On October 15th, The Graduate Center at the City University of New York hosted Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis as she presented her lecture, “ Destruction and Documentation: Saving Syria’s Cultural Heritage.” The talk was co-sponsored by the CUNY Digital Humanities Initiative, Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center and the M.A. program in Liberal Studies. Macaulay-Lewis is an archeologist, educator, author and director of the Manar al-Athar photography database, which provides high quality, open access images of archeological sites across the Middle East.
This talk examined the recent conflict in Syria from an archeological perspective. This is a region that has been traditionally overlooked by archeologists, who prefer to excavate regions with biblical ties, such as Iraq. For this reason, Syria still has a large number of beautiful ancient sites and unexcavated areas, which are quickly disappearing due to looting and gunfire. Macaulay-Lewis and her colleagues are now attempting to remotely assess the damage, relying on satellite imagery and videos being provided by locals.
She began the talk by stressing the importance of gathering accurate information, providing examples of misinformation reported by mainstream news sources such as the New York Times. Less mainstream, but perhaps more accurate websites that she recommends are monumentsofsyria.com and heritageforpeace.org, among others. Without websites like these providing current images of historical sites around Syria, damage assessment would be nearly impossible.
Once images are gathered, archeologists can use them to compare with older images of the same sites. When compared side by side, it’s easy to see the extent of the damage. Ancient sites leveled, centuries old mosques damaged by shelling, mosaics shattered by bullets. Satellite images reveal a pockmarked landscape, the result of locals excavating cultural objects to sell on the black market. This excavation is confirmed by videos shot by concerned locals and uploaded to youtube. Although archeologists can only observe the damage from afar, knowing the extent of the damage can allow them to develop future conservation plans, in the hope that this conflict will soon reach an end.
As someone who has no experience in archeology or Middle Eastern cultural heritage, I found this lecture to be very engaging and quite easy to follow. Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis was both knowledgeable and very passionate about the need for the public to receive accurate information about the conflict. I appreciated that she was willing to share the websites she uses to gather information, and was surprised how often that website was youtube.
When people hear the word “archeologist” it conjures images of dusty books and hours of digging up bones, but this was a fascinating example of professionals using any and all resources at their disposal to gather information. Often piecing together a bit of one video and a few seconds of another, they’re using traditional research skills in conjunction with new media to conduct an off site study. I think this may become standard practice for professionals to assess cultural heritage damage in war torn regions of the world.
I found the archeologists’ innovative approach to research inspiring, and will be sure to follow their progess as it continues. I would like to thank Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis for this lecture, and for the work she is doing.