The archaeology of conflict damaged sites: Hosn Niha in the Biqaʾ Valley, Lebanon.

Summary

When faced with the destruction of archaeological sites through conflict, and the accompanying loss of knowledge, what can archaeologists do? Archaeologists, politicians, and many others recognise that damage to heritage is irreversible and has very serious, lasting consequences. The impact of war on archaeological sites is rightly an area of great significance and concern to archaeologists and other heritage professionals, and is increasingly an area of research and debate, both within and outside academic circles. In this paper we use the example of a site in Lebanon which has been severely damaged by multiple conflict episodes to show that by careful fieldwork and analysis a great deal can be learned from an apparently destroyed site. Following an initial appraisal of the site damage, it was felt that by using an appropriate range of fieldwork methods useful information not only in assessing the effect of conflict on a site, but also about the development of the site could be gathered and meaningful results produced.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Post-conflict Archaeology

Keywords

Spatial Coverage