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Syrian Conflict Imperils Historical Treasures

 

By PATRICIA COHEN

 

Published: August 15, 2012

 

"Preservationists and archaeologists are warning that fighting in Syria’s commercial capital, Aleppo — considered the world’s oldest continuously inhabited human settlement — threatens to damage irreparably the stunning architectural and cultural legacy left by 5,000 years of civilizations.

 

Already the massive iron doors to the city’s immense medieval Citadel have been blown up in a missile attack, said Bonnie Burnham, president of the World Monuments Fund, an organization that works to preserve cultural heritage sites.

 

The fund has collaborated for more than a decade with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, the Syrian government’s Cultural Ministry and German archaeologists in excavating and restoring the site.

 

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have been shelling the city, and in recent days his army has taken up positions inside the Citadel, trading fire with insurgents through the castle’s arrow loops, according to news reports. Built on a massive outcropping of rock, the easily defended Citadel has been an important strategic military point for millenniums and is once again serving that function.

 

Among the significant archaeological sites endangered is the Temple of the Storm God, which dates from the third to the second millennium B.C. and which Ms. Burnham identified as one of the oldest structures in the world. Never opened to the public, the recently discovered temple and its huge carved reliefs are protected only by sandbags and a flimsy corrugated tin roof, she said."

 

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3 September 2012

 

Syrian Obsidian Discovery Opens New Chapter in Middle Eastern Studies

 

An archaeologist from the University of Sheffield has revealed the origin and trading routes of razor-sharp stone tools 4,200 years ago in Syria.

 

"Ancient sites and cultural heritage are under threat in Syria due to the current conflict. An interdisciplinary research team hopes this new discovery, which has major implications for understanding the world’s first empire, will help to highlight the importance of protecting Syria’s heritage.

 

Obsidian, naturally occurring volcanic glass, is smooth, hard, and far sharper than a surgical scalpel when fractured, making it a highly desired raw material for crafting stone tools for most of human history. In fact, obsidian tools continued to be used throughout the ancient Middle East for millennia beyond the introduction of metals, and obsidian blades are still used today as scalpels in specialised medical procedures.

 

In an interdisciplinary collaboration, researchers from social and earth sciences studied obsidian tools excavated from the archaeological site of Tell Mozan, located in Syria near the borders with Turkey and Iraq. Using novel methods and technologies, the team successfully uncovered the hitherto unknown origins and movements of the coveted raw material during the Bronze Age, more than four millennia ago.

 

Most of the obsidian at Tell Mozan (and surrounding archaeological sites) originated from volcanoes 200km away in what is now eastern Turkey, as expected from models of ancient trade developed by archaeologists over the last five decades. However, the team discovered a set of exotic obsidian artefacts originating from a volcano in central Turkey, three times farther away. Just as important as their distant origin is where the artefacts were found: a royal palace courtyard. The artefacts were left there during the height of the world’s first empire, the Akkadian Empire, which invaded Syria in the Bronze Age. The find has exciting implications for understanding links between resources and empires in the Middle East."

 

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Syria’s Looted Past: How Ancient Artifacts Are Being Traded for Guns

 

The ongoing civil war in Syria, a land brimming with history, has led to a dangerous, tragic surge in the looting and smuggling of Syrian antiquities

 

By Aryn Baker / Majdal Anjar, Lebanon | @arynebaker | September 12, 2012

 

"Abu Khaled knows the worth of things. As a small-time smuggler living along the porous border between Syria and Lebanon, he has dabbled in antiquities as much as the cigarettes, stolen goods and weapons that make up the bulk of his trade. So when a smuggler from Syria brought him a small, alabaster statue of a seated man a few weeks ago, he figured that the carving, most likely looted from one of Syria’s two dozen heritage museums or one of its hundreds of archaeological sites, could be worth a couple thousand dollars in Lebanon’s antiquities black market. So he called his contacts in Beirut. But instead of asking for cash, he asked for something even more valuable: weapons."

