The
Iraq War & Archaeology
Reviewed Articles Archive Twenty: Second 1/2
of January 2004
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This is the twentieth archive of the reviewed articles of The Iraq War & Archaeology web site.
Francis Deblauwe,
Ph.D.
The
articles and other information are listed chronologically, most recent
first.
Almost all are accessible for free (or after a free registration) on
the internet. Each time, I try to draw attention to the most
relevant tidbits of information, esp. things that were not mentioned
before; occasionally, I provide some comment. The usual warning
applies: many links become defective with time. Inclusion
in the list does not in any way mean that I necessarily agree with the
opinions expressed in an article. But for a few
exceptions, the occasional photos and figures accompanying
reviewed articles are just hotlinked images on other web sites, in
other words: do not download them or request
permission to publish them from me, for I do not own the copyright
to them in any way! Please do contact the rightful owners if you
would like to use them for publication purposes. Finally, for the sake
of convenience, all articles and so on are assumed to have been
published on US web sites unless indicated otherwise.
- "Japan
to Team Up With Germany, France Over Iraq's Reconstruction," in Boone Today (Iowa), January 29,
2004: "Yukio Okamoto, diplomatic adviser to Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi, will visit Germany and France from Sunday to Thursday ..."
"With France, Japan is planning to restore historical artifacts and
repair cultural facilities, including museums and libraries, the
officials said." "France has told Japan it is planning to invite Iraqi
specialists to the country to train them in restoration techniques.
Japan, meanwhile, started a project in January to rebuild an
institution of the Baghdad museum tasked with preserving and restoring
cultural assets."
- Musician's
Hope for Ancient Harp. City Musician Andy Lowings Was Horrified When He
Heard That a 4,750 Year Old Harp Had Been Destroyed by Looters in the
Iraqi Museum in Baghdad," in The
Peterborough Evening Telegraph (UK), January 29, 2004: "... he
decided to rebuild a working copy of the instrument – which will cost
£25,000. Now, Mr Lowings has just received two large blocks of
Iraqi wood, which were collected by airmen and flown back to RAF
Wittering, to be used in making the base of the new harp." [sic;
actually a lyre] "He said: 'I think the harp is a definite symbol of
the new Iraq, and hope that as it is rebuilt, so Iraq will be as
well.'" "... the blocks of cedar wood were presented to Mr Lowings, who
has sent them to Austria for an expert instrument maker to start
carving the harp. Experts in other countries will be asked to use their
skills in the restoration project, too."
Photo 1: "Carving on the original Bull Harp of Ur" [this is in error:
the bull's head is made of gold sheets, not carved out of wood; also,
they won't rebuild the Harp from Ur nor the Lyre of Queen Shub-Ad
(shown here) but the Queen's Lyre, see Lowings
October 20]
Photo 2: "5131 Squadron members Jim Gardner and Titch Jones hand the
wood to Nobert Maier, Andy Lowings and Ismail Jalili"
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- L.L. Caro, "El
Museo de Bagdad recupera 4.000 de las 14.000 piezas robadas," in Diario ABC (Spain), January 28,
2004: Donny George said that 14,000 artifacts went missing from the
National Museum of which 4,000 have been recovered; he was going over
the list of millions of dollars in aid received from UNESCO, the US,
the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Egypt, Qatar ... which will help to
reopen the Museum in 18 to 24 months; the fence around the museum
complex has been doubled in height and is being finished with barbed
wire
- A. Burchard, "„Sie
haben vergessen, wie man eine Demokratie aufbaut“. Die Soziologin Uta
Gerhardt kritisiert die amerikanische Besatzungspolitik im Irak – und
schaut zurück auf Deutschland 1945," in Der Tagesspiegel (Germany),
January 27, 2004: the World War II US Armed Forces had prepared
extensively for how to proceed after the fighting in Germany would be
over; museums, archives and libraries were immediately put under
protection of troops which were not billeted inside those buildings
[contrary to what happened in Iraq]; no looting by soldiers or German
civilians was tolerated; it is hard to understand why in Iraq nothing
was done
- M. Müller-Karpe, "Dr.
Riadh Al-Doori Has Passed Away," in Iraqcrisis, online, January 23,
2004: "... Dr. Riadh al-Doori, who has worked in Assur for many years
and who was shot last week on his way to Assur in an attempt to rob his
car, passed away last night."
