Spolia and Spoilage of the Archaeological Environment. Construction - Destruction - Reconstruction: The Case of the Historical Center of Athens. Destruction. Archaeological, Philological and Historical Perspectives. Edited by Jan Driessen. UCL, 2013. Stavros Oikonomidis. (original) (raw)

The research intends to investigate the link between accidental destruction due to natural disasters, such as earthquakes or spontaneous collapses, and intentional destruction operated by unfortunate conservation and restoration strategies. In order to conceptually embrace the buildings’ decay as inalienable, the essay aims at establishing a parallelism between what the nature has destroyed and the strategies to fix to such damage, and what has been modified or destructed, instead, by human work, often scarcely aware of the historical, value-driven and technological properties of the asset. The article will examine many archeological realities present in Asia Minor and attributable to the Roman or late Roman age, with the purpose to provide for operational examples of intervention and modification of the archeological context and to fulfill a parallelism that proposes itself as interesting critical reading of the intervention strategies.

Over the last decades, archaeological heritage has suffered considerably from threats caused by armed conflict. The destruction of Bamiyan's Buddhas in Afghanistan, the Iraqi museums ransacking and looting and, more recently, the destruction of Palmyra by Daesh (also referred to as IS, ISIS or ISIL) are among the most famous examples. Before they were damaged, the public did not know most of these heritage sites, which, nevertheless, were appropriated as symbols of Western values against the ideology of Islamic extremists. UNESCO defined the deliberate destruction of Syria's cultural heritage as a war crime and the academic world is launching several projects aiming at preserving endangered archaeological heritage. At the same time, antiquity trafficking from Syria and Iraq to Europe and United States represents one of the most relevant revenues for Daesh. The debate on the notion of appropriation and ownership, the role of a globalized scientific archaeology and the impact of armed conflict on archaeological practice are topics that this issue of Ex Novo wants to address. We will welcome papers exploring the various ways the past is remembered, recovered, created, and used. In particular, we want to discuss the role of archaeology in present-day conflicts and its function as peacekeeping tool or as a weapon of war.

The paper from Driessen's Destruction conference in UCLouvain, looking at settlement structure in the Aegean; basically a core chapter of book project on settlement structure in the Aegean.

In H. Barnard (ed.) Archaeology Outside the Box, pp. 9-18. Los Angeles, CA: Cotsen Institute. In this chapter Doug Bailey describes and discusses his controversial destruction of an amphora at the Theoretical Archaeology Group (USA) sessions in 2019 at Syracuse University (with apologies to Ai Weiwei). Issues of interest include the following: the creative power of destruction, art/archaeology, visual archaeology, and questioning the basis of archaeology and historical conservation. In addition, Doug discusses his "Ineligible" project exhibited in Portugal at the International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture (Santo Tirso) and Carpintarias de São Lázaro (Lisbon) in 2020 and 2021.

Needs for protecting cultural manifestations marked as ‘heritage’ are often claimed when they are at the risk of destruction or when they are being destructed. Considering destruction as opposed to protection, groups concerned with heritage, such as the state agencies, archaeologists, and the locals, tend to emphasise the value of heritage. Focusing on the case of the Roman mosaics discovered in Zeugma, southeast Turkey, this paper explores the ways in which the destruction of heritage is perceived and understood, and what aspect of destruction is emphasised to claim its significance for heritage. Analysing in what way destruction of the Zeugma mosaics is problematised, this paper also considers the political aspects of presenting the destruction of heritage, in particular, in campaigns for heritage preservation. Through this, the paper examines how stories of destruction work to produce and enhance the distinction between protection and destruction, and suggests how the fragmentary or ruined state of heritage objects can be alluring. Keywords: heritage value; destruction; museum exhibition; Turkey

B. Olsen and Þ. Pétursdóttir (eds.) Ruin Memories: Materiality, Aesthetics and the Archaeology of the Recent Past. London: Routledge

An archaeology of ruins

Published in the student run archaeology Journal known as the Posthole.. It's online. It's in issue 47

With the growth of the so-called Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the world is being forced to contemplate if there is any way we can ever comprehensively prevent cultural heritage of international significance falling into the hands of terrorists. The international community also has to consider the uncomfortable truth that how we handle the current crisis will send a clear message to the next group of extremists: Will the message be one of strength or impotence?