 

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The Assyrian City of Tushhan: A Race Against Time

 

Posted by Past Horizons on Saturday, October 13, 2012

 

"The ancient mound at Ziyaret Tepe in Diyarbakir province of southeastern Turkey, comprises two distinct areas: a high citadel and an extensive lower town. Since 1997 an international team of archaeologists have been excavating a site that was occupied nearly continuously for 2400 years from the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000 BCE).

 

Over most of this time Ziyaret Tepe was a modest village situated on the fertile Tigris floodplain. However, Professor Timothy Matney of the University of Akron, (the project director) in collaboration with Professor McGinnis of the University of Cambridge discovered that during the Middle Iron Age (c. 882 – 610BCE) Ziyaret Tepe acted as an important urban centre situated on the northern periphery of the Assyrian Empire and was known as the city of Tushhan.

 

Mapping a city

 

The citadel mound rises over 22 metres above the surrounding modern agricultural fields and covers an area of some 3 hectares. The lower town is larger and covers an area of 29 hectares surrounded by a fortification wall.

 

The site’s location on the Tigris river means that it is now threatened with destruction by the rising flood-waters of the Ilisu dam and the team has been working hard to save as much of this heritage before it disappears."

 

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Why One Researcher is Documenting the Damage to Syria’s Archaeological Sites

 

BY DANIEL ESTRIN ⋅ DECEMBER 11, 2012

 

"Emma Cunliffe sits in a tiny graduate student’s office on the medieval campus of the University of Durham. But her mind is thousands of miles east, in Syria.

 

Every day she goes online, sometimes for a few hours, to monitor the Facebook feeds of local Syrian groups for word about damaged sites. She’ll scroll past horrific photos of dead children till she comes across mention of a new archaeological site that was shelled or plundered. She says it’s incredible just how much you can find out from these posts.

 

“It’s a new world online now,” she says. “The prevalence of social networking sites like Facebook, ease of access to YouTube, and the way that most people’s mobile phones can take video, means that, all those people who are desperate to share information have a real easy way to upload it and make it accessible.”"

 

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18 December 2012

 

Research Finds Crisis in Syria has Mesopotamian Precedent

 

Dr Ellery Frahm

 

"Research carried out at the University of Sheffield has revealed intriguing parallels between modern day and Bronze-Age Syria as the Mesopotamian region underwent urban decline, government collapse, and drought.

 

Dr Ellery Frahm from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Archaeology made the discoveries by studying stone tools of obsidian, razor-sharp volcanic glass, crafted in the region about 4,200 years ago.

 

Dr Frahm used artefacts unearthed from the archaeological site of Tell Mozan, known as Urkesh in antiquity, to trace what happened to trade and social networks when Bronze-Age Syrian cities were abandoned in the wake of a regional government collapse and increasing drought due to climate shifts.

 

“Unfortunately,” explained Dr Frahm, “the situation four thousand years ago has striking similarities to today. Much like the fall of the Akkadian Empire, a governmental collapse is a real possibility in Syria after nearly two years of fighting. Some archaeologists and historians contend that the Akkadian Empire was brought down by militarism and that violence ended its central economic role in the region.

 

“Additionally, farming in north-eastern Syria today relies principally on rainfall rather than irrigation, just as in the Bronze Age, and climate change has already stressed farming there. But it isn't just climate change that is the problem. Farming, rather than herding, has been encouraged at unsustainable levels by the state through land-use policies, and as occurred during urbanisation four millennia ago, populations have dramatically increased in the area.”

 

The diverse origins of the obsidian tools, which date from the rise of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia to several centuries after its fall, revealed how social networks and trading routes evolved during this period.

 

Dr Frahm explained the motivation behind the research: “This time of transition in Mesopotamia has received great attention for the concurrence of aridification, de-urbanisation, and the decline of the Akkadian Empire about 4,200 years ago. However, our current understanding of this ‘crisis’ has been almost exclusively shaped by ceramic styles, estimated sizes of archaeological sites, and evidence of changing farming practices. Trade and the associated social networks have been largely neglected in prior studies about this time, and we decided obsidian was an ideal way to investigate them.”"

