What has happened to the archaeology of Iraq?

Last week I reviewed an extraordinary book for the Times Saturday Books page.The Destruction of the Cultural Heritage in Iraq is a collection of essays about what has happened to the archaeology and museums of Iraq around, and since, the invasion. Where are the treasures of Ur, Babylon etc. now? Answer: many are lost, destroyed, or making a lot of money for antiquities dealers in the west.

The review was, in some ways, a stupid thing to take on. My Pompeii book is to be finished  -- bar the would-be elegant conclusion – on Tuesday (sic). But I have recently got very interested in the relationship between archaeology/culture and war. This is partly because of the bombing of Pompeii by the allies in 1943, which left many areas of the site a wreck (though thirsty travellers may be ironically grateful that it cleared the way for the site restaurant).

The book proved even more fascinating than I imagined, and more fascinating than I could squeeze into the 500 words I was given.

I hadn’t for a start properly appreciated the history of the Baghdad Museum, which had been founded by Gertrude Bell, as part of the British Mandate in the 1920s. Indeed it seems to have been Bell who started the practice of keeping some of the antiquities in Iraq, rather than sending them round the Museums of the Great Powers.

That said, given what has happened, one feels quite grateful – as I’m sure I’ve said  before – that some of the Iraqi treasures were in the safe housing of the British Museum.

More than the history, the essays offered a marvellous galaxy of different perspectives on what had gone on in the battle for/looting of the Baghdad Museum in 2003. The Director – an able man called Donny George, and a pretty able self-publicist too, by all accounts – had obviously done a heroic job in trying to save what he could of the collection from the assorted and dangerous looters. A tragic amount of material was destroyed; but more than anyone expected actually came back.

But, as I said in the review, there was a slight tendency for the other archaeologists in the volume to be a bit starry eyed about what might be done to protect cultural heritage in the middle of a combat zone. One of the ex-military men writing, Matthew Bogdanos, was nicely hard-headed over the Museum itself. He did actually point out, unlike most of the archaeologists that it had not been open to the public since 1991, except to celebrate Saddam’s birthday in 2000. So maybe that explains why, it seemed for some Iraqis, fair game.

He also went through some of the reasons why the Coalition forces might have had trouble defending the Museum, even if they had had the will. “. . You cannot just hail a tank the way you hail a taxi. Unless you are requesting a suicide mission, you need a tank platoon. What those who have never been in combat do not understand is that a stationary tank is a death trap . . . one well placed round from an anti-tank weapon and you would need to use dog-tags to identify the charred remains of the four men inside.”

Got it boffins?

I was sad to see from the preface that one of my friends had refused to contribute to the volume, because he didn’t want to share covers with any soldiers. It seems to me that some sharing of that kind  is exactly what we need.

Boffins need to know a bit more about tank-warfare. Soldiers need to know a good bit more about archaeology and why it's important. Indeed, very quietly that’s exactly what some people in the USA are piloting. Brian Rose and the Archaeological Institute of America have been getting to GIs and explaining to them the importance of the land of Iraq for the whole of world culture.

It is at least a good try.

Comments

[anthony alcock]

Dear Ms Edgar. That's why I used the term "often exaggerated". I have always been reasonably certain that written things can be understood fairly comprehensively without the need for a context.
I used to know someone who did neutron activation of pottery, and the whole point of her work seemed to be to determine where the items under examination had been made and then how far they had travelled from their place of manufacture to where they had been discovered, and of course in those cases context is relatively important. I don't know if it worked or not, but it seemed a fairly expensive business to me.

[Lucy]

Mary, this is fascinating, thanks.

Tony - please, for the love of God, knock it off with wiki, would you?

[Katharine Edgar]

Jane - thank you.

Anthony - I think it depends what is meant by context. Keeping the context in the sense of 'leaving things where they are' does tend to be over-rated, I agree. Preserving information about that context, on the other hand, is pretty much always worth doing. The two things often get confused in discussions about repatriation.

I also wonder if papyri are a bit of a special case as they're texts and likely to have value based on that alone, above and beyond the archaeological context.

[Jane2]

Katherine
Thank you for your reasoned, informed and gentle reply.

[Tony Francis]

For the report from the Marine Corp lawyer in charge of investigating the looting of the Iraqi National Museum:
http://www.ajaonline.org/index.php?ptype=content&aid=5

By:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Bogdanos

[anthony alcock]

Of course archaeology is tied up with war and cultural imperialism. As far as I know it has been a commonplace in the bit of the ancient world that still interests me that Egyptology is a western construct. One of my teachers in Oxford flatly refused to go anywhere near Egypt after his one visit (when the poor chap contracted some minor illness, which seemed to grow in size with the passing of the years). According to him, you would do far better to spend your time in a well-equipped library. To some extent, he was right.
I think the business of cultural context is often exaggerated. I' m working on papyri from a well-run dig in the Dakhla Oasis, one volume published and one to go. I went out once to see the place where they came from, and I was no better informed about the texts than I had been before, beyond the fairly obvious fact that these documents (mostly letters) had been abandoned when the houses were abandoned. And there was nothing an archaeologist could tell any of us working on the texts about the context that was of the slightest use.

