Technology
Rebuilding History One Megabyte at a Time
(archrecord.construction.com - 03/2005 issue)
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| Personnel from
Iraq’s SBAH review testing methodologies for site
assessment at Ain Ghazal, an archaeological site outside
Amman, Jordan. Photography: Courtesy The World Monuments
Fund |
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| A GIS total station
is used to collect location information at the Amman Citadel.
Photography: Courtesy The World Monuments Fund |
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| Gaetano Palumbo
of WMF examines site maps with SBAH trainees. Photography:
Courtesy The World Monuments Fund |
... Using
data across borders to plan for the future
SBAH officials plan to hold two more
training sessions this year, ideally in Iraq. Their timing
and location will depend on the political situation and safety
concerns. The southern provinces of Iraq, especially those
between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, are particularly
dense with ancient sites and may be a focus for early efforts.
The first task facing SBAH will be simply recording what sites
exist and where they are. This sounds rudimentary, but the
knowledge base in Iraq is full of holes because the agency’s
resources were so scarce for so long.
SBAH also intends to use the database
for projects beyond simply managing the sites themselves.
The agency has a representative in the office in charge of
reconstruction in Iraq, and “with the database information,
they will be able to advise developers, contractors, and government
agencies on which areas should be preserved, and which areas
are okay to build on,” says Berenfeld. Such guidance
has been difficult to provide in the absence of a centralized
information system.
Both the SBAH initiative and JADIS mark
a shift in how cultural resources are researched, prioritized,
and preserved in the Middle East. In the past, individual
sites were excavated or explored by Western universities or
research organizations; now there is an emphasis on management
of cultural sites by their parent countries. “Technology
facilitates this trend by providing tools that help departments
of antiquities become proactive in the infrastructure planning
process,” says Savage, the database developer. “These
systems also allow sites and historic properties to be monitored
for adverse conditions that might affect them over time, so
that preventive and restorative steps can be implemented.”
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Images: Courtesy Arizona State University
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| Although many buildings
were destroyed during the Iraq War (above, a civic structure
in Ramadi), looters are responsible for the most significant
losses. Photography: © AP/Bilal Hussein Images |
Improvements made in SBAH’s database
will be incorporated into JADIS, but in the long term, the
two efforts may be merged into larger regional initiatives.
Savage hopes to create a comprehensive information system
that would allow research and preservation activities to take
place across national borders in the Middle East. “Those
borders are artificial anyway—they’re just lines
that were drawn once the Ottoman Empire was broken up,”
he says.
For now, though, preservationists just
hope to contain the damage. Dr. Elizabeth C. Stone, an archaeologist
and professor at SUNY Stony Brook, has worked in Iraq for
more than a decade. “These projects may not be necessary
to ensure the future of civilization,” she told The New
York Times in an interview in October 2003, “but it wouldn’t
be a great thing for the future of civilization to lose the
cradle of civilization.”
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