April 28, 2010
This blog is closed
September 16, 2008
Calling it quits?
As it is apparent to me now that quite a few of the people supposedly still involved in trying to help protect the archaeological heritage of Iraq, are more concerned with petty quarrels and finger pointing, I think I'll be calling it quits as far as this blog is concerned. I may leave the archive up as my traffic statistics do indicate that IW&A continues to be used every day. I enjoyed trying to be of some assistance esp. in 2003-2004, I even think I did at least a few things right, but I have no time or energy to spare anymore to deal with such futile arguing.
Sorry!
Sorry!
August 31, 2008
Baghdad Museum, Clarington, Ontario
A while back, I was emailed a poem, written by Antony Di Nardo in the Winter of 2004, which I'd like to share.
•
Baghdad Museum, Clarington, Ontario
after visiting an exhibit* of work by contemporary artists
at the Clarington Gallery** responding to the looting
of the Baghdad Museum during the invasion of Iraq
We can see the war just north of the 401,
the ziggurats of ancient sand
crumbling on these walls and around the world
outside these rooms
there’s a bowl of brass and a bowl of clay
and a bowl of souls
launching into media desperate dreams of red white
and blue soldiers wasted
in their helmets, the soft sands of time like hands lost
in the Ur-glass groping for
the artifacts of the week that’s gone, the world that fell,
the wreck of the reckoning past
with the old ways under foot, we have to face them all again
in headlines, op eds, talking heads,
and to think that on this side of the world we juxtapose
cinema Dorothy’s
ruby-painted shoes circa 1940 beatified to praise those deserted
years of Hollywood,
but not quite so in a military grab, in a colonel’s gab, so what,
so fuckin’ what
if the lapis lazuli is lost in the rubble, the Sumerians'
first record of the first
writings blown to smithereens, the armed tanks rumbling
outside spent museums
guarded by grenades, the irony of the fear of native looters
now that the past is pillaged,
the clay pots the clay heads the clay soldiers here at the end of time,
the time they slipped up,
marching on a painting of the elegant skeleton man in the valley
of the thirsty kings, the Tigris
and Euphrates, picked like a peach a plum a date palm
stuffed in an old man’s head
for desert shade, for the justification of justice done to all,
the way forward
lost and lost again in the long-time lion and the bear
resurrected out of wax,
out of a time of hunger, the lion sinking into the bleak
bear’s haunches –
these were all on the walls, in the rooms, under the roof
beneath the winter sky in Clarington
among the dreaded wombs of unwed mothers, the video
that failed to show itself
the truth, the march of crimes on blue floors cycling through
the columns of the right
and left guard watched over by the sullen eyes which a princess
slave with double-sided tape
peeled off her mouth her feet her object of desire
that they’ll never get
like the deer with antlers radiant on someone else's wall
calls affection to itself
and the buckskin warriors in camouflage and fitted boots
glued to their maps and guns
and helmets wired to the skulls behind the masks we look through
with our eyes on the first frontier
where we see a man made of steel, and outside in the snow,
in a glass case,
the man made of burs, the footprints that were made
in the snow to get us here
and back again to the 401, the angle of the sun this winter’s day
so blinding.
* Catalog picture shown above; BAGHDAD MUSEUM, January 11-25, 2004, Exhibition Curated/Essay by Margaret Rodgers, Project Coordination: Margaret Rodgers and the Iris Group, ISBN 0-9733768-1-3, Price: $3.00
** Clarington Gallery is affiliated with the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington in Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada.
