Petition: Protection for Syria's Cultural Heritage

The British Association for Near Eastern Archaeology (BANEA) has launched a petition seeking protection for Syria's cultural heritage.

We hope you can sign it, support it and promote it through any contacts or avenues available to you.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Save_Syrias_Cultural_Heritage_1/?fPWGUcb&pv=1

The pdf of 'Damage to the Soul: Syria’s Cultural Heritage in Conflict' can be downloaded here: http://ow.ly/bNSk1

TEXT of the petition:
Save Syria’s Cultural Heritage The worsening situation in Syria places thousands of archaeological sites in immediate danger of current and future looting. A full discussion of the sites affected can be found here: Cunliffe, Emma. 2012, Damage to the Soul: Syria’s Cultural Heritage in Conflict. 16 May 2012. Global Heritage Fund. The British Associate of Near Eastern Archaeology (BANEA) and other interested parties call on the British Government, UNESCO and the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) to protest to all parties to the conflict and petition for:
1. The removal of armed encampments, troops and weaponry from archaeological sites,
2. protection of archaeological sites and museums from looting,
3. recovery of stolen artefacts and the prosecution of the thieves and those who benefit from the thefts.

Updates and information can be found at www.banea.org

Jan Picton
Secretary, Friends of the Petrie Museum. www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk
Teaching Fellow, Institute of Archaeology, UCL. j.picton@ucl.ac.uk
Deputy Director, Gurob Harem Palace Project, www.gurob.org.uk

Flight 20120522: Now online

We have been busy cataloguing the second of our two flights in Jordan last month, and you can now access the photographs on our Flickr archive.

David Kennedy, Mat Dalton and Don Boyer flew five hours in a Eurocopter to capture some 1700 images of archaeological features and the landscape. Here is a selection.

Qattafi Kite 34. Note how the guiding walls narrow along the natural curves of the landscape, and the head is hidden behind a ridge.
APAAME_20120522_MND-0005. Photographer: Mat Dalton.

Looted Cairns. The heads of Safawi Pendants 64 and 65 have both been hollowed out by illicit excavation.
APAAME_20120522_DLK-0312. Photographer: David Kennedy.

Safawi Wheel 88 intercepting the tail of Safawi Kite 7. APAAME_20120522_DDB-0242. Photograph: Don Boyer.

Qasr Aseikhim. APAAME_20120522_DLK-0653. Photograph: David Kennedy

Azraq Kite 46, overlayed by modern agriculture. APAAME_20120522_DDB-0667. Photographer: Don Boyer

Safawi Pendant 67 with a well built and in tact head. APAAME_20120522_DLK-0308. Photographer: David Kennedy.

Flight 20120520: Now online

Our first flight for 2012 is now uploaded to our flickr archive. You can browse the images here.

This flight focused on the stone built structures known as Kites located in the basalt desert of Jordan, but also captured other structures known as Wheels and Pendants. In particular, we were interested in the landscape and other structures surrounding the Kites, and how these features interact.

Here are some highlights. Please click on the images to enlarge (you will be sent to the image on our flickr site).


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Descending the Zoar Ascent

Haim Ben-David at the start of the hike.
Photographer: David Kennedy. Click to enlarge.

Thursday at 4 am we left Amman on a 2.5 hour drive to the point on the northern rim of the Wadi el-Hasa. Our party of five was led by Prof. Haim Ben–David who has hiked up and down some of the more rugged parts of the escarpment overlooking the Dead Sea and Wadi Araba. Several of these tracks follow or intersect some of the more spectacular Roman roads in the Near East. The track that starts just west of Mazar is a mixture of bull-dozed track, Roman road and footpath. In places there are traces of efforts to plough up a few of the flatter bits of ground. Most of the route is steep and rugged.

