Marinov 2016). Both fields of research were exploited for the production of heavily ethnicized versions of Bulgarian history that subscribed to the sociopolitical and cultural nationalistic tendencies identified and grouped under the concept of “national(ist) continuum” (Todorova 1992, 1995).

The role of Bulgarian politicians and academics of the communist era in the application of Party policies regarding the country’s ethnic minorities has already been acknowledged (e.g. Marinov 2010). So has the politization of Bulgarian archaeology during that same era and, more generally, of Bulgarian academia (Bailey 1998, Todorova 1992: 1105-1106). However, from within the discipline itself, historiographical studies are rare and whatever such studies there are, they usually attribute the proliferation of communist era ethnicizing discourses to an anonymous, outside political pressure. This otherwise reconciliatory practice of (literally) occasionally diffusing theoretical and ideological tensions in academia has resulted in the lack of interest in, as it were, the workings of the field and, more importantly, in the effects that its ethnicized discourses have had on Bulgarian society of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Our central argument is that one major effect of this oversight is the witting or unwitting subscription by twenty-first century Bulgarian academia to the nationalist continuum of nineteenth and twentieth century political and academic discourses. As we aim to show in this paper, far from acquiring an ideology-free objectivity after its emancipation from communist era political pressures and interventionism, Bulgarian academia and, more precisely, Bulgarian archaeology has kept in line with the tenets of a nationalist, primordialist continuum now more than it has ever done before. As M. Todorova notes, after Bulgaria’s entry into the post-1989 so called transitional era, “all signs indicate that there is no reversal in the status quo nature of nationalism, no matter how and by whom it is articulated” (Todorova 1995: 98).

Our goal is to show in this paper that this statement, published more than two decades ago, still applies to research in the Bulgarian humanities, especially in archaeology and its sub-fields. Contrary to claims (below), Bulgarian archaeology of the twenty-first century seems far from having abandoned the use of overt ideology and propaganda in its reconstitutions of the past. We show that vernacular primordialism – references to blood ties, to naturally inherited cultural traits, to a nation’s spirit, etc. – and ethnicization are still very much an integral part of interpretations in that field. By comparing selected discourses from post-communist era ethnology and archaeology, we show that the former are “representative of the overall considerations of Bulgarian nationalism(s)” (Todorova 1995: 100).

For reasons of space, time, and clarity, we have chosen to base our study predominantly on a single, rather particular sub-field of the Bulgarian humanities or, more precisely, of ancient history and archaeology, that of thracology. The sub-field of thracology has been defined as:

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume2 (2017) 85-110 87 an adapted, interdisciplinary direction for the study, explanation, and appreciation of Thracian history and culture from the transition between the Neolithic and early Bronze Age … to the creation of the Slavo-Bulgarian state in 681 (Popov 1999: 12).

The development of this research field (or “direction of study”) is one of the generally overlooked factors in the process of ethnicization of Bulgarian archaeology and, more generally, the Bulgarian humanities. Since its institutionalization in the early 1970s, thracology has been one of the communist government’s main tools of cultural propaganda, both in the country and abroad (see below; for a general study of the exploitation of Thracian antiquity as a tool of political propaganda in south-eastern Europe see Marinov 2016). Despite this acknowledged fact, the role of ideology in historical and archaeological reconstitutions of the post-communist era seems to have been completely ignored to date. Basing our analysis on representative examples from that field of study, we show that the ethnicization of discourses in thracology (and connected disciplines) has been carried seamlessly from the communist era over into the so-called transitional period. We do not claim that the examples presented in this paper reflect the opinion of all researchers in the corresponding academic fields. These examples are representative of the fields in question mainly because they reflect intellectual and/or ideological trends that are widely accepted, as is indicated by the complete absence of discussions or critiques of their tenets. More importantly, these discourses are published by authoritative specialists whose publications have an impact not only in their fields of research but also, to a considerable extent, on the Bulgarian public. In the last section of this paper we underline the detrimental impact of ethnicizing discourses in thracology on Bulgarian society.

Archaeology and Nationalism In archaeology, nationalism, ethnicity, identity and cultural policies have been abundantly studied since the 1990s, especially in the case of Western Europe and the Near East (e.g. Kohl & Fawcett 1995, Atkinson et al. 1996, Diaz-Andreu & Champion 1996, Graves-Brown et al. 1996, Meskell 1998, Hamilakis 2007). Further reflection on these subjects will continue its development in the following decades by enlarging its geopolitical perspectives, notably by opening it out towards Asia and South America (Curtoni & Politis 2006, Glover 2006; Silverman & Isbell 2008). However, in some areas of the globe where ethnic conflicts and nationalist aspirations are ongoing, archaeology has often been excluded from such reflections, and local archaeologists have largely disregarded or distanced themselves from theoretical developments, both potentially debasing and damaging career-wise. The reasons for this absence of self-reflection in some archaeological national bodies can be manifold, but one of the reason, notably in the case of Bulgarian archaeology, might be related to the absence of a habitus of critical analysis and of constructive oppositional discussions in the academic circles, summoned to conform to various political agendas. For Bulgaria, this absence could originate from the long period of successive authoritarian-nationalist regimes since the nineteenth century (see Todorova 1995), largely unchallenged and mostly unchallengeable, even after the so-called democratic but rather capitalist transitional period of the 1990s.

88 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

These facts contribute to the wrong impression that only Western liberal democracies reached a level of political maturity which allowed scholars to have a theoretical and reflexive – but not necessarily an explicitly or implicitly objective – approach to themselves and their disciplines (which does not imply, in any sort of way, an objective approach), while areas like the Balkans, amongst others, would remain affixed to material culture and cultural history. This is indeed a mistaken perception, as illustrated by Özdoǧan (1998: 111–123, 2017: 197–199) in Turkey, who adopts a largely critical approach towards Cultural history. Yet, to what extent such reflection will be possible in the current political configuration of Turkey is questionable.

Figure 1. Ethnographic map of the Balkans ‘European Turkey’ established by Sax (1877). Although imprecise, this map of the ethnic composition of the Balkans drawn by Sax reflects adequately the multi- ethnic and multi-religious character of the whole region during the last quarter of the 19th century. The ‘West’ increasingly displays signs of resurging national-conservatism on the European continent. For instance, to what extent this ideological trend, as fostered by the constantly progressing Front National (FN) in France, will favour a return to historical propaganda and a resurgence of racist theories over the rise of alternative histories/facts, is yet unknown. The electoral program of the FN promised important investments in ‘Heritage’, as a symbol of defense of the pride and the values of the

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume2 (2017) 85-110 89

French national identity (See Art.91 of Marine Le Pen’s 2017 program); but what is the heritage in question, and to what purpose is it being discussed? As such, we are entering a period in which archaeologists may have less and less reflexive space in a new national- conservative political framework.

In parallel, since the 1980s, coercive neoliberal policies claiming objectivity through so- called depoliticizing, democratizing and technicalizing mechanisms, while in fact implementing deeply ideological reforms (Bourdieu 1998: 3, Aparicio Resco 2016), have contributed greatly to the neutralization of archaeological discourses that could challenge inbuilt-national narratives. Neoliberal logic is easily accommodated with a national- conservative ideal, as it does not undermine the making of profits or, even better, if it can facilitate profit generation. Neoliberal policies favor the fixing of heritage on specific figures, events, and interpretations of the past according to the needs of corporate interests and of its subjective consumer majority. If both demand reassuring historical certainties, though simplistic, false or harmful to others, it is the trend that heritage and its actors might have to adjust to within neoliberal/neo-nationalist regimes such as the in the UK (Zorzin 2016: 297-325), USA, Japan, Russia and China. These regimes use extensively globalized neoliberal market, but, paradoxically, internally claim to use anti- globalizing policies to regulate national identity and national interests. Thus, archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists of the ‘West’ could well be either asked to (or coerced into) avoid(ing) self-reflexive processes, or risk being labelled as declinists, antipatriotic or multiculturalists, and being marginalized, defunded (especially in the case of private funds), or simply dismissed.

In comparison, local archaeologists evolving in the so-called zones of dominant “cultural-history” have no space (and often never had any intellectual space in the past) to concern themselves with the political problems of relevance to their field of work; they have no access to national grants or fellowships, no access to dedicated positions to the subject, nor financial or political support and, therefore, no incentive to conduct critical research. Despite its appearance of inevitability, such a fate is far from unalterable, and the very existence of this Journal (Ex-Novo) and others like it, as well as the increasing accessibility to European research funds illustrates that fact. Nevertheless, in the Balkans, the true consequence of the current blockage is a quasi-impossibility to engage with the definition of a new praxis from within (Meskell 1998: 2), and an inability to escape the nationalist continuum, which is precisely the phenomenon we expose here, in the case of Bulgarian archaeology or, more precisely, the sub-field of thracology.

In the course of the last thirty years, a number of western archaeologists tackled their own national archaeologies by considering many modern historical, economic and sociopolitical factors, while Balkan archaeology, among others, was always treated as being outside of the limits of contemporaneous and global theoretical thought (Meskell 1998: 2-3). However, many theoretical perspectives spread through the Balkans in a non- uniform manner and have taken on new forms according to historical circumstances in order “to meet the demands of the different cultural and intellectual traditions and research agendas” (Palavestra & Babić 2016: 1).

90 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

Therefore, Bulgarian archaeology cannot be completely understood through the “cultural-history” paradigm, its critical analysis must be approached through a historical approach, allowing the tackling of original influences and their evolutions through time. Furthermore, as underlined by Gori and Ivanova in “Balkan Dialogues” published in 2017: “[In the Balkans] since the late 19th century, archaeologists have been classifying spatial clusters of artefacts into discrete “cultures” which are conventionally treated as bound units and implicitly equated with past social (or even ethnic) entities” (Gori & Ivanova 2017: 1, our emphasis). As the authors suggest, this situation demands an “urgent need for a theoretical informed reconsideration of traditional approaches” to the past of the Balkans, which is in essence the point of departure of our present contribution. However, most of the chapters in the book “Balkan Dialogues” have been produced by foreign researchers, except for an important number of Greek contributors and few other Balkan researchers (Turkey and Serbia), showing that the free expression of this “need” to reconsider traditional approaches comes, for now, essentially from outwith the Balkans themselves.

Finally, in these zones of the world where violent conflicts are a very recent memory or an ongoing reality, another reason why local archaeologists have often chosen not to get involved in politics or preferred not to grasp the socio-political issues at stake frontally, is a simple matter of self-preservation (financial, professional, physical integrity, etc.) and of protection from external pressures (media, political, social, etc.). However, in those nations relatively recently formed or (re)legitimized, the work of archaeologists has an important socio-political impact which, whether overtly recognized or not, cannot be ignored. For most of the last century and a half, Bulgaria has been involved in an ongoing process of formation and re-legitimization, in which archaeological and historical discourses have had a very notable, although underestimated, sociopolitical and cultural impact.

Contextualizing Bulgarian institutionalized archaeology in the nationalist continuum Given its comparatively deep historical roots (Fine 1983, 1987), it is easy to forget that the modern Bulgarian state was only born less than a century and one half ago. At the end of the eighteenth century, religious and cultural altercations between the different Balkan Christian Orthodox communities of the Ottoman Empire prompted the awakening of the former’s subdued national identities (Meininger 1987, Daskalov 2004, see also Pundeff 1969, Crampton 2007). In the context of the time, overtly nationalistic, primordialist approaches to history were perceived as the only viable, valid means towards the reconstruction of a nation’s socio-politically and culturally dominated identity. Thus, in a setting of intra-religious, inter-cultural struggles, a process of national revival had gathered pace by the beginning of the nineteenth century in Ottoman Bulgaria. Realizing that any future struggle for religious and cultural emancipation, as well as an eventual formation of a new political state, would require some legitimizing before the so-called Great Powers, Bulgarian intellectuals and patrons of the arts set out to reconstruct a monolithic Bulgarian culture and history that had never existed in fact.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume2 (2017) 85-110 91

The task they set for themselves and the process that they set wittingly or unwittingly in motion would eventually characterize the early-to-mid nineteenth century in Bulgaria as the era of the Bulgarian Revival.

With hindsight, the Bulgarian Revival is a pivotal point in Bulgarian history and in the development of Bulgarian national identity. However, the success of the “reviving” process was initially far from predictable. Indeed, contrary to the tenets of subsequent nationalistic discourses, Bulgarians had significantly regionalized identities in the nineteenth century (Krasteva 1998: 26). Because of this regionalization, combined with significant Greek religious and cultural influences, the galvanizing of an almost inexistent national spirit and common identity in those communities would require some persuasion, even manipulation. Bulgarian humanists proceeded with the (re)construction of a Bulgarian national identity implicitly based on a primordialist understanding of nationhood and ethnic identity as matters of “blood” and “spirit” (Daskalov 2004: 16, see also Harvey 2000). By the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, this primordialist Bulgarian national identity had managed to unite all ethnic Bulgarians if not yet territorially, at least culturally and, as it were, spiritually. The newly created national identity would then serve to legitimize Bulgaria’s claim to political and territorial unity and autonomy, both partially obtained in 1878 after the latest Russo-Turkish war (Crampton 2007: 41-95).