 

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Syrian Violence Threatens Ancient Treasures

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN | Wed Feb 20, 2013 11:54am EST

(Reuters) - "Syrian museums have locked away thousands of ancient treasures to protect them from looting and violence but one of humanity's greatest cultural heritages remains in grave peril, the archaeologist charged with their protection said.

Aleppo's medieval covered market has already been gutted by fires which also ripped through the city's Umayyad mosque. Illegal excavations have threatened tombs in the desert town of Palmyra and the Bronze Age settlement of Ebla, and Interpol is hunting a 2,700-year-old statue taken from the city of Hama."

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Site of Earliest Known Urban Warfare Threatened by Syrian War

June 24, 2013

"An ancient city in Syria, which was the site of the earliest known case of urban warfare, now finds itself threatened by the effects of a modern-day war.

Around 5,500 years ago, before writing was even invented, the people of an ancient city called Hamoukar, located in modern-day Syria, were subjected to the horrors of urban warfare, the earliest case of this style of combat that scholars know about.

They were assaulted by a force armed with slingshots and clay balls. The attackers, possibly from a city named Uruk and perhaps motivated by Hamoukar's access to copper, succeeded in taking the city, destroying part of it through fire. [10 Ways Combat Has Changed Throughout History]

"The attack must have been swift and intense. Buildings collapsed, burning out of control, burying everything in them under vast piles of rubble," Clemens Reichel, one of the team leaders of the University of Chicago Oriental Institute's Hamoukar Expedition, said in a 2007 University of Chicago news story."

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Widespread Damage to Syria's Ruins Seen from Space

By Megan Gannon, News Editor | January 17, 2014 11:48am ET

"Archaeologist Jesse Casana couldn't have foreseen the violence that would break out in Syria less than a year after he left his dig site in summer 2010.

"No one knew whether it was going to blow over quickly," Casana said. "We were all just waiting to see what happened. Clearly, it started getting worse."

Casana, a professor at the University of Arkansas, was director of an expedition at Tell Qarqur, an artificial mound in northwest Syria built up through 10,000 years' worth of debris left by human occupation. He had to cancel his 2011 field season, and because of the ongoing war in Syria, he hasn't returned since. Violence has besieged the Christian village of Gassanieh, where his team stayed, and he has barely been able to contact his friends and colleagues in the country, let alone get a handle on how Tell Qarqur is faring."

 

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Ancient 'Ritual Wand' Etched with Human Faces Discovered in Syria

By Tia Ghose, Staff Writer | March 11, 2014 12:33pm ET

"Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient staff carved with two realistic human faces in southern Syria.

The roughly 9,000-year-old artifact was discovered near a graveyard where about 30 people were buried without their heads — which were found in a nearby living space.

"The find is very unusual. It's unique," said study co-author Frank Braemer, an archaeologist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France."

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Oldest Ever Schistosomiasis Egg Found May Be First Proof of Early Human Technology Exacerbating Disease Burden

Date:
June 19, 2014
Source:The Lancet

Summary: "The discovery of a schistosomiasis parasite egg in a 6200-year-old grave at a prehistoric town by the Euphrates river in Syria may be the first evidence that agricultural irrigation systems in the Middle East contributed to disease burden, according to new research. Schistosomiasis is a disease caused by several species of flatworm parasites that live in the blood vessels of the bladder and intestines."

"The discovery of a schistosomiasis parasite egg in a 6200-year-old grave at a prehistoric town by the Euphrates river in Syria may be the first evidence that agricultural irrigation systems in the Middle East contributed to disease burden, according to new Correspondence published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Schistosomiasis is a disease caused by several species of flatworm parasites that live in the blood vessels of the bladder and intestines. Infection can result in anemia, kidney failure, and bladder cancer. This research shows it may have been spread by the introduction of crop irrigation in ancient Mesopotamia, the region along the Tigris-Euphrates river system that covers parts of modern-day Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Syria, and Turkey."

