Assessment of the impact of the Syrian conflict on archaeological sites in the Daraa region

Abstract

To date, the attention of both local and global cultural heritage preservation initiatives in Daraa Province, southern Syria, have focused on the well-known Bosra World Heritage site. A comprehensive investigation of damage to Daraa’s many other archaeological sites, poorly studied in comparison to other parts of Syria, has until now, not been undertaken. This study, for the first time, attempts to remedy this, by detailing 1632 instances of damage across 196 archaeological sites surveyed using freely available high-resolution satellite images captured between 2004 and 2022. A key element of this dataset is that it indicates that while the types of damage to heritage sites identified are similar to those that have been documented elsewhere in Syria, the temporal and spatial patterning of this damage can be related to specific local conditions and events. This underscores the need for large-scale studies undertaken using remote sensing, to be grounded within an understanding of local circumstances, to maximize their information value.