Figure 2. ‘Nationality’ map of East Central and South-East Europe (Balkans) established by Sebõk László (1989-1992). Today the Balkans are still the multi-ethnic and multi-religious region represented by Sax in the late 19th century. However, after more than a century of ‘regenerative’ processes backed by academic research and discourses, in some regions this multiculturalism is almost impossible to reconstruct based on census data alone.

92 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

In the context of social, cultural, and political adversity, the process of ethnicization of history by Bulgarian so-called revivalists was necessary and instrumental in the formation of a (re)new(ed) nation. Thus, as a tool of emancipation from what was perceived as a more powerful oppressor, the Bulgarian Revival can be defined as an example of ethnicization of history with potentially positive sociopolitical and cultural effects. However, as the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire prompted other Balkan communities with conflicting national aspirations to strive also for cultural and territorial independence, the goal of the territorial unification of ethnic Bulgarian communities in the region would evolve into a tool of political gain and nationalistic oppression.

Throughout the twentieth century, state-backed nationalization and ethnicization of Balkan histories and, eventually, archaeologies served to legitimize the struggle for cultural and political influence outside of established, but often disputed, state borders and over foreign regions deemed of national importance by more than one nation. In the first few decades of the last century, the otherwise emancipating process of ethnicization that gave birth to the new, independent Balkan nations, would be quickly transformed into a practice of ethnicization – a politicized ideological process that would permeate all aspects of social and cultural life in the region.

In Bulgaria’s case, the emancipating Bulgarian Revival would eventually give way to primordialist, nationalistic, so-called regenerative processes. The latter were most often than not backed by institutionalized academia, most notably in the fields of history, ethnology, and archaeology. In turn, these ethnicizing, nationalistic processes shaped the historical development of Bulgarian academia and, more precisely, Bulgarian institutionalized archaeology.

Bulgarian archaeology has its roots in the work of local and foreign professional researchers and amateur archaeological clubs and societies of the late nineteenth–early twentieth century (see Ovčarov 1995, Prešlenov 1995). However, with the foundation of the National Museum in 1892, followed by the creation of the Bulgarian Archaeological Institute (hereafter BAI) in 1921 by archaeologist Bodgan Filov, archaeology officially acquired an institutional presence. During the early twentieth century, the BAI and a renamed, specialized National Museum of Archaeology (hereafter NMA) was to provide a basic administrative structure and neuralgic center for archaeology in Bulgaria for the decades to follow (Velkov 1993: 125).

During the first quarter of the twentieth century and the interwar period, a strong emphasis was placed on the unification and reinforcement of the Bulgarian nation by the various political factions, some of which, under the influence of notably fascist ideologies, strived for the advent of “a new man” (Frusetta & Glont 2009: 558). On the basis of nationalist academic publications of the nineteenth century (Todorova 1995: 82), organizations with “radical ideologies with unmistakably racist, fascist, and even Nazi overtones” reassessed Bulgarian history by emphasizing the “proto-Bulgarian element … with its state organizing potentialities, … strong kin (tribal) relations, and centralized leadership” (Todorova 1995: 84).

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume2 (2017) 85-110 93

Members of the BAI also contributed, wittingly or otherwise, to the revival of the nationalistic continuum in the twentieth century by showing that the country had some of the oldest archaeological remains in the Balkan Peninsula. Excavations of tells in different regions also showed that Bulgaria’s territory had been occupied continually since prehistoric times (Ovčarov & Bogomirova 2001: 11). Research on funerary mounds with tombs and dolmens appeared to confirm the longevity of cross-cultural traditions in the Bulgarian lands, especially in the case of the multi-layered (in terms of cultural diversity, as well as stratigraphy) funerary mounds that were in continual use for nearly 3000 years (see Mikov 1943). Despite such indirect contributions to the growing sense of national awareness (on the back of the humiliating outcome of Bulgaria’s siding with the Axis powers in the First World War), Bulgarian archaeologists of this period do not seem to have espoused explicit ethnicizing and nationalistic discourses in specialized archaeological publications. Nevertheless, some of these archaeologists were actively involved in the politics and policies of the authoritarian regimes of the interwar period. They even backed publically, in “blind admiration”, the politics and policies of Nazi Germany (especially, but not only, BAI’s founder and then Prime Minister Bogdan Filov, see Miller 1975: 91, 100-103, et passim). Indeed, B. Filov noted that during a conference in Germany attended by a group of Bulgarian professors, the latter “had embarrassed their hosts by being more Nazi than the Nazis” (Miller 1975: 7). Regardless of their political alignments and personal convictions, Bulgarian archaeologists of this period seem to have maintained a certain professional objectivity in their interpretations of the vestiges of the past. Things were to change dramatically with the conclusion of the Second World War and the advent in Bulgaria of yet another regime with “authoritarian, and often totalitarian, ambitions” (Todorova 1995: 96), that of “state-” or “etatist communism” (Todorova 1995: 88, 91).

Despite its qualification as a period of mainly quantitative archaeological work (Ovčarov, Bogomirova 2001: 12), the pre-communist, or pre-state socialism, era is held as a particularly significant period of foundational work and it has become a point of reference for Bulgarian archaeologists. It was followed by a tumultuous decade of administrative and ideological transformations permanently reshaping Bulgarian archaeology. Two years of post-war recovery and “organizational work” (Ovčarov & Bogomirova 2001: 12) were followed by a major reorganization of institutionalized Bulgarian archaeology that included the integration of the BAI and NMA into the Bulgarian Academy of Science (Ovčarov & Bogomirova 2001: 13, Rašev 2007: 229). This process of centralization of Bulgarian archaeology, which had begun in the 1920s, was furthered in 1948 by the fusion of the BAI and NMA into a single institution called National Archaeological Institute and Museum (hereafter NAIM). More than a project of administrative streamlining, such mergers allowed a more efficient control of Bulgarian institutionalized archaeology by the government.

The change from rightist, authoritarian governments to a communist regime in 1945 meant that ideological shifts permeated all fields of Bulgarian academia (see Todorova 1992). In the field of archaeology, ideological changes were expressed by the insistence

94 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

on the part of NAIM’s governing body that participants in discussions organized by the Institute should criticize the so-called bourgeois archaeology practiced in Bulgaria by some of the Institute’s former members, most notably by B. Filov1. Researchers were now explicitly directed to abandon BAI’s “anachronistic methods (…) that forced [archaeologists] to see only the glittering, attractive side of life, and to ignore the monuments of everyday life and of work” (Mijatev 1959: 4). As in all other spheres of Bulgarian society, discourses in academia were filled with “imagery of nationalism, translated into an idiosyncratic Marxist slang” (Todorova 1995: 91).

The new indoctrination aimed, among others, to harness Bulgarian academia in a collective contribution towards Bulgaria’s cause in the ongoing “virulent dispute[s]” (Todorova 1995: 95) on ethno-historical subjects taking place between Bulgarian historians and academics of neighboring states. Having previously espoused a Marxist “cosmopolitan, universalist” (emphasis in the original) ideology of recognition, self- determination, and even the right to secession (Todorova 1995: 89) for its ethnic minorities, the communist government completely reversed its stance after the death of its leader Gueorgi Dimitrov (Pundeff 1969: 163; Marinov 2010) and after a failed attempt at incorporating a conceptualized Balkan federation of nations. The new policies of the Bulgarian Communist Party (henceforth the Party), catered for the bulgarization of the country’s ethnic minorities and involved processes of assimilation which took place sporadically throughout the second half of the twentieth century. The last such process, the “process of regeneration” – “a euphemism for the attempted assimilation of Bulgaria’s ethnic Turkish minority” (Crampton 2007: 376), by “renaming” all members of the latter while allowing those unwilling to change their Arabic-Turkish names for Slavic ones to leave the country, was “the culmination (and biggest miscalculation) of a long-term nationalist line” (Todorova 1995: 97). Bulgarian academia was called upon on many occasions to contribute to these processes of assimilation of ethnic and religious minorities. The response on the part of the Bulgarian intelligentsia and institutionalized humanities to this call for the scientific (ethnographical, ethnological, historical, etc.) nationalization of the country’s population was so enthusiastic, that the last ten years of that period are still known in Bulgaria as “the time of the historians” (Marinov 2010: 178, see also Todorova 1995: 95).

During the so-called state communism period, areas of particular interest to NAIM were the Paleolithic period and the Greek colonization of the west Pontic region, as well as the formation of Bulgarian culture. Interest in legitimizing a “right to high national self- esteem” (in the words of then Party leader T. Zhivkov, cited in Todorova 1995: 63) accrued on the occasions of “nationalist ritual[s] – anniversaries of historical events” (Todorova 1995: 92) such as the 1981 celebrations of the 1300th anniversary of the foundation of the Bulgarian state (Yoroukova 2001: 9, 10). Such occasions saw the intensification of archaeological field research and publications on the subject of Bulgarian identity – research meant to serve the “purposes of government” (Kachaunov

1 Filov was sentenced to death by the People’s court of Bulgaria for, among others, his implication as a politician in the pro-Nazi government of the WWII period – a sentence that was executed on the night of the 1st of February 1945 (Zlatkova 2009).

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume2 (2017) 85-110 95

& Simeonova 1979; see also Bailey 1998: 92). At that particular time, around the 1300th anniversary of the Bulgarian state, in the late 1970s – early 1980s, the purposes of the Party were to endorse “the unitary state…with no accommodations for ethnic or other minorities.” (Todorova 1995: 96)

One particular field of research, that of thracology, supplanted all other in providing justifications for the Party’s nationalistic purposes and policies (see Marinov 2016). The international popularization of Ancient Thracian culture was promulgated in the 1960s through museum exhibitions (Rašev 2007: 230, Roumentcheva 2015). These exhibitions of “Thracian treasures” – “prestigious works [of art]” – are presented as “prestigious ambassadors” which, by a formidable “politics of exposition” of no less than 85 exhibitions in 24 countries, provided “opportunities for intense diplomatic exchange” “as testified by the high level political visits [occasioned by the exhibitions in question]” (Roumentcheva 2015: 362-363). More importantly, they are taken to have, furthermore, presented to the world a specific “discourse” of a “common European heritage” (Fol 2015: 360, our emphasis). Simultaneously, thracology itself was recognized as one of the major sub-disciplines of the Bulgarian Academy of Science by being institutionalized in the early 1970s, becoming the Institute (now Center) of Thracology (amongst others, see Popov 1983; Fol, Yordanov, Porozhanov 2002). The popularization of Thracian archaeology and of Thracian culture through international exhibitions, as well as thracology’s institutionalization, helped to rekindle interest in the research subjects of the original (until then renounced, at least in principle) members of NAIM. This popularization of the ancient Thracians both in the country and abroad was directly assisted by Lyudmila Zhivkova, daughter of party leader T. Zhivkov, who is said to have been “the embodiment of rising nationalism” (Todorova 1995: 97). In the spirit of the rising nationalism of the Bulgarian 1980s, one of the most notable subject that attracted the attention of researchers and the public was that of the nature of Thracian ethnicity and the nature of the ethnographic and ethnological realities (daily life, religion, ethnic identity, etc.) of the ancient Thracians. In such studies, the latter were almost exclusively presented as forming a monolithic, unitary culture whose “cults, mythological conceptions, and magical practices” were absorbed in Bulgarian folklore (see Angelov’s introduction to a republication of Teodorov’s 1972 study of the “traces (fragments)” of ancient Thracian culture in Bulgarian folklore in Teodorov 1999: xv).

The disintegration of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 had a significant impact on Bulgarian archaeology both in terms of practice and explicit ideology. Archaeological practice was significantly reorganized (Gotsev 2001: 88), although the different departments of NAIM do not seem to have been affected administratively (see Nikolov 2001). Since archaeology was no longer following government policy (at least not explicitly and, because of the lack of government funding, probably not even implicitly), pre-1944 intellectual traditions re-emerged (Frusetta & Glont 2009: 554) and fused with the remnants of communist era intellectual traditions seemingly purified of communist ideology. Nevertheless, the echoes of communist era ideology and policies can be perceived in statements noting that “the most appropriate regions and monuments for the development of key problems of Thracian culture and history” (Gergova 2001: 105, our

96 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

emphasis) must now be studied. This post-communist era goal for Bulgarian archaeology explicitly set by Gergova is identical to the communist era policy of concentration on “sites of national importance” (e.g. Gergova 1986: 2), differing probably only by its neoliberal, rather than so-called socialist, context (see previous section). Thus, despite the lack of overt political pressure, theoretical, methodological and (now mainly implicit) ideological requirements of post-communist Bulgarian archaeology seem to display notable affinities to those of the preceding period. Although this was no longer an officially stated goal set by a governing party, post-communist archaeology seems to have remained a “national archaeology”.