- "Missione
italiana scopre a Nassiriya necropoli sumerica," in AGI (Italy), online, January 21,
2004: the semicircular burial vessels in the Early Sumerian cemetery at
Tell el-Lahm, 40 km south of Nasiriyyah, are only 70-80 cm under the
ground and measure 1 m by 70 cm; the site will be studied by an
Iraqi-Italian archaeological team; preliminary research by an Italian
delegation has uncovered child and baby burials; work done by the
Carabinieri so far in Dhi Qar province: assessment and taking control
of 25 out of 211 known archaeological sites, registration and
cataloging of 156 artifacts, 28 looters arrested, 73 looters
identified, 10 aerial surveillances, training of local police
- "Foreigners
Steal Ancient Artefacts," in Iraqi
Press Monitor (UK), January 21, 2004: "(Al-Mutamar) – Foreign
visitors to archaeological sites in Babylon, exploiting the site’s lack
of surveillance and security, have stolen valuable artefacts, the paper
says. Local residents reported seeing foreigners abscond with relics
from the city of Borseeba. It is not the first time foreigners have
stolen relics from the area." [the site is Birs Nimrud, ancient
Borsippa, about 12 miles south of Babylon, not Babylon itself which is
within a Coalition military base]
- [D. Collon], "Lecture
by Dr Margarete van Ess in Essen, Germany," in The British Museum: Iraq Crisis
(UK), online, January 16, 2004: "Dr Margarete van Ess (German Oriental
Institute [sic; German Archaeological Institute]) gave a lecture in the
Ruhrland Museum in Essen on the looting of the museums and sites in
Iraq. ... She presented some interesting statistics: a season of
excavation will recover some 20,000 sherds, 10,000 small-finds or
fragments thereof, and only around 10 museum-quality objects; she used
this to demonstrate the scale of the destruction of sites by
indiscriminate looting in order to recover a handful of objects. She
also showed many looted objects that are appearing on websites such as
Zurqieh Gifts and Novelties Co. LLC, PO Box 19867, Dubai."
- D. D'Arcy, "US
Customs Art Squad Reassigned to War on Terror. The Agents Who Had
Investigated Stolen Art Will Now Work on Cases Related to Terrorism and
Fraud," in The Art Newspaper
(UK),
[January 16, 2004]: "The US Customs Art Fraud Investigation Center set
up in 2000 to track and seize stolen art has been subsumed into the
Department of Homeland Security. ... Although cases of stolen art will
still be investigated by Customs agents, no employees will work
exclusively on art investigations. The re-organisation has not been
publicised, but government officials confirmed the move to The Art
Newspaper at a ceremony in late November at the offices of the newly
named Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)." "... ICE New York
Special Agent-in-Charge Martin Ficke, said, that because of the looting
of museums in Iraq, ICE has more active art cases than ever before. He
insisted that the consolidation of resources and databases will make
retrained agents more efficient. 'We work these leads to exhaustion.
Nothing goes uninvestigated. It is not a situation where we get a lead
here in a particular area and say ‘we’re not going to do it’, because
we’re investigating counter-terrorism or money or narcotics. We don’t
have a specific unit now that investigates art theft, but we’ve got a
lot of expertise in the office.' Others question whether the dedication
to investigating cases of stolen or smuggled art will survive the ICE
age. According to one insider, agents working for the Art Fraud
Investigation Center 'were in active communication' with various
foreign governments that protect their cultural property. 'They were
looking for cases and developing them. Now that will no longer happen;
unless something falls on agents’ toes and they have to respond to it,
that won’t take place. Legislation is just words on paper unless
somebody puts some teeth in it and that’s what Customs did. Considering
the amount of money that has been made available for national security
since 11 September, I do not think that a few Customs people in New
York dealing with art would have made a big dent on that budget.' One
critic of a conspiratorial bent hinted that aggressive investigators
aggravated enough influential collectors and dealers in New York for
them to lobby privately for the redeployment of the art squad: 'When
they finally saw the opportunity with the Bush administration’s new war
on terror, they made a few phone calls to people in high places and
took care of it'. The Art Newspaper has no evidence of such lobbying.
The Art Newspaper made several phone calls to ICE headquarters in
Manhattan seeking information about art related investigations. More
often than not, the staffers in the press department who 'came from
Immigration' and referred to pre-ICE Customs as 'Legacy Customs' knew
nothing about ongoing art cases."