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also here (Full Text):

Prehistoric Schistosomiasis Parasite Found in the Middle East

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 18-Sep-2014

 

New high-resolution satellite image analysis: 5 of 6 Syrian World Heritage sites 'exhibit significant damage'

 

SEPTEMBER 18 —"In war-torn Syria, five of six World Heritage sites now "exhibit significant damage" and some structures have been "reduced to rubble," according to new high-resolution satellite image analysis by the nonprofit, nonpartisan American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
 
The AAAS analysis, offering the first comprehensive look at the extent of damage to Syria's priceless cultural heritage sites, was completed in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology's Penn Cultural Heritage Center (PennCHC) and the Smithsonian Institution, and in cooperation with the Syrian Heritage Task Force. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the analysis provides authoritative confirmation of previous on-the-ground reports of damage to individual sites.
 
"Only one of Syria's six World Heritage sites—the Ancient City of Damascus—appears to remain undamaged in satellite imagery since the onset of civil war in 2011," said Susan Wolfinbarger, director of the Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project at AAAS. Historic structures at the other five sites, including ancient mosques, schools, and civilian as well as government buildings, have all been damaged and, in some cases, destroyed, AAAS reported. Wolfinbarger added, however, that "the Damascus site also could have damage not visible in satellite images."
 
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Syrian Forces Battle IS Near Ancient Ruins of Palmyra
 
15 May 2015 Middle East
 
"Syrian government forces are trying to drive back Islamic State (IS) from the ancient ruins and famous World Heritage Site of Palmyra in the Syrian desert.
 
Syrian warplanes and troops are targeting militant positions on the city's eastern edge, activists say.
 
The UN's top cultural official said the IS advance was "very alarming".
 
Islamic State has ransacked and demolished several ancient sites in Iraq. Palmrya has already suffered damage during the Syrian civil war."

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Saving an Ancient 'Lost' City in War-torn Syria
 
A small band of Syrian villagers fight poverty, war, and the elements to protect an ancient site.
 
By Andrew Lawler, National Geographic  
 
PUBLISHED JUNE 04, 2015
 
"Amid the death, despair, and destruction that mark today’s Syria, there's little good news for archaeologists and others who fear for the country’s remarkable cultural heritage. But in a windswept corner of the country, a dedicated group of local people is quietly protecting an important archaeological site, often at their own expense."

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Here Are the Ancient Sites ISIS Has Damaged and Destroyed
 
Shocking destruction in the Syrian city of Palmyra is part of the militant group's ongoing campaign against archaeology.
 
By Andrew Curry, National Geographic 
 
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 01, 2015
 
"Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria continue their war on the region’s cultural heritage, attacking archaeological sites with bulldozers and explosives.
 
The so-called Islamic State (ISIS) released a video that shocked the world last month by showing the fiery destruction of the Temple of Baalshamin, one of the best-preserved ruins at the Syrian site of Palmyra. Last weekend, explosions were reported at another Palmyra temple, dedicated to the ancient god Baal; a United Nation agency says satellite images show that larger temple has largely been destroyed."

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Islamic State: Militants Blow Up Ancient Arch of Triumph in Palmyra, Antiquities Chief Says
 
Updated 5 Oct 2015, 2:36pm
 
"Militants from the Islamic State group (IS) have blown up the Arch of Triumph, a major monument in the 2,000-year-old Roman city of Palmyra, Syria's antiquities chief says.
 
Maamoun Abdulkarim said sources in Palmyra had confirmed that the Arch of Triumph, a jewel in the exquisite collection of ruins in the oasis city, had been blown up.
 
"We have received news from the site that the Arch of Triumph was destroyed yesterday. IS bobby-trapped it several weeks ago," he said.
 
Situated at the entrance of the ancient ruins' historic colonnaded street, it was an "icon of Palmyra", Mr Abdulkarim said, warning that IS fighters have already laid explosives in other monuments."