Even a brief glance at debates and interpretations in specialized publications suffices to indicate that Bulgarian institutionalized archaeology has subscribed, be it sporadically or unsystematically at first, to the so-called national(ist) continuum all through its nine decades of existence. Despite amendments to Bulgaria’s constitution guaranteeing the rights of minorities (see Crampton 2007, Spirova 2007, Marinov 2010) and recognizing the latter as an integral part of the Bulgarian nation, this trend, or continuum, of nationalism in academic or other discourses does not seem to have been halted. In fact, the context of the deep socio-economic crisis of the 1990s (Vassilev 2003: 100) prompted the re-emergence in Bulgaria of overt populist, anti-globalization, and, generally, anti-minorities discourses. The nationalistic, if not outright fascist, notion of Bulgarnost (Bulgarity), appearing in Bulgarian society in 1935 to designate an imagined amalgamation of ancient Thracian, Proto-Bulgarian and Aryan ethnic elements (see Frusetta & Glont 2009: 557), found an echo in the post-communist process of so-called thracianization of the history of the Bulgarian lands. Answering a recurrent need for national unity after the “total crisis” of the 1990s (Fotev 1996), communist era work on the bulgarization, and later the thracianization of Bulgarian society – the latter held to be a positive process of “linking Thracian culture with the contemporaneity of Bulgaria and of Europe” (Zarev 2009: 6) – has been maintained and even reinvigorated by Bulgarian academia (following section).

Factors external to the Bulgarian humanities, such as the country’s failed transition to a market economy, which brought about the alleged total crisis of the so-called transition period, have prompted some researchers to argue that post-communist archaeological exploration in Bulgaria was inevitably influenced by economic rather than ideological factors (e.g. Vagalinski 2001: 109). This point of view appears to be confirmed by the apparent lack of government intervention in academia. However, it is important to note that nationalistic academic discourses of the previous era were not necessarily the result of political, or any other kind of external pressure. Indeed, as Todorova notes in her analysis of Party leader T. Zhivkov’s speech on the occasion of Bulgaria’s 1300th anniversary:

The professional historians [of the 1960’s and 1970’s] in particular took it upon themselves voluntarily to protect and promote the ‘national interests’ and the ‘national cause,’ espousing the false, but self-satisfying, illusion that they were taking a dissident position. The rehabilitation and glorification of the great leadership figures of the medieval past—the scores of khans and tsars, who had created a

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume2 (2017) 85-110 97 strong Bulgarian state—was seen by the historians and writers as a way to counter the pernicious effects of what was considered to be ‘national nihilism,’ and to overcome what seemed to them to be the anonymous, anti-individual, deterministic, and overly schematic methodological approach of socioeconomic Marxist history (Todorova 1995: 95, our emphasis).

We believe that this observation is also valid for post-communist research in Bulgarian archaeology and, more specifically, in thracology – an overlooked field of analysis as far as ethnicizing, nationalistic discourses are concerned. We contend that the ethnicizing discourses of twentieth century Bulgarian institutionalized history and archaeology have seamlessly permeated archaeological and historical interpretations in thracology, thus perpetuating the so-called national(ist) continuum in Bulgarian academia of the twenty- first century. Overlooking this fact has contributed to the uncritical passing of subjective, ideological discourses as objective, scientific reconstitutions of the past. Furthermore, and as importantly, ethnicized archaeological interpretations of the discipline’s post-communist era seem to have inspired directly, though probably unwittingly, radical populist discourses that employ not only state socialism era notions of national identity and thracianization, but also the indistinctly fascist rhetoric of the interwar period with its goal of bulgarization (see also Frusetta & Glont 2009: 567).

The ethnicizing, nationalist continuum – the case of thracology Despite the apparent lack of political pressure on academia, the ethnicization of discourses seems to have gathered pace since 1989 in the Bulgarian humanities. The signs – interpretational and semantic – indicating that this is the case appear especially in studies on the nature of Thracian culture, on the latter’s ethnic, social, and cultural characteristics. Such ethnicizing discourses seem to have evolved simultaneously and interdependently in the different disciplines of the institutionalized humanities in Bulgaria, most notably in ethnology and thracology. We believe these examples show that the nationalist continuum characteristic of all public and even private spheres of Bulgarian society during the whole of the twentieth century has followed uninterruptedly into twenty-first century Bulgarian academia, especially in the field of thracology.

In Bulgarian ethnology this pattern of ethnicization is applied in historical studies either subtly, through the manipulation of otherwise recognized and accepted notions and concepts (e.g. Hadzhinikolov 1991), or, more often, directly, through the application of controversial or, at least, anachronistic notions, concepts, or trends of thought (e.g. Angelov 1971, Jivkov 1994, Minkov 2011). Communist and post-communist era Bulgarian ethnology generally holds that ethnic identity is the core element of any group (e.g. Minkov 2011: 29), and that when ethnicity is “linked with one or another form of social life”, ethnic groups transform into “ethno-social organisms” (Hadzhinikolov 1991: 50). These “social organisms” eventually develop a close link with a specific geographic territory and, subsequently, establish institutions with “state [or administrative] functions” (Hadzinikolov 1991: 51). The ethno-social group’s economy is expressed in the development of production, of agriculture and husbandry, as well as in the appearance and growth of cities as centers for trade and the crafts (Angelov 1971: 26).

98 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

The development of an economy makes the convergence of multiple ethnic groups into one cohesive “ethno-social” organism possible. Once all necessary elements – “ethnicism”, ethnic institutionalization, “ethno-social” groupings and identification with a specific territory –, are in place, “objective ethnic processes” follow: the appearance of nations and states (Angelov 1971: 27) or, in the case of ancient Greece and Thrace, “the birthing of European nations, of Europe” (Jivkov 1994: 17).

These tenets allow Bulgarian ethnologists to argue, for instance, that, contrary to other ethnic identities (i.e. Macedonian ethnic identity, see Minkov 2011), Bulgarian ethnicity has been legitimized by going through these essential (for its development) evolutionary processes. As of yet unable to link Bulgarian and Thracian ethnicities genetically (see, however, Karachanak et al.: 2012, 2013), ethnologists are nevertheless able to bring both ethno-social groups together as founding European communities separated by time, but culturally and spiritually united (e.g. Jivkov 1994, Minkov 2011), as well as to repudiate undesirable (but otherwise objectively documented) cultural links between the Bulgarian ethnicity and ethnic groups perceived as culturally and spiritually foreign (for a notable exception to this trend in the field of ethnology see the publications of A. Krasteva). Even with the hindsight provided by the previous section, it may seem shocking at this point to suggest that thracology may have followed this ethnicizing, nationalistic trend of Bulgarian ethnology. Nevertheless, the following example from the field of thracology indicates unequivocally that the latter has followed the trend in question, subscribing wholeheartedly (at least in the case presented here) to the so-called national(ist) continuum in modern Bulgarian society.

Although Bulgarian ethnologists’ theoretical developments on the concept of ethnicity have not had any notable effects on Bulgarian science, or society, the effect of the applications of these developments to historical reconstitutions of ethnic identity has been dramatic, most notably in post-communist era reconstitution of Thracian culture. Indeed, in thracology, decades of sparse theoretical developments and comparative analogies (mainly with ancient Greek culture) have culminated in the attribution to Thracian culture of the status of first European (in cultural, rather than geographic terms) civilization (below). That ancient Thracian culture is taken to be a so-called European culture in sociocultural and spiritual terms, rather than merely in geographical ones, is evidenced in (typically cryptic) statements such as the one emitted by philosopher R. Dankova who refers to a Thracian tomb as “a mythological model of the World through which the transition to the European Logos was accomplished” (Dankova 2006: 171).

References to a spiritual unity between Thracians and/or Bulgarians and European civilization (e.g. Dankova 2006, Minkov 2011, Porojanov 2012, see below) or the role of the (Bulgarian) nation in the history of European civilization (e.g. Minkov 2011) may be reminiscent of nineteenth century European philosophy, but in fact they are ideologically and contextually much closer to identical references made by the party, and the nation’s, cultural and political leaders during the last decade of the communist era in Bulgaria (see examples analyzed in Todorova 1995). Thus, such references or, more

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume2 (2017) 85-110 99 generally, theoretical and historical developments in the Bulgarian humanities, foremost in ethnology and history, but also in archaeology and thracology (below), can be perceived as parts of the ongoing nationalist continuum in Bulgarian society in general identified more than two decades ago by M. Todorova (1992, 1995) which is still in existence today.

The ethnologists’ idea of “the birthing of European nations” (Jivkov 1994: 17) in the Balkans, as well as the reconstitution of their “march on the difficult road of civilization” (Dragan 1991: 12) has recently attracted the attention of thracological archaeologist K. Porojanov (2012, 2017). In a study titled The Ancient heritage in Bulgarian history and culture, Porojanov states, for instance, that the ancient authors of the 6th – 5th centuries BCE (Hecataeus, Herodotus, Thucydides) took Europe to mean the Greek and the Thracian lands. This direct association of Thrace and, hence, the Thracians with the first European communities (“civilizations” in Dragan 1991 and later also in Porojanov 2012, see below) has prompted Porojanov to conclude that: 1) “[t]he oldest European civilization is documented in the lands of Ancient Thrace”, and 2) Ancient Bulgarian nationality and culture was composite and included significant elements of Thracian ethnicity and culture –Dragan (1991: 23) seems to attribute to the Thracians an even greater primacy by leaning towards a direct association of the Pelasgians, “who played a civilizing role [in Greece] before the arrival of the Achaeans”, with the Thracians.2 Porojanov notes that during the 5th millennium BCE Thracian culture exhibited certain characteristics – agriculture, pastoralism, crafts, and trade – that “lead to accumulation and surpluses in the community”, which are typical traits of early “state organizations” (Porojanov 2012: 282). He then argues that the earliest archaeological traces in the Balkans – the Varna necropolis [5th millennium BCE], the settlement of Durankulak [6th millennium BCE] “with the first stone architecture in Europe”, and the “proto-Linear inscriptions on clay tablets and seals” (Porojanov 2012: 282; on these allegedly proto- Linear inscriptions see Fol et al. 2000) – were left by “proto-Thracians” (Porojanov 2012: 282–283). Porojanov then adds that the enumerated archaeological sites and vestiges indicate the presence of state formations that “predate the similar, earliest [state formations] of Egypt and Mesopotamia by a whole millennium!” (Porojanov 2012: 282).

This last comparison is reminiscent of an earlier one between, on the one hand, the Danube river and, on the other, the Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Indus rivers, the Danube held to be “rightly included among” the latter as a river “around the banks of which flourished the earliest civilizations” (Dragan 1991: 11). Such associations and comparisons between Thracian culture and ancient civilizations are also reminiscent of comparisons between Bulgarian folklore heroes and Biblical characters such as Moses (e.g. Mihailov 2015 [1972]: 25).

According to Porojanov (2012: 283), between the 5th and the 1st millennium BCE, the said characteristics – those allowing for the development of “state organizations” – were consolidated in the whole of Southeastern Europe, “meaning in Thrace, but also in

2 All translations from the Bulgarian are ours.

100 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

Hellas” (Porojanov 2012: 283). The period between the 4th and the 3rd millennium BCE was characterized by the accruing mobility of populations in that region, as well as in Asia Minor. The collective (i.e. Thracian) nature of the populations in question is observed in the common features presented by their architecture – the fortified settlements in Thrace and in the Troad –, as well as by the development of the “proto- Linear” or “Trojan script” on the walls of ceramic vessels (Porojanov 2012: 283).

The 1st millennium BCE is characterized in Thrace by the appearance of “early class states”, the most notable being those of the Odrysae, the Getae, the Tribali, the Dacians, and the Bithynians (Porojanov 2012: 284). “However, [these states] kept their archaic, ethnos [in the Aristotelian meaning of the term] nature, which is expressed in the already mentioned typology ethnic states, as opposed to the Hellenic (…) polis states” (Porojanov 2012: 284, italics in original; see also Fol 2000; Porojanov 2017b).

According to Porojanov, both the Greek poleis and the Thracian ethne strive to develop into empires (the Peloponnesian, Delian, and Boeotian leagues in Greece and the Odrysian “state” in Thrace) or, more precisely, towards the domination of other states by bringing them into vassalage and levying taxes from them (Porojanov 2017a: 12, 13- 14, 2017b). By imposing itself on other Thracian ethne and by levying taxes from the Greek poleis in Thrace, the Odrysian becomes not only a typical empire, but “the biggest early state empire during these centuries in Europe” (Porojanov 2017a: 14). Despite the Macedonian dominance of Thrace during the 4th – 1st centuries BCE, the territorially diminished Odrysian “kingdom-empire” “continues its imperialist politics of domination over other ethnic communities and Hellenic poleis” (Porojanov 2017a: 18).

The relationship between the Odrysian empire and the Greek poleis that it dominates is, nevertheless, one of mutual benefit and cooperation (Porojanov 2017b: 32). Far from losing its position of influence after the Roman conquest of the region, Thrace becomes during the first centuries of the 1st millennium CE “the backbone of the Roman Empire”, the latter “representing the first attempt at tolerance and loyalty in the limits of the Ancient United Europe” (Porojanov 2012: 284, emphasis in the original).