Baghdad Museum, Clarington, Ontario
after visiting an exhibit* of work by contemporary artistsat the Clarington Gallery** responding to the looting
of the Baghdad Museum during the invasion of Iraq
We can see the war just north of the 401,
the ziggurats of ancient sand
crumbling on these walls and around the world
outside these rooms
there’s a bowl of brass and a bowl of clay
and a bowl of souls
launching into media desperate dreams of red white
and blue soldiers wasted
in their helmets, the soft sands of time like hands lost
in the Ur-glass groping for
the artifacts of the week that’s gone, the world that fell,
the wreck of the reckoning past
with the old ways under foot, we have to face them all again
in headlines, op eds, talking heads,
and to think that on this side of the world we juxtapose
cinema Dorothy’s
ruby-painted shoes circa 1940 beatified to praise those deserted
years of Hollywood,
but not quite so in a military grab, in a colonel’s gab, so what,
so fuckin’ what
if the lapis lazuli is lost in the rubble, the Sumerians'
first record of the first
writings blown to smithereens, the armed tanks rumbling
outside spent museums
guarded by grenades, the irony of the fear of native looters
now that the past is pillaged,
the clay pots the clay heads the clay soldiers here at the end of time,
the time they slipped up,
marching on a painting of the elegant skeleton man in the valley
of the thirsty kings, the Tigris
and Euphrates, picked like a peach a plum a date palm
stuffed in an old man’s head
for desert shade, for the justification of justice done to all,
the way forward
lost and lost again in the long-time lion and the bear
resurrected out of wax,
out of a time of hunger, the lion sinking into the bleak
bear’s haunches –
these were all on the walls, in the rooms, under the roof
beneath the winter sky in Clarington
among the dreaded wombs of unwed mothers, the video
that failed to show itself
the truth, the march of crimes on blue floors cycling through
the columns of the right
and left guard watched over by the sullen eyes which a princess
slave with double-sided tape
peeled off her mouth her feet her object of desire
that they’ll never get
like the deer with antlers radiant on someone else's wall
calls affection to itself
and the buckskin warriors in camouflage and fitted boots
glued to their maps and guns
and helmets wired to the skulls behind the masks we look through
with our eyes on the first frontier
where we see a man made of steel, and outside in the snow,
in a glass case,
the man made of burs, the footprints that were made
in the snow to get us here
and back again to the 401, the angle of the sun this winter’s day
so blinding.
* Catalog picture shown above; BAGHDAD MUSEUM, January 11-25, 2004, Exhibition Curated/Essay by Margaret Rodgers, Project Coordination: Margaret Rodgers and the Iris Group, ISBN 0-9733768-1-3, Price: $3.00
** Clarington Gallery is affiliated with the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington in Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada.
August 29, 2008
IW&A word cloud
I have just discovered this wondeful tool: Wordle. "Wordle is a toy for generating 'word clouds' from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes." This is the result for the IW&A Blog site:
Food for thought...
Food for thought...
August 14, 2008
Check out my other blog: Word Face-Off
Check out my other blog, Word Face-Off, which strikes a lighter tone than IW&A. For every post, I select two words or concepts and find their popularity in Google (relative) and Google News (absolute), using Google Trends. The resulting graph is instructive or interesting or unexpected or... you tell me! My IW&A blogging will continue but with a slow pace for the time being.Technorati Profile
August 09, 2008
Ossendrijver Iraq photos, 2
I know I haven't posted for some time... Here's something to tide you over: more Mathieu Ossendrijver photos from his Iraq trip in 2000 (I posted the 1st batch in 2006—time flies!). This time they were taken at the archaeological site of Aqar Quf (ancient Dur Kurigalzu, approximately 30 km/19 mi W of Baghdad). It was the capital for a while during the Kassite period, occupied from the 14th-12th cent. BC. See also University of Chicago Oriental Institute. Archaeological Site Photography for more pictures. The most prominent feature is the remains of the ziggurat with the surrounding (reconstructed) buildings:
June 23, 2008
Remember Iraq?