- R.E. Sullivan, "Iraq
Journal: Grave Robbers' Looting Spree," in Fox News, January 16, 2004:
"Archeologist John Russell ..., flying in a U.S. military
helicopter, looked out over the barrel of the gunner’s machine gun and
saw his nightmare in the desert below: dozens of brazen looters in
broad daylight busily robbing graves as old as 5,000 years." "In the
two-hour-long flight south to [Tell el-Lahm] from Baghdad, Russell
flew over several sites, all of which showed recent looting damage. Two
of them were looted so badly — with little grave-like holes
dug from wall to wall — virtually no room was left to dig for anything
else. ... Holes dotted the ground in Mashkan-shapir ..., a
Babylonian-era city, which was considered a world power in the time of
Hammurabi; in Nippur ..., which ruled the area between the Sumerian and
Acadian [sic] regimes some 2,500 years ago; and in Drehem ..., famous
for its 4,000-year-old hardened clay tablets — the probable object of
the thieves' searches. The worst appeared in Isin, which was a world
center several hundred years before Hammurabi ... wrote the first
written code of laws in human history. Some of the looters scattered at
the sound of the helicopters. Others waved. The holes dug in this
Sumerian ... mound provided both good news and bad news. The holes were
started by looters, who were then spotted, and arrested. Archeologists
came here and surveyed the damage and discovered previously unknown
tombs. 'The exposed artifacts will be removed properly and sent to a
museum to be studied and the site will be covered over again for its
own protection,' Russell said." "When a site is properly surveyed, it
takes years to map the surroundings, take and analyze soil samples, and
attempt to learn everything possible about the target group, he
said. Scientists want to know how they lived, what they ate and
what was their culture. Grabbing individual clay tablets and ancient
cylinders makes that impossible, Russell said. He said the proper
excavation of a tomb — like the one uncovered here and left by looters
— could take as much as five years." "Russell, a professor at the
Massachusetts College of Art ... in Boston and a technical advisor to
the Iraqi cultural ministry, said the rebuilding of Iraq 'should
provide enough work for an entire generation of archeologists, and
more' without anyone ever beginning a new dig. Opening canals and
building roads in a country with some of the oldest urban ruins on the
planet invariably turns up something, he said. 'Contractors and
builders should provide their own archeologists, or support a
university team before they begin destruction,' Russell said, 'and
fortunately we now have language in the building agreements calling for
just that.'" [you go, John!]
- G. Gallo, "Dal
nostro inviato. Tal Laham (Iraq meridionale) - Gli uomini ...,"
in Corriere della Sera
(Italy), [January 16, 2004]: looters excavated a complete urn with the
remains of a child, 2700 years old; part of yet another Sumerian
cemetery; the Carabinieri team "Vyper 5" [but see Cremonesi January 2] led by
Marshall Franco
Caligiore made arrests of looters at Tell el-Lahm; Abdul-Amir
el-Hamdani (director of archaeology of Dhi Qar province) will study the
seized urn in his laboratory; Mario Bondioli-Osio (Minister of Culture
of the CPA) has also flown over, saw evidence of looting at
Mashkan-shapir [Tell Abu Duwari] on his way; the 2 Japanese men
recently assassinated in Tikrit, Oku Katsuhiko and Inoue Masamori, are
called archaeologists in this article: surely, this is an error, they
were career diplomats although they do seem to have been involved in
cultural-heritage preservation issues
- Y. Hamilakis, "Iraq,
Stewardship and ‘the Record’. An Ethical Crisis for Archaeology,"
in Public Archaeology (UK),
3, 2 (2003) [2nd 1/2 of January 2004]: "In the last few
months, we all witnessed an
unprecedented coverage of archaeological issues in the print and
electronic media. Archaeology has now a continuous presence, with
a total of many hundreds or even thousands of articles so far, and more
to come, as the story covered unfolds daily and develops in at times
unexpected twists. The saga, which has almost acquired the features of
a police drama, is of course the looting of antiquities in Iraq,
following the invasion of the country by US and UK forces, and the
subsequent occupation ..." "I want instead to turn the light, not on
the thieves of Baghdad and Mosul, nor on the countless looted artefacts
that are bound to ‘resurface’ sooner or later on a Manhattan, London or
Tokyo mantelpiece, but on us, the archaeologists, and to ask: what does
our own reaction (both before and during the war) say about our notion
of ethical responsibilities in the present?" "Initially responding to
the appeals by Iraqi archaeologists, [Western archaeologists] managed
to raise the issue in the international media, and sustain interest in
the matter for months." "This enormous publicity and exposure are
undoubtedly linked to the heated public debate on the war on Iraq, a
war that many millions around the world have considered, justifiably,
both illegal and immoral. It is also linked to the position of
Mesopotamia in Western imagination, as an important biblical reference
and as a locus that has long been seen as the ‘cradle of civilization’,
a phrase that the media (and most archaeologists) will repeat
endlessly, unaware of or oblivious to the patronising and highly loaded
meaning of both terms." [that's only one way of looking at it, I would
argue that it can also be seen as a sign of respect as well as a
statement of fact]; "In short, most individual and collective
archaeological responses focused on the destruction and loss of
antiquities. In contrast to the majority of the people in the world and
the vast majority of academics, intellectuals and cultural workers,
they fell short of explicitly opposing the invasion, and failed to link
up to the wider oppositional movement. In fact, they actively offered
specialist advice and help to the invading armies: these archaeologists
were happy to provide the coordinates of the archaeological sites so
that they could be spared from the bombing." "... the [British]
archaeologist Peter Stone ‘advised the [British] military for more than
two months in his role as Chief Executive Officer of the World
Archaeological Congress … His role included identifying key museums and
archaeological sites in Iraq, so they could be included on the same
list as hospitals and schools which were to be spared from bombing’
..." "My question is this: why did the concern for the many thousands
of innocent dead people, for the criminal illegality of the whole
campaign, for the illegal colonisation of a country – concerns that
undoubtedly many archaeologists share – not find any prominent place in
archaeologists’ individual and collective statements?" [my guess:
because they wanted the statements to be as effective as possible which
was best achieved by not giving the Bush administration an easy excuse
to dismiss them for just being political ploys]; "Moreover, why did
archaeologists (many, no doubt, opposed to the war) agree to act as
advisors to the invading armies, oblivious to the fact that their role
provided academic and cultural legitimacy to the invasion? Here I
should say that there were exceptions to this pattern, the most
prominent of which was the letter of 78
Mesopotamian specialists, published in the January 2003 issue of
the Society of American Archaeologists’ bulletin, The Archaeological Record."