Rejecting the general (mainly communist era) notion that Thrace was, as it were, enslaved by the Romans, Porojanov holds that the Thracians had become citizens of the Empire, existing in the latter as an ethnic community despite lacking “a state of [its] own” (Porojanov 2012: 284). The Thracian ethnic community did not cease to evolve socio-politically under Roman dominance. It developed into a feudal society more similar to Medieval feudal societies than to its contemporaneous “Classical slave- owning” ones, which “is probably the reason why the Christianization and barbarization of the Late Roman Empire will preserve the strength of [Thracian] culture and [Thracian] vernacular language” (Porojanov 2012: 284-285, our emphasis).

This Thracian conservatism and sociopolitical and cultural perseverance in adversity allowed Thracian society “to incorporate itself into the new, composite [triunite] Bulgarian nationality of Medieval southeastern Europe” (Porojanov 2012: 285). Indeed,

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume2 (2017) 85-110 101

“[a]t that time [social relationships in Bulgarian society] were most similar to Thracian social relationships”, a fact that further helps the preservation of “the Thracian (…) so- called live Antiquity (…) through the Middle Ages and into New Times [in the populations of] Bulgaria and modern Macedonia and northern Greece” (Porojanov 2012: 285).

Porojanov is adamant that Christianization, and not a mere encounter of cultures, contributed to the consolidation and to the transmission of ancient values into the newly formed Bulgarian culture.3 According to him, the continuity in the transmission of Thracian culture into modern Bulgarian culture is due to “the centuries-long Christianization of the Late Antiquity population of the Thracian lands” (Porojanov 2012: 287). Thus: “it is through Christianization and the new Bulgarian alphabet that the city culture/behavior of Medieval Bulgaria inherits, and gives meaning to, the cultural values of Antiquity” (Porojanov 2012: 288, emphasis in original).

Vernacular, traditional Thracian culture was preserved in the Balkan populations of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages – “Germans/Goths, Avars, Slavs, Bulgarians/Proto- Bulgarians” – because it was “the only agro-cultural and socio-behavioral stereotype possible in these geographical conditions” (Porojanov 2012: 288). By choosing to stay in Thrace, these diverse populations “are forced by the conditions to adapt and to conform (…) to the local norms and way of life” (Porojanov 2012: 288). The same conclusion also follows somewhat less directly from T. Spiridonov’s statement that “the first task for the group/ethnos is to adapt to the [natural] environment in order [for the group/ethnos] to survive” (Spiridonov 1998: 142 et passim).

Adaptation to the natural surroundings of the “ethnic territory” is not simply a matter of physical or material means (Porojanov’s “agro-cultural and socio-behavioral” elements of adaptation), but also of “cultural” and “linguistic” ones (Spiridonovo 1998: 142 et passim). It is thus held that, in order to survive both physically and as one people, the groups or, in Spiridonov’s terms, the ethnicities who established themselves in the Balkans, including the Slavs and Bulgars (Porojanov’s Proto-Bulgarians), had no other choice but to become “thracianized” (Porojanov 2012: 288). Thracianization is taken to be expressed in the adoption of only the “most important, vital customs, traditions, festivities, names, beliefs, song singings, cult places, etc.” (Porojanov 2012: 288).

3 The Bulgarian state was founded in the Balkans in the late 7th century and officially adopted Christianity in the 10th century. To our knowledge, no traces attributable to Thracian culture have been dated to the 10th and following centuries. It has been generally accepted in Bulgarian archaeology and history that there is no incontrovertible evidence of the existence of Thracian culture in the Balkans after the 4th century A.D., nor are Thracians mentioned in texts after that century. Arguments against this view (e.g. Stantcheva 1981) state as evidence of the Thracians survival the proliferation of public buildings in Late Roman Thrace, taken to indicate the presence, and employment in building projects, of a large local population. Furthermore, (unspecified) archaeological findings and the apparent links between (earlier) Thracian and (later) Slavic-Bulgarian culture seem to indicate that the Thracian population of the Balkans flourished in the administrative and demographic vacuum left by the disintegration of the Roman Empire (compare these earlier, already vague and circumstantial interpretations with Porojanov’s conclusions above).

102 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

These elements are held to have “filtered” through time and through a conscious selection “operated by each community (ethnicity)” (Spiridonov 1998: 13) which found itself in the process of being thracianized. Their adoption in other (Bulgarian, Slavic, etc.) societies was facilitated by the fact that Thracians, Slavs and Bulgarians/Proto- Bulgarians (or Bulgars) relied on oral traditions and oral cultures that, despite their individual particularities, “belonged to a common Indo-European cultural and linguistic circle” (Porojanov 2012: 288). If Thracian culture, with its “archaistic aspects” and its “agro-cultural and socio-behavioral stereotype” is so “enduring”, it is because “some of the oldest Indo-Europeans are the Thracians”4 (Porojanov 2012: 288). Bulgarian culture was influenced by Thracian culture even before the Bulgars arrived in the Balkans. The fact that the latter used a Turkic language, as testified by the “Turkic inscriptions of the First Bulgarian Kingdom” (Porojanov 2012: 289), does not contradict their cultural closeness to Thrace, given that a Turkic language and script was adopted by the Bulgars simply as a sort of a lingua franca in the Eurasian steppes (Porojanov 2012: 289; for a very similar reconstruction of cultural links uniting Thracians, Slavs and Bulgars before any of these people came into contact with each-other, see Venedikov 1981). The thracianization of Slavs and Bulgars was also unproblematic because both of these cultures inherited the “sacral territory” (or “Thracian space” in Dragan 1991, i.e. “the geographical zone … of the Thracian, Getae, and Dacian tribes”) of the host culture – that of the Thracians. This territorial (and, unavoidably, sacral and spiritual) inheritance was part of the mechanism which allowed for the fusion of different “tribal groups” into “national formations” (Spiridonov 1998: 144) or, more precisely, in the “formation of the Bulgarian people” by the triunine national formation of Thracians, Slavs, and Bulgars (Spiridonov 1998: 13).

Nationalistic continuum in thracology and Bulgarian society One of the implicit or explicit goals of twentieth century thracology was to show that “the Thracians infuse[d in the triunine national formation] not only their blood”, but also “their cultural values.” (Mihailov 2015). The ethnographic (e.g. Spiridonov 1998), ethnological (e.g. Jivkov 1994), and thracological (e.g. Popov 2007; Porojanov 2012; 2017a) studies of the cultural values of the ancient Thracians aim to reconstruct uninterrupted cultural and genetic links between (in the words of the authors cited here) the modern Bulgarian nation (read ethnic Bulgarians) and ancient Thracian civilization. The tenets resulting from the decades-long pursuit of this goal are epitomized by thracologists and prolific author of popular historical publications D. Popov who states that:

4 This statement is indirectly opposed by Dragan’s reconstitution of the evolution of the earliest “European civilizations” in the Balkans. According to him, the latter were replaced during the 4th millennium BCE waves of migrants from the northern shores of the Black Sea (Dragan 1991: 20-24 and references). Dragan (1991: 22) accepts that this replacement of the earliest European civilizations was the actual “Indo-Europeanization” of the Balkans, whereas Porojanov attributes to the Indo-European Thracians the status of “first European civilization”.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume2 (2017) 85-110 103

“We, the Bulgarians, live in a land with millennial traditions and that is the reason why our culture has its roots deep in antiquity. (…) At the dusk of that antiquity are the Thracians, who are entirely a part of the ethnic composition of the Bulgarian nationality, as the latter’s smallest, but strongest and spiritually richest part. This is why [the Thracian’s] history is not pre-history, but is simply the beginning of [Bulgarian] history” (Popov 2007: 7).

Such ethnological, historical, and thracological reconstitutions of Bulgarian culture as a monolithic unity of ancient and modern cultures (and people) seem to be based firmly in the tenets and semantic habits of the nationalist continuum of the twentieth century, with its references to a glorious past and to national unity enduring in the face of adversity while striving to develop its full cultural and spiritual potential. That the tenets presented here are not solely the product of communist era propaganda, but are part of a continuing nationalistic habit at the level of Bulgarian academia is made clear by the manner in which they mix communist primordialism and vernacular evolutionism with communist era Marxism, producing as a result the post-communist developments presented here: the “striving” of groups based on a core ethnic identity (same “blood” and “spirit”) to develop their full sociocultural potential by evolving into modern nations while going through the stages of “early class empires”, of “states”, and of precocious “feudal societies”.

Such interpretations cannot but remind us of the political policies and goals of pre- and communist era Bulgarian society: those of legitimizing the Bulgarian nation and its political aims through links with, and references to, a greater past, references to other ethnic groups, nations, and states – Thracian civilization – that are perceived as holding more legitimate or, as it were, autochthonous rights to local culture and territory. As extensions of the nationalist continuum, these post-communist historical and archaeological reconstitutions by thracology (and other disciplines) appear to attribute to the modern Bulgarian nation the primordial right to the “sacred territory” – ancient cultural, religious, and territorial claims – of the Thracians, i.e. the eastern and central Balkans. Thus, we believe that by tracing back the cultural, spiritual, and even genetic characteristics of the modern Bulgarian nation and people to the most ancient, most autochthonous of European civilizations – that of the Thracians –, Bulgarian thracology of the twenty-first century subscribes directly to the Bulgarian nationalist continuum of the nineteenth and twentieth century.

Noting this fact and exemplifying it achieves little, except to contradict institutionalized archaeology’s claims to an (post-communist) era of objective, scientific, ideology-free research. In order for our deconstruction of thracological ethnicizing discourse and our placing of the latter squarely into the nationalistic continuum examined by Todorova (1992; 1995) to have any importance or impact, its effects on Bulgarian society have to be examined.

Instead of dissipating after 1989 with the demise of state socialism, the national(ist) continuum was simply rendered passive. Anticipating the initiation of processes leading to its eventual admission in the EU (see Engström 2009: 100, Katsikas 2012), the

104 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

Bulgarian government and Bulgarian society in general seemed to espouse a “non- violent dynamic” (Koinova 2013: 158) during the late-1990s and early 2000s. In the absence of a comprehensive critical or auto-reflective analysis of over a century of archaeological practice and theory, post-communist archaeological discourses are taken at face value and the thracianization/bulgarization of the region’s history is unwittingly reproduced in the country and abroad. Such reproductions of ethnicizing academic discourses add, in turn, to the perceived authority of the latter. The nationalist continuum in Bulgarian academia, based on pre-communist primordialism and communist-era Marxism, is furthered in Bulgarian archaeology by the proliferation of vernacular empiricism, as demonstrated by, to say the least, surprising conceptualizations such as one published less than a decade ago by archaeologist and vice-director of the National Historical Museum Dr. Ivan Hristov: “[t]he skeletons found indicate that the buried show small percentage of Mediterranean racial signs and absolutely lack Mediterranean gracile features that were characteristic for the Thracians” (Hristov 2009: 46, our emphasis).

By maintaining, even reinvigorating the nationalist continuum both in theory and in practice, academic narratives in the Bulgarian humanities have slowly but surely acquired the traits of populist discourses. The application of the latter, as expressed by academics, are varied. Some, most notably the nationalist discourse of historian Bozhidar Dimitrov, host of a talk show on Bulgarian television and director of the National Historical Museum, as well as ethnologist I. Minkov (e.g. 2011) have, for instance, publicly dismissed the validity of Macedonian ethnic identity and argue, by the same token, for the historical, cultural, and territorial domination by Bulgarian ethnicity over ethnic minorities in Bulgaria and other ethnic groups in the Balkans5.

Thus, disillusionment with the EU and dissatisfaction with the ever ongoing transitional process in the post-communist Bulgarian state have brought the passive, supposedly scientific nature of academic ethnicizing discourses closer to activation or, in other words, closer to acquiring tangible consequences. In the adverse economic and sociopolitical context of the post-communist Balkans, the revived nationalist continuum has provided Bulgarian society with a sense of continuity and security. By linking the “European” and “Christian” values and “spirit” of Bulgarian society (Porojanov 2012 et passim) directly with ancient, autochthonous values and traditions (see also Zarev 2009: 6), post-communist ethnicizing discourses are promoting the historical superiority of ethnic Bulgarians over ethnic and religious minorities in the country. The latter are perceived today as they were perceived ever since the establishment of the New Bulgarian State in the late nineteenth century: as disruptive intruders in Bulgarian society and in Bulgarian lands. These ethnicizing academic discourses exclude minorities from Bulgarian society’s now purified history. The minorities’ claim to a centuries long presence in Bulgarian lands (e.g. Jews, Roma, Turks) or to direct contribution to the

5 It is worthwhile noting that, since the submission and acceptance of the manuscript, Bozhidar Dimitrov has been replaced as director of the National Historical Museum.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume2 (2017) 85-110 105 formation of the medieval Bulgarian states (e.g. Armenians and Aromanians/Vlakhs)6 are now being supplanted by academic reconstitutions of direct cultural and genetic links between modern Bulgarians and ancient Thracians. If the ethnic purification of Bulgarian history were not an alarming enough process, these academic reconstitutions are now providing in the eyes of the ethnic Bulgarian majority the necessary scientific authority for them to be re-applied once again in the cultural, social, and political reality of the Bulgarian nation in, as it were, a continuation of the national(ist) continuum. As long as the permanence of this national(ist) continuum in post-communist academia is ignored or accepted passively by academics, ethnicizing, nationalistic discourses will continue to affect the latter directly, with tangibly detrimental, possibly even catastrophic effects.

