A tempest is gathering force in the world of archaeology, and a Stony Brook academic is in the middle of it.
In a Wall street Journal piece yesterday, writer Melik Kaylan opens up both barrels on archaeologists who say the United States’ invasion of Iraq and the subsequent melt down of all institutions has led to precious historic sites being looted and/or destroyed.
Stony Brook archaeologist Elizabeth Stone studied satellite images of the ancient sites and concluded that nearly 10 miles of land had been looted and hundreds of thousands of objects stolen. Kaylan dismissed Stone’s research.
Stone then travelled to Iraq with a team of specialists to look at the condition on the ground. No offical report has been made, but there is an indication the damage may not be as extensive as previously reported.
The World Archaeological Congress, which opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning, recently opposed any possible war with Iran, urging that “any differences with Iran should be resolved through peaceful and diplomatic means.”
Kaylan deemed the WAC out of line for taking “public positions on political matters.” I suppose public positions on political matters should be left exclusively to politicians and Mr. Kaylan.
From the Journal story:
The archaeologists’ mission to southern Iraq took place in early June. Besides Prof. Stone, the experts included John Curtis, head of the British Museum’s Middle East Department; Paul Collins, a Mesopotamia specialist at that museum; a top German expert; and Iraqi experts. It was conducted through the British military, which is in charge of the area, using a helicopter and armed escorts to visit the locations. They included such celebrated “cradle of civilization” sites as Ur, Eridu (the earliest Sumerian city), Warka (Sumerian Uruk), Larsa (a Babylonian city), Tell el-Ouelli (ancient Ubaid) and Tell el-Lahm (an Assyrian site).
According to the Art Newspaper article, “The international team . . . had been expecting to find considerable evidence of looting after 2003 but to their astonishment and relief there was none. Not a single recent dig hole was found at the eight sites, and the only evidence of illegal digging came from holes which were partially covered with silt and vegetation, which means they [were] several years old.” Furthermore, the most recent damage “probably dated back to 2003,” to just before and after the invasion when the Iraqi army maneuvered for the allied attack. (According to other experts, looting probably took place when the Iraqi army first moved out of areas near sites to counter the invasion.)
Neither the British Museum pair nor Prof. Stone responded to my calls seeking comment. The British Museum press official for the Middle Eastern department cautioned that the official report had not yet been compiled, but it seemed that the article was generally accurate. Certainly none of the experts have denied any of it. In the article, Dr. Curtis “admits that he was ‘very surprised’ at the lack of recent looting, but stresses that . . . ‘it may not be typical of the country as a whole, and the situation could be worse further north.’”