I know it's easy to get swept up in the fervor of the US presidential race. There are floods in the Midwestern US, the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe is showing one more time what a dictatorship looks like. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are expecting another baby—twins even! But... but the situation in Iraq is still a catastrophe of gigantic proportions, even though the media are not paying much attention to it anymore. Dr. Juan Cole, on his esteemed Informed Comment blog, reminds us of the ongoing tragedy, a situation where "normal" is a condition that in any Western country would be considered a total chaotic disaster, a breakdown of society as we know it:
"By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships on densely populated city and town quarters.He continues:
In absolute numbers, that would be like bombing to death everyone in Pittsburgh, Pa. Or Cincinnati, Oh.
Only, the US is 11 times more populous than Iraq, so 310,000 Iraqi corpses would equal 3.4 million dead Americans. So proportionally it would be like firebombing to death everyone in Chicago."
"The wars of Iraq-- the Iran-Iraq War, the repressions of the Kurds and the Shiites, the Gulf War, and the American Calamity, may have left behind as many as 3 million widows. Having lost their family's breadwinner, many are destitute."And:
"But over 500 a month dead in political violence is appalling enough. The Srebenica massacre in 1995 killed 8,000. At the average rate of death in Iraq this winter and spring, a similar massacre will have been racked up in 2008. In the Northern Ireland troubles over 30 years, about 3,000 people died, and it was widely considered a bad situation. That death toll is still being achieved every 6 months in Iraq according to the official May statistics.I could keep on quoting but you must read this article completely, yes, I mean you!
And, of course, by the rule of 11,that death toll would be like nearly 6,000 Americans dying in political violence every month, or 72,000 a year. (Note that this 72,000 figure would only be political deaths, since it does not include criminal homicides). The annual total murder rate in the US is about 16,000, including political violence, what little there is. The US is one of the most violent societies on earth, and Iraq in May makes it look like a pacifist convention."
June 20, 2008
Protecting heritage at times of war
There's a good article out in the latest issue of the Getty Newsletter, co-written by Corinne Wegener for whom I have a lot of respect:
Further along she writes:
In response to her experiences in Iraq, she has been instrumental in founding the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield (USCBS) as well as, together with her co-author Marjan Otter, the Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield which will co-ordinate the national organizations' work in times of armed conflict or natural disaster. I will give Mses. Wegener and Otter the last word:
"At the end of 1943, as war raged in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote to his commanders in Italy, clearly expressing his intent to spare cultural property from damage whenever possible:'Today we are fighting in a country which has contributed a great deal to our cultural inheritance, a country rich in monuments which by their creation helped and now in their old age illustrate the growth of the civilization which is ours. We are bound to respect those monuments so far as war allows.'This statement and other protective measures for cultural property were a direct result of concerted efforts by governments, the military, and cultural heritage professionals of many of the Allied nations to protect Europe's cultural heritage during World War II."
Further along she writes:"The Coalition Forces in Iraq did not have the kind of M[onuments, ]F[ine ]A[rts, and ]A[rchives] units that were present during World War II. While most countries still have Civil Affairs units, few cultural heritage personnel serve in today's military, leaving most military commanders without this expert advice. Furthermore, units receive little training on cultural property protection beyond instructions to avoid damage during military operations. Some European nations maintain Civil-Military Cooperation units, including a small force of reservists who are cultural heritage professionals; however, their deployment is often hindered by their nation's rules regarding entry into combat areas."
In response to her experiences in Iraq, she has been instrumental in founding the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield (USCBS) as well as, together with her co-author Marjan Otter, the Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield which will co-ordinate the national organizations' work in times of armed conflict or natural disaster. I will give Mses. Wegener and Otter the last word:
"The choice is ours. If we, as cultural heritage professionals, continue to act as individuals and function within a variety of discrete organizations, we will almost certainly fail the next time colleagues in a war-torn country need us. However, if we unite in support of the Blue Shield organizations created to protect cultural heritage during armed conflict, we can make our voices heard and perhaps even be influential enough to prevent the 'next time.'"