References

ANGELOV, D., 1971. The Formation of the Bulgarian Nation, Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo (in Bulgarian, summary in English). ANGELOV, D., 1984. Развитие и постижения на българската археология (1944- 1984) [Development and achievements of Bulgarian archaeology (1944-1984)]. Archaeology (Sofia) 4: 1–8. APARICIO RESCO P., 2016. Archaeology and Neoliberalism. Madrid: JAS Arqueologia. ATKINSON J.A., I. BANKS & J. O’SULLIVAN (eds.), 1996. Nationalism and Archaeology – Scottish Archaeological Forum. Glasgow: Cruithne Press. BAILEY, D. W., 1998. Bulgarian archaeology – Ideology, sociopolitics and the exotic, in: L. MESKELL (ed.), Archaeology Under Fire. Nationalism, politics and heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. London and New York: Routledge, 87–110. BOURDIEU, P. 1998. L’essence du néolibéralisme. Le Monde Diplomatique (March 1998): 3. BÜCHSENSCHÜTZ, U., 1996. Minderheiten Politik in Bulgarien. Die Politik der Bulgarischen Kommunistischen Partei gegenüber den Juden, Roma, Pomaken und Türken 1944 bis 1989, Berlin: Freien Universität. CRAMPTON, R. J., 2007. Bulgaria, Oxford: Oxford University Press. CURTONI, R. P., & G. POLITIS, 2006. Race and racism in South American archaeology, World Archaeology 38(1): 93–108. DANKOVA, R., 2006. Казанлък и традициите на Българския принос в учението за ноосферата [Kazanlŭk and the traditions of the Bulgarian contribution in the teaching about the noosphere]. Проблеми и изследвания на тракийската култура I: 153– 172. DASKALOV, R., 2004. The Making of a Nation in the Balkans: Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival. Budapest – New York: CEU Press. DETREZ, R., 2006. Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria (2nd ed.) Historical Dictionaries of Europe 46. Lanham (MD): The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

6 On the installation of Armenian contingents and communities in Medieval Bulgaria (from as early as the 10th c.), see Fine 1983: 169 et passim. See also Mitseva (2001). For an overview of the evolution of the Vlakh communities in Bulgaria see Vasseva (1998). On the Vlakh contribution to the foundation of the Second Bulgarian Empire (late 12th - 13th c.), see Fine 1987.

106 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

DIAZ-ANDREU M. & T. CHAMPION (eds.), 1996. Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe. London: Routledge Library Editions. ENGSTRÖM, J., 2009. Democratisation and the Prevention of Violent Conflict: Lessons Learned from Bulgaria and Macedonia. Farnham: Ashgate. FINE, J. V. A. JR., 1983. The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. FINE, J. V. A. JR., 1987. The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. FAWCETT, C. & P. L. KOHL (eds.), 1995. Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. FOL, A., 2000. Ethnosness. Seminarium Thracicum 4: 31–48 (in Bulgarian, summary in English). FOL, A., K. YORDANOV (JORDANOV) & K. POROZHANOV, 2002. Thirtieth anniversary of the Institute of Thracology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Thracia 15: 27–42. FOL, V., 2015. L’apport de la thracologie, in: J.-L. MARTINEZ, A. BARALIS, N. MATHIEUX, T. STOYANOV & M. TONKOVA (eds.), L’épopée des rois thraces: Des guerres médiques aux invasions celtes 479-278 av. J.-C.; découvertes archéologiques en Bulgarie [exposition, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 16 avril - 20 juillet 2015]. Paris: Somogy, 360–361. FOTEV, G., 1996. Total Crisis and the Reorganization of Society, in: J. COENEN-HUTHER (ed.), Bulgaria at the Crossroads. New-York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 11–32. FRUSETTA, J. & A. GLONT, 2009. Interwar fascism and the post-1989 radical right: Ideology, opportunism and historical legacy in Bulgaria and Romania. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 42(4): 551–571. GERGOVA, D., 1986. ХIII конгрес на БКП и българската археологическа наука [13th Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party and Bulgarian archaeological science]. Arheologiia (Sofia) 4: 1–4. GERGOVA, D., 2001. Тракийска археология [Thracian archaeology], in: Състояние и проблеми на методиката и методологията на българската археология [The actual state and problems of the methods and methodology of Bulgarian archaeology]. Arheologiia (Sofia) 3-4:105–108. GEORGIEVA, I., 1974. Sur certaines influences thraces dans la culture spirituelle du people bulgare. Thracia 2: 213–219. GLOVER, I. G., 2016. Some national, regional, and Political Uses of Archaeology in East and Southeast Asia, in: M. T. STARK (ed.), Archaeology of Asia. Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology. Malden, Oxford: Blckwell Publishing, 17–36. GORI, M. & M. IVANOVA (ed.), 2017. Balkan Dialogues – Negotiating Identity between Prehistory and the Present. London & New-York: Routledge. GOTSEV, A., 2001. Тракийска археология [Thracian archaeology], in: Българската археология през последното десетилетие на XX век [Bulgarian archaeology during the last decade of the twentieth century]. Arheologiia (Sofia) 3-4: 88–91. GRAVES-BROWN, P., JONES, S. & C. GAMBLE, 1996. Cultural Identity and Archaeology: The Construction of European Communities. London: Routledge. Hadzhinikolov, V., 1991. Theoretical Problems of Ethnography. Sofia: BAN (in Bulgarian, summary in English).

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume2 (2017) 85-110 107

HAMILAKIS Y., 2007. The Nation and its Ruins – Antiquity, Archaeology and National Imagination in Greece, Oxford: Oxford University Press. HARVEY, F. P., 2000. Primordialism, Evolutionary Theory and Ethnic Violence in the Balkans: Opportunities and Constraints for Theory and Policy. Canadian Journal of Political Science 33(1): 37–65. JIVKOV, T. I., 1994. The Ethnic Syndrome. Sofia: Alja (in Bulgarian, summary in English). KACHAUNOV, S. & K. SIMEONOVA, 1979. Social studies of science in Bulgaria. Social Studies of Science 9(1): 91–99. KARACHANAK, S., V. CAROSSA, D. NESHEVA, A. OLIVIERI, M. PALA, et al., 2012. Bulgarians vs the other European populations: a mitochondrial DNA perspective. International Journal of Legal Medicine 126: 497–503. KARACHANAK S., V. GRUGNI, S. FORNARINO, D. NESHEVA, N. AL-ZAHERY, et al., 2013. Y-chromosome diversity in modern Bulgarians: New clues about their ancestry. PLoS ONE 8(3): 1–8. KATSIKAS, S., 2012. Negotiating Diplomacy in the New Europe: Foreign Policy in Post-Communist Bulgaria, London – New York: I. B. Tauris. KOHL P. L. & C. P. FAWCETT (eds.), 1995. Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. KRASTEVA, A. (ED.), 1998. Общности и идентичности в България [Communities and Identities in Bulgaria]. Sofia: Petekston. KRASTEVA, A., 2016. The post-communist rise of national populism: Bulgarian paradoxes, in: G. LAZARIDIS, G. CAMPANI & A. BENVENISTE (eds.), The Rise of the Far Right in Europe: Populist Shifts and ‘Othering’. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 161–200. MARINOV, T., 2010. La question macédonienne de 1944 à nos jours. Communisme et nationalisme dans les Balkans. Paris: L’Harmattan. MARINOV, T., 2016. Nos ancêtres les Thraces: Usages idéologiques de l’Antiquité en Europe du Sud- Est. Paris: L’Harmattan. MARTINEZ, J.-L., A. BARALIS, N. MATHIEUX, T. STOYANOV & M. TONKOVA (eds.), 2015. L’épopée des rois thraces: Des guerres médiques aux invasions celtes 479-278 av. J.-C.; découvertes archéologiques en Bulgarie [exposition, Paris, Museé du Louvre, 16 avril - 20 juillet 2015]. Paris: Somogy. MEININGER, T. A., 1987. The Formation of a Nationalist Bulgarian Intelligentsia, 1835-1878. New York – London: Garland Publishing Inc. MESKELL, L., 1998. Archaeology Under Fire – Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean. Milton Park: Routledge. MIHAILOV, G. 2015 [1972]. Траките [The Thracians]. Sofia: New Bulgarian University. MIJATEV, K., 1959. Петдесет години българска археология [Fifty years Bulgarian archaeology]. Arheologiia (Sofia) 3-4: 3–11. MIKOV, V. (1943). Произход на надгробните могили в България [Origin of the funerary mounds in Bulgaria]. Annual of the National Museum: 16–31. MILLER, M. L., 1975. Bulgaria during the Second World War. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

108 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

MINKOV, I. S., 2011. Ethnoses and Globalization Communities: Ethnic Communities in Bulgaria during the National Age and the Process of Globalization. Sofia: Tip-top Press (in Bulgarian, summary in English). MITSEVA, E., 2001. Арменците в България – култура и идентичност [The Armenians in Bulgaria – culture and identity]. Sofia: IMIR. NIKOLOV, V., 2001. Праистория [Prehistory], in: Българската археология през последното десетилетие на ХХ век [Bulgarian archaeology during the last decade of the twentieth century]. Arheologiia (Sofia) 3-4: 84–87. OVČARIOM D. & R. BOGOMIROVA, 2001. 80 years Bulgarian Archaeological Institute. Arheologiia (Sofia) 3-4: 5–15 (in Bulgarian, summary in English). ÖZDOǦAN, M., 1998. Ideology and Archaeology in Turkey, in: L. MESKELL (ed.), Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Milton Park: Routledge, 11–123. ÖZDOǦAN, M., 2017. Neolithic assemblages and spatial boundaries as exemplified through the Neolithic of Northwestern Turkey, in: M. GORI & M. IVANOVA, Balkan Dialogues – Negociating Identity between Prehistory and the Present. London & New-York: Routledge: 197–212. PALAVESTRA, A. & S. BABIĆ, 2016. False analogy: Transfer of theories and methods in archaeology (the case of Serbia). European Journal of Archaeology 19(2): 316–334. POPOV, V., 1983. La thracologie Durant la période 1980-1990: problèmes et perspectives. Pulpudeva 4: 7– 15. POPOV, D., 1999. Тракология [Thracology]. Sofia: Lik. POPOV, D., 2007. Тракийските царе. Поведение и превъплъщения [The Thracian Kings. Behavior and Reincarnations]. Sofia: Lik. POROJANOV, K., 2000. State Organization and Civilization in Thrace and of the Thracians till mid-1st Mill. BC, Seminarium Thracicum 4: 9–18 (in Bulgarian, summary in English). POROJANOV, K., 2012. The Thracian Civilization in the Beginnings of two Continents and on the Coasts of three Seas (in ten studies). Thracia Antiqua 11 (in Bulgarian, summary in English). POROJANOV, K., 2017a. Empire and Polis in Thrace, Hellas and Rome (in the Context of the States from the Eastern Mediterranean in the 6th/5th century BC – 1st/2nd Century AD). Thracia 22: 11–25. POROJANOV, K. 2017b. Polis and Ethnos along the Western Black Sea Coast: 3rd Century BC – 1st Century AD. Thracia 22: 27–33. PREŠLENOV, H., 1995. Бележити изследователи на античната археология в България – творчески биографии [Illustrious researchers of Bulgaria’s ancient archaeology – biographies of their work], Arheologiia (Sofia) 1: 16–22. PUNDEFF, M., 1969. Bulgarian Nationalism, in: P. F. SUGAR & I. J. LEDERER (eds.), Nationalism in Eastern Europe. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 93– 165. RAŠEV, R., 2007. 60 години от обединяването на Народния археологически музей и Българския археологически институт [60 years of the unification of the National