The direct distance is 8 km; the actual distance zig-zagging is probably twice that. Equally important is that the hike is largely over boulder-strewn ground in which it is usually impossible to stride out – instead the hiker has to be eyes-down and carefully picking footfalls. And it is steep – a vertical drop between start and the town of Safi is about 1.3 km.

A stretch of road with parallel steps.
Photographer: David Kennedy.
Click to enlarge.

Setting off at 06.30 the start was easy and cool; by 08.15 when we stopped to breakfast in a shady place it was hot. An hour more and it was VERY hot and rising. A lot of water was drunk and I needed three coats of factor 30+ sunscreen.

Haim is a skilled guide on the track and with impressive – almost incredible energy. I was impressed to hear he had once walked UP the Ascent – then down the adjacent wadi the next day. By the time we were half way down and at 200 m asl I was incredulous at the thought of walking up this route. Walking down was demanding on the calves; walking up would be a challenge to the lungs.


The Roman road is quite clear in places. The edges are usually a double thickness of roughly square boulders about 3 m apart. In places the path between is divided up by widely-spaced steps. On sharp bends there are supporting walls. We managed to walk along quite lengthy parts of the Roman road but probably the best section is near the end where the current track is some distance away. Instead we had to view the road zig-zagging up a distant slope.

The unreachable but tempting zig-zag of the Roman road near Safi.
Photographer: David Kennedy. Click to enlarge.

We finally reached Safi (-300 m bsl) at 15.30. Not without tears and pain – the undersigned became jelly-legged soon after midday and found walking, much less picking a path between, on and down boulders without losing balance, ‘challenging’. Shade was almost non-existent but the temptation to sit down had to be resisted. Fortunately Haim, Yeshu and Ezer were fitter and kept me going to where the guide had driven round and was ready to meet us. A day to remember. I cannot imagine I would ever do that walk again but I would certainly like to tackle it from the bottom to walk the bit of Roman road we saw but could not reach.

Our track ahead and soon to pass a fortlet on a plateau.
Photographer: David Kennedy. Click to enlarge.

As Haim points out, the engineering of the road implies a government agency rather than any local authority. Yet there are no milestones on the road, no graffiti by exhausted traveller; there is an apparent fortlet and there are at least three open-air mosques. Pottery sherds crop up regularly along the road and they are abundant at a few places.

We had already photographed the fortlet from the air thanks to co-ordinates from Haim. Now we can trace the route more accurately from our GPS track and compare the landscape on the 1953 vertical aerial photos. We can return and photograph it on a future flight. More important, there is scope and a great need for some energetic archaeologist to study the road in detail – especially as parts are being destroyed.

DLK

The Eurocopter: View from inside

The lens of Don Boyer captures David Kennedy and Mat Dalton at work over the landscape of Jordan on Flight 20120520.

Publications: Pioneers above Jordan

David L. Kennedy 2012 'Pioneers above Jordan: revealing a prehistoric landscape', Antiquity 86: 474-491.

Percy Maitland (centre) in Iraq c.1925 (Maitland Family Collection).

Aerial photography is so fundamental an instrument of modern archaeology that we often take it for granted. But its methods are surprisingly specific and its most important experimental theatre was probably the territory of the Levant—and especially the rocky terrain of Jordan. The author, a prominent aerial archaeologist of our own day, takes time off to review the achievements of the pioneers, serving officers who established routes over the desert to deliver mail between Egypt and Iraq. The fabulous ancient landscape they discovered could only be appreciated through the lowlevel window provided by these slow-moving rickety machines and their intrepid pilots. In these days of jet travel, the precious basalt landscape is in danger of slipping off the agenda again—both for researchers and conservers.

Full text: Antiquity.co.uk

Flight 20120522 Taster- Pendant and Wheel

APAAME_20120522_DLK-0095. Photographer: David L. Kennedy. Click to enlarge.

Fantastic example of a Bullseye Pendant, with a tail constructed of small cairns, and a Wheel, with spokes radiating from a central 'hub'.