Abstract
The American Schools of Oriental Research Cultural Heritage Initiatives (ASOR CHI) continues to address the cultural heritage crisis in Syria and Northern Iraq by: (1) monitoring, reporting, and fact-finding; (2) promoting global awareness; and (3) conducting emergency response projects and developing post-conflict rehabilitation plans. As part of this mission, ASOR CHI, through a public–government collaboration with the United States of America (US) Department of State, has been provided with access to hundreds of thousands of satellite images, some within 24 h of the image being taken, in order to assess reports of damage to cultural heritage sites, to discover unreported damage, and to evaluate the impacts of such incidents. This work is being done across an inventory of over 13,000 cultural heritage sites in the affected regions. The available dataset of satellite imagery is significantly larger than the scales that geospatial specialists within archaeology have dealt with in the past. This has necessitated a rethinking of how the project uses satellite imagery and how ASOR CHI and future projects can more effectively undertake the important work of cultural heritage monitoring and damage assessment.
Highlights
The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) established the Cultural Heritage Initiatives (CHI) in 2014 to assist in addressing the current cultural heritage crises in the conflict zones of Syria and Northern Iraq, the worst such catastrophe since the Second World War
While the intersection of all three sources of information has proven critical to CHI’s success, this article will primarily focus on the analysis enabled by the third of these sources—satellite imagery—within the modality of monitoring and assessing cultural heritage damage to the built environment, in Syria and Northern Iraq
Additional special reports have been compiled in response to particular events or tactics of significance to cultural heritage, and some of these appear on the CHI website
Summary
The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) established the Cultural Heritage Initiatives (CHI) in 2014 to assist in addressing the current cultural heritage crises in the conflict zones of Syria and Northern Iraq, the worst such catastrophe since the Second World War. Sustained ground and aerial combat, intensified by long-standing ethno-sectarian tensions and international intervention, have resulted in widespread damage and destruction to individual heritage sites and whole urbanscapes. Extremists such as the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) have deliberately destroyed hundreds of ancient monuments, mosques, churches, shrines, cemeteries, and other sites, as part of a systematized campaign of cultural cleansing, enacted to advance radical ideologies and to achieve more worldly military, political, and economic objectives. Our overriding vision entails empowering local communities to preserve and protect cultural resources through the establishment of broad and diverse coalitions Such nimble, adaptive, and cost-effective responses appear to be the future of the field and form an integral part of broader international humanitarian conflict resolution, and post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery efforts [10]. Cultural heritage case studies, monitored by the project, will illustrate the importance of these developments and the challenges faced in monitoring and assessing cultural heritage during times of instability and conflict
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