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume2 (2017) 85-110 109

Museum of Archaeology and the Bulgarian Archaeological Isntitute]. Arheologiia (Sofia) 1–4: 229–231. ROUMENTCHEVA, S., 2015. Les Thraces à Paris, in: J. L. MARTINEZ, A. BARALIS, N. MATHIEUX, T. STOYANOV & M. TONKOVA (eds.), L’épopée des rois thraces: Des guerres médiques aux invasions celtes 479-278 av. J.-C. ; découvertes archéologiques en Bulgarie [exposition, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 16 avril - 20 juillet 2015]. Paris: Somogy, 362–363. SEMINARIUM THRACICUM 1985: Seminarium Thracicum 1, Sofia: Institute of Thracology, Bulgarian Academy of Science. SILVERMAN, H. & W. H. ISBELL (eds.), 2008. Handbook of South American Archaeology. New-York: Springer. SPIRIDONOV, T., 1991. The Thracian Ethnos: Problems of its Formation and Development, Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Science, Institute for Thracology (in Bulgarian, summary in English). SPIROVA, M., 2007. Political Parties in Post-Communist Societies: Formation, Persistence, and Change. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. STANTCHEVA, M., 1981. За късната тракийска култура [About late Thracian culture], in: V. TŬPKOVA-ZAIMOVA & K. Y. YORDANOV (eds.), Проблеми на културното наследство [Problems of cultural heritage]. Sofia: Institute of Thracology, 25–45. SUGAR, P. F. & I. J. LEDERER (eds.), 1969. Nationalism in Eastern Europe. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. TEODOROV, E., 1972. Altthrakische Erbschaft in der bulgarischen Folklore, Thracia 1: 315– 326. TEODOROV, E., 1999 [1972]. Old Thracian Heritage in the Bulgarian Folklore. Sofia: Akademitchno Izdatelstvo “Prof. Marin Drinov”. (in Bulgarian, summary in English) TODOROVA, M., 1992. ‘Historiography of the countries of Eastern Europe: Bulgaria’, American Historical Review 97(4): 1105–1117. TODOROVA, M., 1995. The Course and Discourses of Bulgarian Nationalism, in: P. F. SUGAR. (ed.), Eastern European Nationalism in the Twentieth Century. Washington (DC): The American University Press, 55–102. VAGALINSKI, L., 2001. Антична археология [Archaeology of Antiquity], in: Състояние и проблеми на методиката и методологията на българската археология [The current state and problems of the methods and methodology of Bulgarian archaeology]. Arheologiia (Sofia) 3–4: 108–111. VASSEVA, V., 1998. Власи [Vlakhs], in: A. KRASTEVA (ed.), Общности и идентичности в България [Communities and Identities in Bulgaria]. Sofia: Petekston, 170–189. VASSILEV, R., 2003. The “Third-Worldization” of a “Second-World” nation: De- development in post-communist Bulgaria. New Political Science 25(1): 99–112. VELKOV V., 1993. Archaeology in Bulgaria. Antiquity 67(254): 125–129. VENEDIKOV, I., 1981. Българската култура и древността [Bulgarian culture and antiquity], in: V. TŬPKOVA-ZAIMOVA & K. Y. YORDANOV (eds.), Проблеми на културното наследство [Problems of cultural heritage]. Sofia: Institute of Thracology, 5–24.

110 IVAN MARINOV & NICOLAS ZORZIN

YOROUKOVA (YOUROUKOVA), Y., 2001. A remarkable jubilee – the 80th anniversary of the Institute of Archaeology. Arheologiia (Sofia) 1: 7–15. (in Bulgarian, summary in English) ZAREV, K., 2009. Празници на тракийската култура в Казанлък – традиция и съвременност [Festivities of Thracian culture in Kazanlŭk – tradition and contemporaneity]. Проблеми и изследвания на тракийската култура IV: 5–6. ZLATKOVA, M., 2009. Богдан Филов. Живот между науката и политикатa [Bogdan Filov. A Life between Science and Politics]. Sofia: Altea. ZORZIN, N., 2016. New Managerial Strategies in British Commercial Archaeology, in: P. APARICIO RESCO (ed.), Archaeology and Neoliberalism. JAS Arqueología S.L.U (December 2016): Madrid, 297–325.

Reviews

Print: ISBN 978-1-78491-763-0 Online: ISSN 2531-8810 EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2, December 2017: 113-121 113 Published Online: Dec 2017

Museo Federico II Stupor Mundi Palazzo Ghislieri Piazza Federico II, 3, 60035 Jesi (AN)

Reviewed by Rachele Dubbini

University of Ferrara

Abstract In July 2017 opened in Jesi (Ancona, Italy) an “experience museum” dedicated to the figure of the imperator Frederick II. According to tradition, indeed, Frederick II was born in the city center of Jesi: here his mother decided to give birth to the royal son, in a tent placed in the middle of the public square. This expedient was necessary to prove the royal lineage of the new born. Based on this famous tale, the city of Jesi has seen in Frederick II an icon of the local cultural identity since the Middle Age. Yet the collective memory seemed not strong enough to remember to the inhabitants so as to the tourists, who crowd into the region during summer, the importance of such historical figure. For this reason, a local entrepreneur decided to invest in the creation of a museum on Frederick II, which could properly present life and deeds of the imperator, even if in Jesi there was no material traces of his passage, but only the memory of the royal tent. The museum has an innovative approach, especially as concerns the communication of the historical value of the imperator, having been designed as an “immersive and multisensorial trip” across the life of Frederick II. Moreover, it is also a pioneering undertaking - in comparison to most Italian museums - since it has been conceived as a “cultural enterprise”, having as one of its main aim the social and economic development of the local territory. The massive presence of private investors has probably influenced such a choice and the result is an interesting experiment that does live up to the visitors’ expectations.

Dalla memoria al museo Federico II Domenica ferragostana a Jesi, di quelle in cui il cielo terso sulle cortine laterizie cocenti pretenderebbe che una cittadina che non dista più di mezz’ora dal mare fosse deserta, tanto più di quei visitatori che in questo periodo dell’anno affollano la riviera del Conero. E invece all’ingresso delle 16 noi genitori di una piccoletta placidamente addormentata nel suo passeggino e di una cinquenne che supplica un gelato, pur appartenendo alla quella categoria di studiosi del mondo antico che lavorano anche in vacanza, siamo tutt’altro che soli all’entrata del neonato museo “Federico II Stupor Mundi”. Il museo, inaugurato il primo luglio 2017, aveva catturato la nostra attenzione sin dai comunicati stampa tanto per la promessa di un’esposizione basata sull’utilizzo di “tecnologie di ultima generazione” che soprattutto per la particolare genesi del progetto culturale, nata dalla volontà non delle amministrazioni locali, che pure per la provincia di

CONTACT Rachele Dubbini, [email protected] 114 RACHELE DUBBINI

Ancona sono state più volte criticate per il tiepido impegno nelle iniziative di carattere culturale (solo nel capoluogo, si pensi al Museo Archeologico dall’allestimento di stampo ottocentesco o alla Pinacoteca Civica, alla cui recente ristrutturazione architettonica non è seguita una nuova presentazione dei contenuti), ma di un privato.

In Gennaro Pieralisi, presidente del gruppo omonimo che si occupa principalmente della produzione di macchine olearie, viene infatti unanimemente riconosciuto l’ideatore - nonché il principale finanziatore - del progetto culturale che ha dato vita al museo. Alla base di questa intuizione, l’imprenditore elenca una serie di motivazioni: oltre al desiderio di vedere la propria città più vivace dal punto di vista culturale, aumentandone allo stesso tempo il potere attrattivo in ambito turistico, un museo interamente multimediale avrebbe potuto rafforzare la fama di Jesi quale “città tecnologica” (o, con un po’ di malizia, di città leader nella produzione di nuove tecnologie quali quelle proposte dal gruppo Pieralisi).

“Ho preso, così, la decisione di far realizzare un museo tecnologico e virtuale, che, anziché mostrare oggetti di cui non siamo in possesso, potesse ricordare e raccontare la storia di Federico II, le sue gesta e il suo pensiero”1.

Figure 1. Piazza Federico II a Jesi, in una domenica d’agosto (foto autore).

1 Tutte le dichiarazioni riportate nel testo, se non diversamente notato, provengono dalla cartella realizzata per gli uffici stampa, gentilmente messa a nostra disposizione dal personale del museo.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 113-121 115

A Jesi, infatti, non esistono reperti legati alla figura del monarca, né tanto meno strutture architettoniche riconducibili a tale personaggio: la città si fregia del titolo di “città regia” per aver dato i natali al futuro imperatore il 26 dicembre 1194, quando Costanza d’Altavilla, sposa attempata del re svevo Enrico VI, avrebbe partorito pubblicamente, in una tenda allestita in piazza, per dimostrare di essere veramente madre dell’erede legittimo dei regni di Germania e quindi di Sicilia (fig. 1). Finora tale avvenimento era semplicemente ricordato dalla tradizione locale, basata anche su una lettera del 1239 inviata da Federico II ai cittadini di Jesi, “nobile città della Marca”, definita “la nostra Betlemme”; a tale personaggio era dedicata la stessa piazza della nascita, corredata di targhe, e una statua piuttosto banale all’ingresso del centro storico. In pratica, della presenza di Federico II a Jesi non rimane che il ricordo, essendo il legame tra la città e l’imperatore basato unicamente sulla tradizione storica, su una memoria collettiva condivisa che da secoli riconosce in questo personaggio una delle icone della propria identità culturale. Tanto più intriganti quindi il ruolo di Gennaro Pieralisi e gli obiettivi del progetto culturale ideato dall’imprenditore:

“A Jesi nessuno si ricordava più di Federico II, finché non ho pensato a un museo dedicato a lui. La scelta di realizzare un museo virtuale è stata dettata dalla mancanza di reperti, ma quello che poteva sembrare un punto debole si è rivelato un vantaggio, perché un museo così può essere cambiato e arricchito continuamente, rendendolo sempre nuovo e quindi quasi eterno” (comunicato ANSA.IT del 02 luglio 2017).

Ora, a parte che nessuno jesino si è mai scordato dell’imperatore che tanto lustro ha dato nei secoli alla propria città, negli anni di maggior dibattito in Italia sul rapporto tra i beni culturali e le iniziative private, si tratti di mecenatismi o di imprese culturali, e in un momento di discussione accesa sul valore di musei puramente virtuali, in cui gli oggetti esposti (siano essi reperti storici od opere d’arte) sono assenti nella forma originale ma sono riproposti tramite riproduzioni, il caso del neonato stupor mundi di Jesi non poteva non attirare la nostra attenzione. Figure 2. Palazzo Ghislieri, ingresso all’esposizione museale (foto autore).

Il progetto museale E quindi eccoci a Palazzo Ghislieri, nel luogo presso cui Costanza avrebbe fatto allestire la tenda da parto, al culmine delle feriae, a domandare quattro biglietti per visitare il nuovo nato (fig. 2). All’ingresso una targa ricorda che il museo si basa su un investimento complessivo di € 2.600.000, frutto della collaborazione tra enti pubblici e privati: la Regione Marche partecipa al 4% mentre il Comune di Jesi contribuisce all’affitto della sede museale per 12 anni con € 36.000 annui; allo stesso fine, la Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi mette a disposizione la stessa cifra per lo stesso

116 RACHELE DUBBINI

periodo di tempo. Il 58% dell’investimento si deve però alla Fondazione Marche, fondata da Francesco Merloni e da Gennaro Pieralisi, un ente totalmente privato senza scopo di lucro che “opera esclusivamente nell’interesse dello sviluppo economico e sociale del territorio della regione Marche” promuovendo, strutturando e realizzando “progetti che hanno come obiettivo la valorizzazione economica, culturale ed ambientale del territorio”, valorizzazione che si intende attuare attivando, “attraverso specifiche iniziative culturali, lo sviluppo di opportunità economico-occupazionali”. Per intendersi e rimanendo sul piano delle attività culturali, la fondazione aveva già finanziato realizzazioni cinematografiche di interesse regionale, tra cui “Il giovane favoloso” di Mario Martone. Un’altra percentuale cospicua, il 38%, viene dalla fondazione Federico II Stupor Mundi, creata appositamente da Gennaro Pieralisi per la creazione del museo, sotto il cui nome campeggia l’indicazione “Voluto e realizzato dal Cav. Lav. Ing. Gennaro Pieralisi”.

La concezione che accompagna la fondazione del museo è dunque quella di impresa culturale che possa favorire in generale la valorizzazione del territorio jesino e in particolare l’economia del turismo locale tramite la promozione di una figura iconica del luogo. Lo confermano le parole del sindaco di Jesi, Massimo Bacci: “Il ruolo e il prestigio di una figura come Federico II, capace di attrarre turisti da tutta Europa e non solo, sarà una bellissima carta da giocare”, ma anche gli obiettivi definiti dalla Fondazione Federico II Stupor Mundi, appositamente istituita “al fine di valorizzare l’origine jesina di una delle più affascinanti e celeberrime personalità della storia moderna e realizzare un’istituzione che attragga a Jesi e nelle Marche flussi turistici numerosi e qualificati, in grado di esercitare un positivo impatto economico e occupazionale”.

Coniugando gli interessi delle parti coinvolte, il museo intende dunque confermare il ruolo tecnologico e industriale di Jesi cercando allo stesso tempo di potenziarne l’aspetto culturale a fini essenzialmente produttivi.

