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Looting in Iraq continues, extending to numerous archaeological sites in Babylon, Isin, Ninevah, Hatra, Larsa, and elsewhere. Professor Piotr Michalowski, University of Michigan, said on June 25, 2003, that “these archaeological sites are the remains of some of the earliest cities in the world.” More than two months after the initial ransacking of museums, a National Geographic Society archaeological expedition describes “certain sites, post-looting, as looking like Swiss cheese. One of the smaller ones is essentially gone. The looters haul out thousands of items, including highly desirable figurines, cylinder seals, and inscribed cuneiform tablets. In the process, they crush countless other objects and destroy the houses, palaces, or temples in which these precious clues to our common past were located.” Many of the more than 10,000 archaeological sites identified in Iraq have yet to be excavated. Thousands of cuneiform tablets have yet to be translated. “We just haven’t gotten to them yet,” said Dr. Elizabeth Stone. “Only a handful of people can read them.” What this means is that much about ancient history and civilization that could be discovered may never be known. “I’m most worried about the sites I’ve never seen,” says Dr. John Russell. “These are the sites that excavations will reveal completely unknown things.” When archaeological sites are brutally plundered and objects hauled away at random, it becomes impossible for archaeologists to painstakingly piece together ancient societies in a way that can tell us a coherent history of our ancestors and origins. An object at its original site tells much about the people who created it by where and how it is found: how deeply it is buried: what it is next to, on top of, and under. An object out of context only tells us that someone made it; it cannot speak by itself. But at a site, it can tell us when the society started and stopped making the object; how it was used, whether in common daily life or in funerary rituals: whether, for example, it signified royalty or religious office. Without context, researchers are no longer able to “assemble a mosaic of meaning” from what remains. "If you find an artifact but you don't have the context, you lose 80 to 90 percent of the information,” said Dr. Donny George of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities. “Every single hour, every single day this goes is a great loss of information.” (The New York Times, May 23, 2003.) Cultural antiquities are the building blocks of human cultural history. Together with experts in archaeology and art history, SAFE aims to convey the reasons that antiquities are vital to contemporary life and our future. WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT IRAQ’S CULTURAL TREASURES? WHAT HAPPENED TO ANTIQUITIES IN IRAQ ? HOW WERE TREASURES PLUNDERED IN THE MUSEUMS? |
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