Archaeology Magazine - May/June 2007 - 20

By

Kristin

M. Romey

at
Archaeology
What
is the

role

of

preservation

last November, the
Institute of Archaeology at
Early University College London
(UCL) held a three-day conference
called "Archaeology in Conflict,"
The mission of the weekend,
according to the conference
announcement, was ambitious:
to attempt to contextualize
heritage management, social
theory, sustainable development,
and poverty relief within the
discipline of archaeology. The
organizers, from the Institute
of Archaeology's Center for
Applied Archaeology arranged
weighty sessions such as
"Conflict Management and
Reconstruction in Lebanon" and
"Conservation and Sustainable
Use Resources: Case Studies
from Afghanistan," The roster of
speakers was equally impressive,
and included archaeologists,
museum officials, and
I
journalists from the Palestinian
and
Lebanon;
Authority, Israel,
various UNESCO officials;
and scholars with new information
from Afghanistan (the Afghans
themselves, however, were stuck in
Islamabad with visa problems). The
conference was held, appropriately
enough, on Armistice Day weekend,
Londoners brightened the rainy
streets with red poppies in their
buttonholes - a tribute to the dead
of the first, and what was briefly
believed to be the last, Great War,
Perhaps the biggest draw for the
audience, myself included, was the
speculated attendance of Donny
George, former director-general of
the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities,
A familiar and seemingly formidable

20

War
in times

of

conflict?

character, George began his career
under Saddam Hussein in 1976,
played a role in the looting of the
Kuwait National Museum during
the first Gulf War, continued
excavations in Iraq in the face of
the severe looting that came with
subsequent UN sanctions, and

hunted down missing artifacts
from the Iraqi National Museum
during the disaster that followed the
Coalition invasion in 2003, George
had recently fled with his family to
Syria, citing fear of rising Islamist
influence at work and the personal
safety of his family,
George was one of the lucky
ones. Archaeologists at Stony Brook
University had recently cobbled
together $10,000 to bring George
and his family over to the United
States, In the narrow corridor
leading to the small auditorium
where the conference was held,
across from a table scattered

with tea bags and biscuits, was a
poster put up by the Council for
Assisting Refugee Academics, a
British organization that helps
Iraqi scholars resettle in the
United Kingdom, The poster bore
the names and photos of several
hundred Iraqi academics murdered
since the outbreak of the second
Gulf War, But they were easy
to miss, especially during coffee
breaks when the corridor
was crowded with attendees
swapping business cards and
hastily quaffing Nescafe,
The array of talks ran from
case studies of specific sites
in the West Bank and Beirut,
to the problem of looting,
I
"diachronic comparative
approaches" to heritage, to
the traditional paeans for the
preservation of global heritage
for future generations. Images
of shattered buildings and
ancient landscapes pockmarked
seen
Ito by illegal digging photos
so often in these circles- still
have not lost their original sting,
and evoked sharp draws of breath
and sad'tsks" from the crowd when
projected on the screen,
A self-assured George gave a brief
sketch of the current state of the
Iraqi National Museum and a profile
of those who continue to loot the
country, while avoiding any mention
of the Coalition or the current Iraqi
government s role in preserving the
country's heritage. Apart from the
organized gangs, he explained, were
the lower-middle-class and poor
Iraqis, who had little education in
ancient history and saw the material
(continuedonpage 64)

* May/June2007
ARCHAEOLOGY
Archaeology Magazine - May/June 2007

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