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NOV 2, 2015 @ 05:26 PM 

 

Exquisite Late Antique Floor Mosaic Discovered In Roman Doliche On Syrian Border

 

"The tiny ancient city known as Doliche to the Romans was famous for its popularizing of the “mystery” god Jupiter Dolichenus.  Not really related to the head of the Roman pantheon, this god was exotic and the central figure in a mystery cult that proliferated in the 2nd-3rd centuries AD. And at Doliche, archaeologists have found a massive temple to him, along with rock graves, stone quarries, and — just announced today — an impressively detailed mosaic MOS +5.56% floor from the late Antique period."

 


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REVIVAL
 
الإحياء
 
Technological Support for Syrian Heritage
 
الدعم التكنولوجي للتراث السوري
 
"Syrian culture is our common heritage. We are losing it. What can we do to preserve this culture for future generations? Documentation can't wait! Iconem sends specialists to support Syrian archaeologists and architects by providing them with advanced techniques to document their heritage. We organise missions in the field using the latest technology in order to create a digital database of Syrian monuments and a national team able to provide data for it. Because saving the knowledge of this history is our common duty."

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Spring 2016, Cover Stories, Daily News
 
French Company Documents Destruction of Archaeological Sites in Syria
 
Wed, May 04, 2016

"Just a few days after the liberation of Palmyra, Iconem – a French company specializing in the 3D digitization of unique and vulnerable archaeological sites – visited the devastated ancient city to carry out the first 3D survey of the damage. 

 

As a long-term partner of the DGAM (Direction Générale des Antiquités et des Musées – the Syrian Directo-rate-General of Antiquities and Museums), the company accompanied the first group of Syrian scientists to arrive on the site on April 5, 2016."

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Assyrians Were More 'Homely' Than We Thought

 

10/20/2016 10:00:00 PM

 


"The Assyrian Empire (ca. 2000 to 609 BC) was  highly successful. At its height, it stretched from Turkey to Egypt and the Persian Gulf. Historians have wondered for a long time how the Assyrians were able to maintain power over such a huge region."

 


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The Legacy of Ancient Palmyra

Presented by the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

"In this 21st century, war in Syria has irrevocably changed the ancient caravan city of Palmyra, famed as a meeting place of civilizations since its apogee in the mid-2nd to 3rd century CE. The Romans and Parthians knew Palmyra as a wealthy oasis metropolis, a center of culture and trade on the edge of their empires. Stretching some three kilometers across the Tadmurean desert, the ruins of Palmyra, like all ruins, stand as bearers of meaning marking their place in history. For centuries, traveling artists and explorers have documented the site in former states of preservation. Created as a tribute to Palmyra, this online exhibition captures the site as it was photographed for the first time by Louis Vignes in 1864 and illustrated in the 18th century by the architect Louis-François Cassas. Their works contribute to Palmyra's legacy, one that goes far beyond the stones of its once great buildings."

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Winter 2018, Cover Stories, Daily News
 
Discovery of a 4,000-Year-Old Military Network in Northern Syria
 
Thu, Dec 21, 2017
 
"The discovery of more than a thousand sites in Syria has revised our understanding of the settlement of the steppes during all periods in the history of the Near East. Recently, analysis of aerial and satellite images has enabled the discovery of a vast structured surveillance and communication network dating from the Middle Bronze Age (2nd millennium BCE). This research, led by researchers from the Archéorient laboratory (Environnements et sociétés de l'Orient ancien – CNRS/Université Lumière Lyon 2) and the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums of Syria, was published in the journal Paléorient on December 19, 2017*."

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Ancient Greek Mosaic Floor Discovered in War-Torn Syria While Digging for Mines
 
TornosNews.gr 17.01.2018 | 14:39
 
"Evidence of ancient Greek culture in the war-torn Middle Eastern country of Syria has recently been discovered.Amid the bloody conflict, three Byzantine mosaic panels have been unearthed inside an archaeological site during a Syrian army mine-clearance operation in the eastern countryside of Hama in, according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA)."

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