A tal fine, la direzione generale dell’impresa è stata assegnata a William Graziosi, amministratore delegato dell’azienda culturale di produzione e servizi per il territorio Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini (nonché segretario generale della fondazione Federico II stupor mundi), ma non si è voluto rinunciare alla qualità scientifica del progetto affidandone la curatela ad Anna Laura Trombetti Budriesi, ordinaria di Storia Medievale all’Università di Bologna supportata dalla collega archeologa Laura Pasquini e dal ricercatore Tommaso Duranti. Salta subito all’occhio però, bisogna dirlo, come al contrario dei ripetuti Cav. Lav. Ing. (la cui reiterazione ossessiva ricorda le personalità della Megaditta fantozziana) la curatrice nientemeno che del progetto scientifico è presentata senza il titolo di professoressa, mancanza che rispecchia quelle che sono ritenute le priorità sociali nel nostro paese. In ogni caso, il gruppo di ricerca ha sviluppato una narrazione basata sugli esiti della storiografia più recente mentre l’allestimento museografico è stato realizzato dalla società Volume S.r.L. di Milano; le ricostruzioni scenografiche e i costumi sono a cura del Laboratorio Scenografico e della Sartoria Teatrale della Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 113-121 117

Chiariti gli obiettivi promozionali e i protagonisti, ci rallegriamo subito per la cifra modica di 6 € di ingresso e l’attenzione volta alle famiglie (esiste un biglietto famiglia per due adulti con due bambini al costo di € 15) e soprattutto alle categorie più deboli, quali minori di 6 anni e disabili, cui è garantito l’accesso gratuito alle sale: nonostante la distribuzione del museo su tre piani, la presenza di ascensore e di scivoli consente di affrontare la visita senza problemi particolari anche a chi ha problemi di deambulazione (il personale consiglia di lasciare i passeggini all’entrata, ma avendo una bimba addormentata abbiamo potuto testare personalmente il percorso dedicato). Nella prospettiva di accogliere un pubblico internazionale, sono previste audioguide in inglese, francese e tedesco al costo simbolico di 1 € a persona e audioguide dedicate ai più piccoli, in cui viene proposta una narrazione dedicata. L’idea in sé è ottima, anche nell’ottica di far sentire protagonisti i bambini (la nostra cinquenne, dimenticato il gelato, era molto fiera della “sua” audioguida) ma dalla prima sala ci rendiamo conto che i contenuti sono troppo semplificati e brevi in relazione alla durata della visita degli accompagnatori adulti.

Anche il libro per bambini scritto da Talita Frezzi con traduzione di Klaus-Wilhelm Gérard e introduzione di Pippo Franco “Chiamatemi Federichino!/Nennt mich Fritzchen!” (edizioni Tecnoprint New, costo 10 €), pur essendo pregevole nell’intento di rendere coinvolgente per i più piccoli la storia dell’imperatore, risulta alquanto banale nell’inserimento di personaggi quali Mago Merlino o – peggio ancora, se si considerano le ragioni per cui Costanza avrebbe deciso di partorire pubblicamente e il conseguente

Figure 3 Sala 1 con la tenda su cui è inscenata la nascita dell’imperatore, attirando l’attenzione dei piccoli visitatori (dal profilo Facebook del museo).

118 RACHELE DUBBINI

valore iconico della tenda reale – del falco imperiale Gaetano, che al posto della cicogna avrebbe consegnato alla regina il fagotto con Federico neonato. Non sarebbe stato meglio spiegare i motivi della tanto famosa tradizione in maniera semplice ma diretta? (fig. 3) Considerando che si tratta dell’unica pubblicazione legata all’esposizione presente in un bookshop piuttosto scarno, privo anche di una qualsivoglia guida del museo, si tratta di un’occasione sprecata. Ci si augura che gli altri servizi didattici e le guide riservate a gruppi e a scuole, cui nelle mattinate invernali sono riservati in esclusiva gli spazi museali, siano, per quanto dedicate a un target specifico di bambini e giovani, di ben altro spessore narrativo e storico.

Per quanto riguarda gli orari di entrata, durante l’inverno (dal 16 settembre al 14 giugno) si può visitare il museo dal giovedì alla domenica solamente dalle 15 alle 19, è prevista una sola apertura la mattina (la domenica dalle 10 alle 13), mentre negli altri giorni e orari l’apertura è riservata a gruppi e scuole esclusivamente su prenotazione. Durante l’estate invece il museo è aperto tutti i giorni, compreso il lunedì, con orari che vanno dalle 10 alle 13 e dalle 15 alle 19 ed è da segnalare l’apertura straordinaria fino alle 22 nei giorni di venerdì, sabato e domenica, pensata in relazione a quella categoria di visitatori locali e lavoratori e a quei turisti che durante il giorno preferiscono dedicarsi ad altre attività.

Il percorso museale Il percorso museale si sviluppa in sedici sale tematiche: 1- La nascita, 2- Gli antenati, 3- Re di Germania, 4- Imperatore, 5- La Sicilia arabo normanna, 6- Lucera, 7- I castelli federiciani, 8- Capua, 9- I papi e la Chiesa, 10- La crociata, 11- La lotta contro i comuni, 12- La falconeria, 13- I saperi, 14- Uomo di potere, uomo di cultura, 15- La moglie, la discendenza, 16- Il mito. Le sale sono disposte su tre piani: la prima sala al piano terra, poi si scende al seminterrato (sale 2-5) per risalire al primo piano (sale 6-12) e ridiscendere al piano terra (sale 13-16), secondo un’articolazione che verosimilmente asseconda le capacità espositive della sede, non essendoci una vera logica alla base di tale divisione, che può Figure 4. L’apparizione di Federico II nella sala 14 (foto risultare anzi dispersiva. Le sale, per autore)) lo più di piccole dimensioni, non possono contenere più di 16 visitatori alla volta: una scelta oculata se si tiene conto che la visita è concepita come un “viaggio immersivo e multisensoriale alla scoperta di Federico II”, basato sulla narrazione delle vicende biografiche dell’imperatore (sale 1-4,

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 113-121 119

9-11 e 15), l’approfondimento di alcuni aspetti essenziali della politica interna e culturale federiciana (sale 6-8 e 12-13) e infine le conclusioni sull’operato del personaggio, esposte da un lato dallo stesso Federico II, evocato dalla ricostruzione dei paramenti imperiali, il qual e risponde a una “intervista impossibile” tracciando un bilancio della sua esistenza (sala 14, fig. 4), dall’altro dai curatori della mostra, che illustrano la fortuna postuma della figura del sovrano tra la storia e il mito (sala 16). L’idea di base è di sviluppare il museo come “una rappresentazione teatrale medievale”, ma il passaggio da temi biografici ad approfondimenti tematici a volte fa perdere il filo.

L’obiettivo di realizzare una visita immersiva e multisensoriale viene raggiunto tramite una divulgazione interattiva e costruita su più livelli, basata sul coinvolgimento emotivo del visitatore: ogni sala è dotata di filmati a fruizione collettiva con altoparlanti ambientali che diffondono musica e testi in lingua italiana (per gli stranieri è prevista l’audioguida) secondo un approccio cinematografico di alto impatto nella presentazione di immagini statiche di elevate dimensioni, affiancate da video con i racconti dei personaggi storici o da rappresentazioni animate tratte da miniature medievali, espediente comunicativo quest’ultimo che dopo qualche sala si rivela in realtà alquanto ripetitivo. In alcuni casi sono previste inoltre proiezioni virtuali su supporti tridimensionali, siano le architetture arabo-normanne (sala 5), il modello ricostruttivo della porta di Capua (sala 8) o il libro in cui scorrono le immagini relative ai saperi della corte federiciana con l’immancabile animazione delle miniature medievali (sala 13). Oltre a tale livello di racconto, pensato per il pubblico più ampio e adatto anche ai bambini di età scolare, è prevista la possibilità di approfondimenti individuali mediante apposite postazioni multimediali provviste di touch-screen in più lingue, mentre la presenza dei più classici pannelli in italiano e in inglese, il cui contenuto poco si distanzia dalla presentazione principale, si rivela un valido supporto per i visitatori con problemi di udito. Mancano invece materiali esplicativi in Braille, tuttavia – ove presenti – è possibile toccare modellini architettonici (sale 4, 6-7, fig. 5) o le ricostruzioni di cavalieri e di macchine da guerra (sale 10-11). Gli ambienti in cui sono proiettati video della durata di diversi minuti sono dotati di Figure 5. Sala 7, modellino architettonico di Castel del Monte sedute, in diverse sale invece la (foto Stefano Bruni, da artribune.com). narrazione si risolve piuttosto velocemente tramite una comunicazione intuitiva che gioca su riferimenti diretti al sapere e alle esperienze dei visitatori, ammiccando anche alle mode del momento (emblematica nella sala 10 la rappresentazione di Gerusalemme quale antica e polverosa Winterfell della serie televisiva di enorme successo Games of Thrones, fig. 6). Il rischio è però quello di non essere abbastanza espliciti, come nella sala 11 in cui il visitatore partecipa emotivamente alle questioni militari prebelliche e quindi alla battaglia dell’esercito federiciano contro i comuni: cadono teste dalle tanto amate miniature

120 RACHELE DUBBINI

medievali ma non si capisce veramente a vantaggio di quale parte si concludono gli scontri; inoltre l’ascolto è disturbato dagli altoparlanti ambientali delle sale vicine, problema momentaneamente mitigato dall’uso di tendaggi doppi tra una stanza e l’altra.

Un’impresa culturale innovativa per lo sviluppo del territorio jesino Se infatti il museo, allestito da poco più di un mese, presenta diverse questioni ancora aperte, bisogna sottolineare come lo stesso sia stato progettato per essere modellato sulle richieste del pubblico, di cui viene monitorato il gradimento tramite una scheda valutativa redatta, oltre che in italiano, in inglese, francese e tedesco: il prodotto viene così testato e implementato sulla base del feedback. Nonostante non sia ancora stato presentato un calendario degli incontri organizzati dal museo, la nuova istituzione è aperta ai suoi pubblici tramite un sito internet in cui si possono trovare le informazioni essenziali sul museo (https://www.federicosecondostupormundi.it, attualmente solo in lingua italiana), e attraverso i principali social (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube e Twitter) in cui si promuovono iniziative culturali all’interno della sede espositiva che vogliono legare maggiormente al territorio il racconto proposto dal percorso, senza trascurare di pubblicizzare la novità del progetto museale e il conseguente successo di visitatori. A proposito del contesto in cui si è deciso di allestire il museo, negli intenti si vorrebbe valorizzare un territorio che in realtà non è praticamente rappresentato nell’esposizione, se si eccettua la prima sala con la nascita di Federico II, in cui viene presentata una Figure 6. La città di Gerusalemme rappresentata secondo il modello di Winterfell (foto autore). carrellata di immagini con gli scorci più suggestivi delle realtà insediative che caratterizzavano la marca di Ancona in età medievale. L’idea di sviluppare il potenziale culturale di Jesi tramite un’esposizione monografica dedicata a una delle sue figure iconiche è non solo interessante ma, in previsione di una crescita economica e sociale della città, unita nella promozione di uno dei suoi simboli, assolutamente lodevole. Non potendo esporre reperti (quei pochi attribuibili con una

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2 (2017) 113-121 121 certa sicurezza alla persona dell’imperatore si trovano nel regno di Germania) né costruzioni (le più spettacolari nel regno di Sicilia) legati alla figura di Federico II, si è scelto di investire in un museo storico, della memoria, puntando tutto su quella tenda allestita in piazza da Costanza che non a caso è l’emblema del museo, e su un immaginario collettivo che, secondo la speranza di imprenditori e amministratori locali, dovrebbe attirare visitatori da tutta Europa. Tuttavia, se si eccettua la suggestione di trovarsi nel luogo della nascita dell’imperatore, in che cosa consiste l’unicità del museo in Europa? Senza una o più sezioni dedicate al contesto territoriale in cui avvenne la famigerata nascita (quello storico e sociale sono delineati nella seconda sala), il museo potrebbe essere allestito ad Aquisgrana come a Lucera, luoghi che oltretutto – rispetto a Jesi – possono vantare materiali e architetture originali legati a Federico II. Il contesto, come è noto, è una fissazione degli archeologi, ma come si può pensare di valorizzare il territorio provinciale e regionale in un museo che a questo contesto, che invece è originale e che già da solo attira visitatori e turisti proprio per la sua unicità, non dedica che una suggestione visiva? Diversi sono gli spunti che si potrebbero approfondire in relazione al contesto storico e territoriale in cui si sviluppano le vicende del neonato imperatore: come si può parlare di Federico II, che dal nonno paterno prese il nome, senza far cenno all’assedio anconetano del Barbarossa? Nel periodo di tensioni col papato e di lotta ai comuni, cosa succedeva nelle Marche? E a Jesi? Com’era Jesi tra XII e XIII secolo?

Unico invece il museo, rispetto al panorama italiano, nei presupposti della sua istituzione, quale impresa culturale nata da una collaborazione tra pubblico e privato (in questo caso sarebbe più corretto dire tra privato e pubblico) per potenziare le opportunità offerte dal territorio mantenendo da un lato un’alta qualità scientifica, dall’altro investendo nelle più moderne forme di comunicazione museale al fine di coinvolgere un pubblico più ampio possibile, sui cui diversi interessi, esigenze e desideri l’esposizione si modella e si implementa. Alcune cose possono essere migliorate, ma molto è già stato fatto. Di grande interesse sociale infine in questo processo è la centralità di una figura iconica attorno alla quale si intende strutturare l’identità culturale locale nella celebrazione di un personaggio storico, così che il nuovo Federico II può essere definito uno stupor mundi tra le proposte museali italiane.