[Katharine Edgar]

Jane, there is a reason why archaeologists get so worked up about looting which perhaps didn't come across in Mary's post. This is, looting generally leads to the loss of context, the information about where an object came from. Context is important because it enables us to learn a lot more from (and about) an object than you'd learn if you looked at it on its own.
If all the associated information went with an object, it wouldn't matter so much which country it ended up in, but looters generally don't take the documentation files with them. In fact they are also likely to remove any identifying marks which might make the object more likely to spot as stolen.
You are spot on about archaeology's history being tied up with that of warfare. A very interesting book on this which deals particularly with the Romano-British side you mention is Richard Hingley's 'Roman Officers and English Gentlemen: The Imperial Origins of Roman Archaeology.'
However, it would be wrong to argue from that (not that you were) that archaeology is ^only^ about looting and pillaging. I'd like to think a discipline can transcend its past to some degree to involve, at least in part, a more disinterested search for information about human history. Which is of interest to me, at least, even if it did start off in a desert thousands of miles away.

[Tony Francis]

When I was with the Army in Desert Storm, there was a guy who kept telling me, "When we get out of here, we need to go to an archeological/paleontology dig. They've got all those girl graduate students in shorts and halter tops." Unfortunately, we never made it to any sites.
http://studyabroad.tamu.edu/travel_avoid.asp
This article needs the attention of a specialist:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looted_art
So here is you chance: PL, Foska, Lord T, Richard, M. Bulley, Jane, Lucy,Cambridge Professor, et al to do something for altruism. Fix this article.

[Xjy]

A soldier is a slave. A general may not be. Soldiers signing up to fight a general's war - if they have any choice in this - can expect to be butchered when they run out of luck.

Artefacts are lifeless chattels - slaves without even voices. If they get in the way in war, they are smashed like soldiers and civilians getting in the way. Even if they aren't smashed, they need guarding, like slaves. Otherwise they get up and run away (helped by some greedy self-seeking bastard or enemy spy or whatever).

As long as armed conflict continues (ie until socialism is the dominant mode of production in the world) this destruction will continue and (unless some new "welfare state" concessions are forthcoming - fat chance of that!) intensify. So unless you want to be part of the mindless apocalypse, refuse to help the general and his fat cat paymasters, refuse to condone any war for oil or foreign conquest, and guard your loved ones and unique artefacts as best you can.

And remember that with this crowd in power, "the worst that can happen" always turns out to be better than what actually takes place.

In Ur in Mesopotamia
The rot and decay just grew gamier.
Said Bush "What the fuck,
It's only Iraq
And Saddam can take all the blame here."

[Jane]

This idea provokes a lot of questions.
I read Mary's review on Saturday in "Books" and instantly forgot it, as I instantly forgot absolutely everything else I read in "Books" that day.
Do I therefore, have any right at all to comment on this essay?
Well, here goes:
1. Isn't the whole science of archeaology based on cultural pillage?
2. Isn't the whole tourist industry based on cultural pillage?
3. Aren't both archaeology and tourism forms of cultural imperialism, and don't both derive from traditions established by military explorations?
4. Isn't it also true that very large numbers of relics and monuments, such as form targets for archaeology, are based on military installations and edifices associated with the military? Civilian rubbish-heaps and cemeteries don't provoke much interest in the wider public. Civilian towns, such as Durobrivae, are not excavated whereas the forts at Lincoln, York, etc are well-documented.
5. I suppose what I am saying is, being stolen/looted etc is an occupational hazard if you are an antiquity.
6. Does that matter in the long-term? Not as much, in my estimation, as the facts that Iraq is a distant, hot place where there are things going on that I'd rather not be involved in, and that it has also been known as the cradle of civilisation, now turned to poisoned dust.

[Paul Potts]

Wasn't a fair bit of the looting of the Iraqi museums done by Amercan personnel? Some of them were arrested on arrival at New York, but of course American personnael are immune from charges about overseas atrocities.

Paulo

[anthony alcock]

It should be relatively easy to box up archaeological artefacts and carry them to a safe place, but I imagine archaeological areas would be a bit trickier.

[army]

And if the answer is that these soldiers are now "dead ducks" to society, then perhaps they deserve some respect.

[army]

Try telling that to the stationary tanks with their legs and necks blown to pieces who now have to wait for the rest of the world to move. Got it Brainbox?

[Chuck Jones]

Readers interested in issues relating to cultural property damaged, destroyed, or lost from libraries, museums and archaeological sites in Iraq during and after the war in April 2003 are welcome to subscribe to the IraqCrisis mailing list

https://listhost.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/iraqcrisis

[Nicholas Wibberley]

Vandalism and theft are likely an aspect of war itself along with rape and vengeance; Sulla pounding Athens to dust, and the Taliban the Buddhas at Bamiyan. Could destruction be as much part of cultural evolution as creation?