[Hamilakis is overstating things here: the vast majority of
Mesopotamian archaeologists were and still are not directly
cooperating with their military in Iraq; the few that were/are
basically saw/see their role as trying to make the best of a bad
situation; they should withdraw their cooperation if they feel that
the benefits to the plight of Iraqi heritage outweigh the compromising
drawbacks of window-dressing for the CPA];
"... the principle, now codified in the
codes of ethics of most Western archaeological organisations, that our
primary ethical responsibility is the advocacy for and stewardship of
the archaeological record ... however, the notion of the
‘archaeological record’ is highly problematic. In the principle of
stewardship, an entity that is produced by archaeologists out of the
material fragments of the past, (‘the record’), acquires metaphysical
properties: it is perceived as the finite entity that people of the
past have entrusted to us for protection and stewardship ... however,
the ‘record’ is produced by disciplinary practices and identity
processes and discourses, using the remnants of the past. We thus
declare ourselves stewards and advocates of something that we ourselves
have been instrumental in producing, and of which we are often the
primary users." [I'd rather use the term "archaeological heritage"
which points at the need for it to be protected first and only
excavated and recorded—indeed, excavating is always also
destroying—when pertinent questions are to be answered and when it is
possible to do it right (methodologically, logistically, timewise,
etc.) or when we have no other choice (salvage digs)]; "... the
frequent evocations of Mesopotamia. More importantly, most
archaeologists promoted the notion that the Iraqi past is ‘our’ past,
engaging thus in a rhetorical strategy of appropriation. But they meant
a selective and constructed past, the past that in the Western
imagination has occupied a central position because of its biblical
connotations, or its links to urbanism and early writing. How about the
more recent past, the Muslim and Arabic [sic] heritage? Is that ‘ours’
too, or just ‘theirs’? Were we thus protecting only ‘our’ past?"
[Hamilakis makes a valid point here; however, it is also true that the
general-public and even scholars tend to think of archaeology as a
discipline as dealing primarily with the Romans and before (in Europe),
or with pre-colonial times (in North America); we all share a
fascination with "firsts" and "ancientness" but, admittedly, the Arab
and Muslim worlds, esp. in their thriving Ottoman, Moorish, etc.
incarnations had their fair share of "firsts" too which are largely
unknown to the Western public and even most educated folk which is
unforgivable]; "... we should be aware that the ethic of conservation
is a context-specific principle, and that some social groups may choose
to place value not on the conservation of the material past but on its
reworking,
recycling or even destruction. Awareness of social asymmetries and
power relationships (such as in the case of the Western antiquities
market) should underpin these contextual judgments." [this reminds me
of the heated debate about the (non-)universality of human rights...];
"Archaeological ethics must be politically aware, sensitive to the pain
of the other, or they are nothing. To quote Francis Deblauw[e], the
independent scholar who set up the most informative website on the
Iraqi looting [well, thank you very much!], ‘no epic Sumerian cuneiform
tablet, majestic Neo-Assyrian lamassu sculpture, or any other
Mesopotamian artifact is worth a human life, be it Iraqi, American,
British or other’ ... [I still stand by that; I would also like to
quote another part of my introduction (unchanged since the beginning):
"War in this
Cradle of Civilization, beyond the horrendous, almost invisible
casualties—always somebody's husband, always somebody's son—and
downplayed 'collateral damage'—always somebody's wife, always
somebody's child—, inevitably takes its toll on the archaeological
heritage as well."]; "... a Mesopotamian specialist made the headlines
by suggesting that the occupying armies should kill antiquities looters
..., providing thus an extreme example and a further confirmation of
the phenomenon that I debate here." [i.e., Dr. Elizabeth Stone;
Hamilakis means not caring for people, only for artifacts; even though
I do take issue with this lethal approach too, I must point out that,
during the 1990s, Dr. Stone went to Iraq many times and took medicines
and other humanitarian supplies with her, something that wasn't without
risk]