122 Print: ISBN 978-1-78491-763-0 Online: ISSN 2531-8810 EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2, December 2017: 123-129 123 Published Online: xx Dec 2017

UNESCO Experts’ Meeting on the Safeguarding of Syria’s heritage. Berlin, 2-4 June 2016

Reviewed by Nour A. Munawar

University of Amsterdam

Armed conflicts are one of the primary reasons that endanger heritage and the symbolic value of cultures. Both the protection of cultural legacy and the promotion of the plural interests and identities that intersect and construct heritage in times of war should be reinforced with an efficient strategy and effective actions. The unprecedented destruction of re- nowned cultural heritage sites in Syria has not remained unno- ticed. The conten- tious violations that occurred during the hostilities of Syria’s ongoing conflict have drawn the attention of international organisations such as UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICCROM, and ICOM (Fig. 1).

Following the constant media reports and aerial photos of

Figure 1. The souks of Aleppo City. Before and after destruction (The heritage destructions Guardian Newspaper, January 2013). in Syria, UNESCO held an experts’ meeting in Berlin to discuss its safeguarding. The meeting was envisioned as a follow-up to the implementation of the UNESCO action plan for the Emergency Safeguarding of Syria’s Cultural Heritage (UNESCO 2014). The three-day conference (2 - 4 June 2016) aimed to continue the work of the 2014 Paris conference, supported by the three-year EU-funded project on the Emergency Safeguarding of the Syrian Cultural Heritage.

CONTACT N.A. Munawar [email protected]

124 NOUR A. MUNAWAR

UNESCO invited over 230 experts from the Syrian government and the opposition, as well as other Syrian and international academics and professionals. The audience was composed of leading figures in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, preservation, architecture, and urban planning (UNESCO 2016a). Maria Böhmer, the Minister of State of the Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany, opened the conference followed by Irena Bokova, the Director-General of UNESCO. Böhmer emphasized that the international community is “concerned by the suffering of the Syrian people, [and willing] to help them regain their heritage, to shape the future.’ (UNESCO 2016b). Bokova stressed the relevance of conducting “a comprehensive inventory of the damages, identify emergency safeguard measures to save what is possible.” (UNESCO 2016).

The experts’ meeting focused on the damage assessment of the Syrian cultural heritage sites, the development of new approaches and methodologies, and the definition of priority emergency measures for heritage safeguarding. Prior to the main conference, the Young Experts Forum allowed diverse young professionals and early-stage academics to organize a unique hub for the safeguard of the Syrian patrimony. The Young Experts Forum was established and organised by the German Commission of UNESCO in cooperation with the Federal Foreign Office of Germany and the financial support of the Gerda Henkel Foundation. The Young Experts Forum issued the statement Unite for Syr- ian Heritage that was presented during the opening ceremony of the experts’ meeting. It is worth mentioning that the group of young scholars was not as diverse as the one of the main conference, as most of the participants were Syrian graduate and post-graduate students from German universities.

The second day started with the welcome addresses by Maria Böhmer, Francesco Bandarin, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture, Friederike Fless, President of the German Archaeological Institute, and Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prus- sian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Lina Kutiefan, Director of World Heritage Sites and Foreign Cooperation at the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM), gave a short presentation on the assessment of damages to cultural heritage in Syria. Kutiefan’s paper addressed the current actions taken by the DGAM of Syria’s government. Mechtild Rössler, Director of the World Heritage Center, presented UNESCO’s actions to safeguard Syria’s cultural heritage.

Subsequently, four presentations by Syrian professionals and archaeologists revealed the level of destruction in Syria by focusing on the reasons and dynamics of damage. They all looked at how international non-governmental organisations and Syrian national organisations responded to heritage destruction, such as documentation and damage assessment. The founder of the Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology (APSA), Cheikhmous Ali, focused on the unprecedented damages of Aleppo’s old city (Fig. 2). He mentioned over 150 violations to the World Heritage Sites documented by his organisation. The situation is further aggravated, Ali stressed, as some non- governmental organisations in the areas controlled by the rebels stopped protecting heritage due to the lack of funds. Following, the Syrian archaeologist, Shaker Al-Shbib, illustrated the projects put in place by the Smithsonian Institute and the Pennsylvania Cul-

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2, Number 1 (2017) 123-129 125 tural Heritage Center. These institutions fund in-loco training programs with heritage experts, museum curators, and civilians in order to raise awareness for the protection of cultural heritage in the areas controlled by the rebels. The third speech was by Ammar Kannawi, the former curator at the National Museum of Aleppo. He explained the need to establish a database and to document the destruction that occurred to the site of Ebla and the mosaic museum in Maarrat al-Nu’man in Northern Syria (Fig. 3). This series of professionals’ presentations ended with the Syrian archaeologist, Houmam Saad, who presented the collaborative project with ICONEM to create 3D documentation of the World Heritage Site of Palmyra.

Figure 2. The Great Umayyad Mosque - Lens of Aleppo Alshapa - Sep. 2013 During the remaining part of the day the participants split into thematic roundtables that would inform them on the state of heritage conservation-built, movable, and intangible, the local communities, the actions carried by UNESCO, and the (inter)national responses. The four thematic groups were: (1) Local Communities, (2) Documentation, Ar- chives: Damage Assessment, Technology and Innovation, (3) Capacity Building Activi- ties and Future Needs and (4) preparing Future Safeguarding Plans for cities, archaeological sites, and museums. Each group had one moderator and one rapporteur. The participants could join any of the thematic groups since each session was simultaneously translated in English, Arabic, German, and French. Most participants showed interest in the fourth session on the future safeguarding and reconstruction plans. During this meeting, the discussion became particularly lively as Cheikhmous Ali suggested that the UNESCO capacity building training should target all parts of the conflict, not limiting its actions to the staff members of the DGAM. Nada Al Hassan interrupted the discussion, UNESCO’s Chief of Arab States Unit, concluding that UNESCO could collaborate only with the member states that signed The Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultur-

126 NOUR A. MUNAWAR

al Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of 1954. During the discussion, Robert Żu- kowski and Bartosz Markowskithe, the two Polish conservators who had visited Palmyra in April 2014 after the withdrawal of ISIS, described the disastrous situation at the site. During the session, the participants stressed on the significance of preparing and implementing future safeguarding plans, in addition to monitoring such plans.

Figure 3. Violations to the site of Ebla - Northern Syria, 23-04-2013. The Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology (ASPA), April. 2013

Simultaneously, the other groups were discussing the initiatives aimed to document the damages to Syrian heritage. One of the key challenges that the authorities responsible for the Syrian heritage face, the discussion unveiled, is that not all of the historical buildings belong to the DGAM. Some registered and non-registered buildings belong to the Awqaf (the ministry in-charge of religious endowments), such as mosques and churches (Fig. 4). The rapporteurs of each session presented the results of the discussions on the last day.

Group A, the group focusing on “Local Communities”, asserted the significance of raising the awareness among locals and including them in the safeguarding processes. In particular, finding ways for the social healing strategies in the post-war period is seen as an essential element of the recovery plan. One of the recommendations of the group is to establish a cultural heritage institute for Syrians in the host neighbouring countries to provide locals with training about tangible and intangible heritage. The group also recommended creating a working network of concerned, non-governmental and civil society organisations related to cultural heritage issues for people inside and outside Syria. Group A stressed the importance of establishing an inclusive participatory approach of

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2, Number 1 (2017) 123-129 127 locals in the process of protecting heritage in a way that would respect the cultural diversity and the local values.

Figure 4. Protecting the façade of the National Museum of Aleppo city. The Association for the Protec- tion of Syrian Archaeology (ASPA), 2013. Group B “Documentation, Archives: Damage Assessment, Technology and Innova- tion”, recommended continuing the improvement of inventories on the national level and collaborating with UNESCO to coordinate and publically share the inventories on the UNESCO’s Observatory of Syrian Cultural Heritage. The group focused on the importance of including the different local administrations (such as Awqaf ministry) and populations in the documentation and damage assessment. The role of ICOM in updat- ing the Red List of Syrian Cultural Objects at Risk was explicitly stated, in addition to the importance of collaboration with INTERPOL, DGAM, UNESCO and other national bodies in the neighbouring countries of Syria.

Group C “Capacity Building Activities and Future Needs” recommended establishing a committee by UNESCO and Syrian experts to coordinate all actions, efforts and initiatives related to Syrian heritage. The group hypothesized the creation of a nonpartisan platform for capacity building and information sharing; this topic had been intensely de- bated throughout the conference. The multi-disciplinarity and the inclusion of different professionals encouraged the group to suggest the finding of common ground in order to cooperate and safeguard Syria’s past. The Capacity Building group advised creating a network between the Syrian universities in a way that could lead to the replication of training activities.

Group D “Preparing Future Safeguarding Plans” considered deploying cultural heritage for the reconciliation of Syrians in the post-conflict period. In post-war recovery, the

128 NOUR A. MUNAWAR

Syrians are the major stakeholders and actors. The group pointed out the need to think timelessly and with priorities (cities vs. archaeological sites) to avoid any chaos in the post-conflict phase. Furthermore, the necessity of cultural heritage inclusion in the recovery plans as a vital component of Syria’s rebuilding should be advocated for at the international level. The participants to this group insisted on supporting Syria’s institutions (DGAM, universities, etc.), learning from previous international post-conflict experiences such as Lebanon, and considering refugees and displaced peoples as crucial actors in the definition of Syria’s post-recovery plans. The group proposed the creation of a coor- dinating system at the international, national, and local levels. The experts specified the methodology through which the future safeguarding plans can be implemented (short, mid, and long-term plans), and to develop plans according to current accessibility (fully accessible, partial accessible by the civil society, and under-fire). The action points proposed by group D include: (1) UNESCO needs to coordinate with emergency relief and key humanitarian actors and other NGOs on ground; (2) define who are the stakeholders and establish a participatory approach to include NGOs, locals, scholars, universities, and students inside Syria and in diaspora in the planning process; (3) identify the no-go zones in historical settings (i.e. World Heritage Sites boundaries); (4) establish guidelines and train people who will access sites, and deal with security issues; and finally (5) advocate for cultural heritage among the locals and displaced peoples for the social and psy- chological healing.

A plenary session concluded the three-day conference. The Director of UNESCO Her- itage Division and World Heritage Center Mechtild Rössler moderated the conversation among six speakers: Amra Hadžimuhamedović, University of Sarajevo, Margarete van Ess, German Archaeological Institute in Berlin, Lina Kutiefan, DGAM, Jacques Seigne, Director of the Scientific Research National Center (CNRS), Amr Al-Azm, Shawnee State University in Ohio, and Markus Hilgert, Director of the Ancient Near East Muse- um at the Pergamum Museum in Berlin (Fig. 5). Discussing the plans to safeguard Syr- ia’s heritage, the speakers asserted the importance of learning from previous post-war reconstruction such as Bosnia and Herzegovina and making sure that future rebuilding will be an inclusive process of all the stakeholders.

Final Thoughts Overall, the conference brought together numerous Syrian heritage experts and academics from all over the world, in timely manner, allowing them to openly discuss future plans. The establishment of the Young Experts Forum was an important development in the working mechanism of the UNESCO, as the United Nations agency responsible of cultural heritage. In the future, participants’ selection might aim at guaranteeing the presence of a more diversified group, as the inclusion of the young generations can be the first stone in (re)building the future of Syria. The UNESCO conference emphasised the need to unify, discuss, share and coordinate all efforts and initiatives to safeguard and preserve cultural heritage in Syria and beyond.

EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 2, Number 1 (2017) 123-129 129

Figure 5. The plenary session that concluded the conference - by the author - 4 June 2016. Over the past few years, UNESCO and its partners have been working on several levels to promote the protection of cultural heritage in conflict zones, in particular in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Mali and Libya. After the “liberation” of Aleppo at the very end of 2016, UNESCO conducted a first emergency assessment of the damages of the old city of Aleppo. Later on, UNESCO hosted the First International Coordination Meeting for the recovery of Aleppo’s heritage in Lebanon in March 2017 to set up the actions plans for restoring the old city of Aleppo. However, the UNESCO efforts are limited to the international law which prohibits the United Nations specialized agency in heritage from collaborating with non-state actors. In other words, UNESCO could not provide capacity building training for entities that did not sign The Hague convention of 1954. This has showed how cultural heritage cannot be fully protected in the framework of the UNESCO work mechanisms. In my view, there has to be a parallel system that would initiate and fund projects to protect, conserve and rebuild heritage with no limitations, in a way that would neutralize cultural heritage and deploy it for post-war recovery plans in effective way.

References

UNESCO 2014. Rallying the International Community to Safeguard Syria’s Cultural Heritage. Accessed on 05-09-2017. http://en.unesco.org/news/rallying-international-community- safeguard-syria%E2%80%99s-cultural-heritage UNESCO 2016a. Syrian and international experts agree on emergency measures to safeguard Syria’s heritage. Accessed on 30-03-2017. http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1505 UNESCO 2016b. Director General opens Berlin expert meeting on the safeguarding of Syria's heritage. Accessed on 30-03-2017. http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1503/