June 09, 2008
Iraqi heritage status update
At the UCLA/Getty Storage Symposium I was frequently asked about how the archaeological heritage of Iraq is faring these days. Also, today I am cleaning out my email inbox and came across some stuff I hadn't looked at yet. The Los Angeles Times published an excellent article back in January:
I would also like to thank SAFE - Saving Antiquities for Everyone for their continuing efforts. Recently, they again organized a Global Candlelight Vigil to remember the anniversary of the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad five years ago. One of the vigils was held at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ:
Finally, some good news. Syrian authorities seem to step up their efforts to intercept smuggling of ancient Iraqi artifacts (Report: Syrian customs officials seize 40 Iraqi stolen museum pieces from smugglers, in the International Herald Tribune, May 21, 2008):
"BAGHDAD -- He works as a blacksmith in one of Baghdad's swarming Shiite slums. But at least once a month, Abu Saif tucks a pistol into his belt, hops into a minibus taxi and speeds south. His goal: to unearth ancient treasures from thousands of archaeological sites scattered across southern Iraq."Read the whole article, it paints a pretty good picture of the situation. Also, the New York Times published a good article in February on the National Library in Baghdad and its courageous director Saad Eskander:
"Saad Eskander, the director of Iraq’s National Library and Archive in Baghdad, finally had some time to catch up on his diary after a couple of very busy weeks. As he wrote in his latest entry, he was having trouble repairing the Internet system; the Restoration Laboratory 'was hit by 5 bullets;' and 'another librarian, who works at the Periodical Department, received a death threat. He has to leave his house and look for another one, as soon as he can; otherwise, he will be murdered.'"Read it. Both articles were brought to my attention by the Iraqcrisis mailing list where many fine colleagues (esp. Chuck Jones) post the little information we are still able to obtain.
I would also like to thank SAFE - Saving Antiquities for Everyone for their continuing efforts. Recently, they again organized a Global Candlelight Vigil to remember the anniversary of the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad five years ago. One of the vigils was held at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ:
Finally, some good news. Syrian authorities seem to step up their efforts to intercept smuggling of ancient Iraqi artifacts (Report: Syrian customs officials seize 40 Iraqi stolen museum pieces from smugglers, in the International Herald Tribune, May 21, 2008):
"... the pieces were seized at al-Tanaf crossing on the Syrian-Iraqi border. They were hidden in a bag in an Iraqi crossing into Syria. The artifacts include different-sized glassware and clay tools." "This is the third smuggling attempt aborted in less than two months by Syrian customs officials. Last month, the Syrian Cultural Ministry handed Iraq back some 700 pieces of looted priceless antiquities seized inside Syria."
June 08, 2008
Live blogging the UCLA/Getty Storage Symposium (part 9)
There was sunshine, coffee and cookies—not for me, I'm a diabetic :-( —and we're back in the auditorium of the Fowler Museum. John Lynch (UCLA) presents: Tracing Portable Archaeological Finds: The UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology and the Challenges of Digital Archaeology. It's all about context! We gather more of it nowadays than ever before but our publishing and storing of it hasn't changed: paper. Digital publishing has all these advantages: updatable, as many images (in color) as you want, etc. But we still usually make facsimiles of the paper versions. The UEE is going further, e.g., geographical and geospatial searching/interacting. You can take info and use it in Google Earth, even with, for instance, chronological evolution of a site and its 3D-reconstructed buildings. The process of going back and gathering the data for 3D models of excavated buildings can lead to correction of the original (paper) publication, e.g., Robert Cargill's new theory on Qumran. The technology used by the Wii (with its handheld location determination in reference to a fixed point) could allow for easier collection of geospatial data. Open-access, public data is what is needed: complete, timely. He mentions the Open Context database and pointed me out as the one to ask expert questions... A typical report is an interpretation of what was excavated, which is good, but why not also publish all primary data to allow colleagues to searching across excavation datasets and solving new questions. It does also allow for long-term preservation of data as copies spread all over the world. Why is the new approach not widely adopted? Sharing is not encouraged: data receives its value from being secret, you need it for publications that will give you tenure. Furthermore, policies in different countries and licensing authorities are not yet requiring open access. There is also the problem of technical difficulties. Open Context uses ArchaeoML, an XML-based format. The content of the UEE will be peer reviewed and authors' rights will be reserved for limited time.
Liz Werden presents Condition Change at Painted Rock: 3D Laser Scanning for Conservation Documentation. Painted Rock is located inside Carrizo Plain National Monument, in San Luis Obispo county, California. By the way, I notice that the official website of the National Monument doesn't seem to mention the rock art, which is probably for the better. Oddly enough the US Geological Service has pictures up on their website (see the photo I used). She mentions that for every day of scanning, you have to count on 5 days of processing.
Craig Mauzy (American School of Classical Studies at Athens) talks about Analog to Digital: Transforming the Agora Collections to the 21st century. The ASCSA has been excavating the Agora in Athens, Greece, for the past 77 years. He shows an interactive QTVR (Quicktime Virtual Reality) tour of the Agora site. They are mandated by Greek policies to eventually provide open access to their excavation data and research. Nearly 400 houses were on top of the excavation site before work was started in the 1930s. They are now transferring the card catalogue into a digital database and scan the photographic archive. When they are excavating today, they enter items immediately into the database.That concludes the symposium. It was very interesting. I hope I didn't bore some people too much ;-)
Update: I corrected a location name.
Live blogging the UCLA/Getty Storage Symposium (part 8)
I had lunch with colleagues on a sunny patio. Nice to be back inside an air-conditioned building though :-) Here we go with the next session: Developing Virtual Collections, introduced by Diane Favro (UCLA).
Our first speaker is Ron Street (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York): Molding Reliefs from the Pyramid of Amenemhat I, and 3-Dimensional Imaging for Sculpture Conservation. He is most of his time involved in making commercial replicas but also does scholarly projects. He went to the actual 12th-dynasty pyramid of Amenemhat I (ca. 1970 BC) in Lisht, Egypt. For large items, milling is still the only affordable way of making a facsimile. 3D-imaging produces a better replica however. It was used in the re-reconstruction of the Ur-Nammu stele to create a virtual model that allowed to improve upon the original reconstruction from the early 20th cent. It's not back in the galleries yet. He shows other projects, emphasizing that the hand of a skilled artist is still needed to do the ultimate retouching and finishing of a facsimile.
Next is Jean-Angelo Beraldin (NRC Institute for Information Technology, Canada) focuses on 3D scanning, modeling and processing. The patented technology that the Visual Information Technology Group developed is even used by NASA. He shows a video giving a brief overview of cultural-heritage applications of their 3D expertise. There are 3 acquisition methods: triangulation, time of flight, inferometry. Using 3D data and modeling software is not easy to use, the experience of the scanner matters. Color is added either by measuring reflectivity or by draping photos over the 3D model. Technologies are comercially available but mostly for manufacturing and infrastructure industries. A business model is still missing for cultural heritage applications.
Kandace Pansire (UCLA) speaks on The Difficulties of Preserving Spatial Context: Karanis, tourism and the olive oil industry. Ancient Karanis (modern Kom Aushim, in the Fayum oasis) yielded a large amount of papyri. The local sebakhin used the mudbrick for fertilizer and even put in a small railroad for transport. Consequently, a lot of the site is just destroyed, gone. Also, the architectural remains exposed by the old University of Michigan expedition in the 1920s-1930s have since decayed substantially. The new archaeological project is a collaboration of UCLA and the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (The Netherlands). She surveyed the area and found olive grinding stones, presses and settling vats. It is hard to ascertain often whether they are still in their original location. This a tourist site, tourists pick up stuff and drop it elsewhere. A road is lined with olive presses, probably not placed there in antiquity. She is trying to preserve the spatial context using GIS and virtual modeling. The project doesn't have the finances to use better technologies.
Our first speaker is Ron Street (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York): Molding Reliefs from the Pyramid of Amenemhat I, and 3-Dimensional Imaging for Sculpture Conservation. He is most of his time involved in making commercial replicas but also does scholarly projects. He went to the actual 12th-dynasty pyramid of Amenemhat I (ca. 1970 BC) in Lisht, Egypt. For large items, milling is still the only affordable way of making a facsimile. 3D-imaging produces a better replica however. It was used in the re-reconstruction of the Ur-Nammu stele to create a virtual model that allowed to improve upon the original reconstruction from the early 20th cent. It's not back in the galleries yet. He shows other projects, emphasizing that the hand of a skilled artist is still needed to do the ultimate retouching and finishing of a facsimile.Next is Jean-Angelo Beraldin (NRC Institute for Information Technology, Canada) focuses on 3D scanning, modeling and processing. The patented technology that the Visual Information Technology Group developed is even used by NASA. He shows a video giving a brief overview of cultural-heritage applications of their 3D expertise. There are 3 acquisition methods: triangulation, time of flight, inferometry. Using 3D data and modeling software is not easy to use, the experience of the scanner matters. Color is added either by measuring reflectivity or by draping photos over the 3D model. Technologies are comercially available but mostly for manufacturing and infrastructure industries. A business model is still missing for cultural heritage applications.Kandace Pansire (UCLA) speaks on The Difficulties of Preserving Spatial Context: Karanis, tourism and the olive oil industry. Ancient Karanis (modern Kom Aushim, in the Fayum oasis) yielded a large amount of papyri. The local sebakhin used the mudbrick for fertilizer and even put in a small railroad for transport. Consequently, a lot of the site is just destroyed, gone. Also, the architectural remains exposed by the old University of Michigan expedition in the 1920s-1930s have since decayed substantially. The new archaeological project is a collaboration of UCLA and the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (The Netherlands). She surveyed the area and found olive grinding stones, presses and settling vats. It is hard to ascertain often whether they are still in their original location. This a tourist site, tourists pick up stuff and drop it elsewhere. A road is lined with olive presses, probably not placed there in antiquity. She is trying to preserve the spatial context using GIS and virtual modeling. The project doesn't have the finances to use better technologies.Live blogging the UCLA/Getty Storage Symposium (part 7)
Back from the coffee break. Now we have my old professor at UCLA presenting a paper, Giorgio Buccellati. He discusses the Urkesh Global Record, a real-time publication system of the portable finds from the ongoing excavation at Tell Mozan—I'm an alumnus of that dig myself (1988). The royal palace they uncovered dates back to 2250 BC. A temple (late Chalcolithic-1300 BC) was built on a terrace next to a plaza. The recording system is very extensive and there is an auditing process. The entries can then be incrementally added to as items are studied typologically. The great bulk of the finds consists of ceramic sherds and bone. The database allows for immediate publication of finds as lots of details were immediately entered (stratigraphical, functional). 
They also make sure that the excavated walls which are at least partially mud brick are preserved by constructing removable covers. Even after 20+ years, the walls haven't deteriorated. They adhere to an incremental publication philosophy. They have Syrian students (5 currently) on the dig too. He applied for a grant inside UCLA for the website. Archaeological websites that are recognized and used a lot are usually presenting data, he also wants to provide an argument, matters that are less pure data. The web environment also allows to make that argument in innovative ways that can't be done on paper. So it should get the same respect so to speak as paper publications. A colleague pointed out the website Architecture, Restoration, and Imaging of the Maya Cities of Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil and Labná - The Puuc Region, Yucatán, México. During the discussion, Wellman is offering the template of his condition survey database (CARS) to use freely for any colleague (open source!).Update: You can contact Howard Wellman by email at wellmanconservation@comcast.net.
