Community Heritage in the Arab Region: Values and Practices (One World Archaeology) 3031074459, 9783031074455

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One World Archaeology

Arwa Badran Shatha Abu-Khafajah Sarah Elliott   Editors

Community Heritage in the Arab Region Values and Practices

One World Archaeology Series Editors Inés Domingo Sanz, Department of Prehistory, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Naoko Matsumoto, Department of Archaeology, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan

Arwa Badran • Shatha Abu-Khafajah Sarah Elliott Editors

Community Heritage in the Arab Region Values and Practices

Editors Arwa Badran Formerly of the Department of Archaeology Durham University Durham, UK Sarah Elliott Independent Scholar London, UK

Shatha Abu-Khafajah Department of Architectural Engineering Faculty of Engineering The Hashemite University Zarqa, Jordan

ISSN 2625-8641     ISSN 2625-865X (electronic) One World Archaeology ISBN 978-3-031-07445-5    ISBN 978-3-031-07446-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

In memory of our dear contributors, Nada Atrash, Bert de Vries and Adel Yahya, who we sadly lost during the production of this volume. Their life’s work was dedicated to preserving and promoting cultural heritage, and we are forever grateful for their inspiring contribution to the Arab region community heritage praxis and scholarship.

Foreword

This is a courageous book. It explores the ways in which local communities can play a role in safeguarding the rich heritage in the Arab region, a part of the world often portrayed in the media as being afflicted by immigration, war, poverty and social unrest. The editors acknowledge that archaeological and architectural heritage do not stand alone and that monuments have associated natural, ethnographic and intangible cultural heritage that give them greater meaning. They are also aware that defining ‘the Arab Region’ is problematic; Arab countries are not uniform and do not have the same cultural histories or identical forms of heritage. By recognising and celebrating these differences, the editors emphasise the importance of acknowledging all forms of heritage across the Arab countries and bring stimulating and fresh forms of enquiry from a wide range of authors who provide perspectives from Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Sharjah, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Iraq. I write ‘courageous’ because the authors challenge the role of states in monopolising heritage management and heritage discourse, the effect being that local voices are excluded as heritage is safeguarded and interpreted by powerful, dedicated authorities, by expert and elite opinion. Consequently, there are no efforts made to look beyond the monuments, to enable local community opinions, values and concerns to be heard, and be taken into account. The concept of engaging with local people and encouraging partnerships remains an alien concept in many Arab countries, where state control over heritage is deeply entrenched. Heritage is dominated by authority at every level, by national organisations and international bodies such as UNESCO; power lies with these authorities, so creating a gulf between them and local communities. There is also a gulf in educational terms as pre-Islamic cultures do not feature in the traditional teaching of history, literature and art in the Arab region. The authors question what heritage means to these disenfranchised local communities and ask what changes are needed to encourage local involvement, and the procedures that could build a sense of community ownership and communal responsibility for their heritage, creating a sense of belonging and shaping cultural identity. In a changing world, it is increasingly important to hold on to the past, but communities must have the option to interpret their past in their own way, even when they contest the official versions of heritage or particular events, the dominant vii

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narratives that sustain a hierarchy of values that are different from their own. For this reason, the cultural concept of awneh, which features strongly in this volume, is of particular significance. It is a practice rooted in the Arab region related to community engagement and empowerment, one that can enable communities to work together to create their own meanings about heritage and play an active role in its safeguarding and interpretation. Education about the past is a significant strand in several chapters of this volume. Efforts to engage children in the critical investigation of heritage began in the second half of the twentieth century, notably in Jordan. The two chapters in Part IV are particularly revealing, describing two very different approaches to heritage education. In the Jordanian city of Jerash, a UNESCO-led project which involved several stakeholders resulted in the creation of an educational toolkit; the creation of a Girls Archaeology Club in Jordan’s capital Amman increased awareness of the archaeological heritage of the city through practical engagement that included site visits and taking part in excavations. In many ways, these two examples echo the difference (and arguably the perceived success) between authoritative or top-down approaches and a personal community-based or bottom-up initiative. Whatever process we utilise, having knowledge about the past is key. The Senegalese scholar Baba Dioum expressed this beautifully: ‘In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; we will understand only what we are taught’. A central feature in this volume is sustainability and the importance of sustaining cultural tourism in the region. Sustainable heritage tourism must demonstrate the conservation and sustainable use of natural, social and cultural resources and demands the full involvement of local communities leading to benefits for them, for the heritage sites and for tourists. Cultural tourism is a vital feature in the Arab region, an essential means of supporting local economies and local people; attractive cultural landscapes provide a link between archaeology, intangible cultural heritage, nature and history, a combination that is especially attractive to tourists. Sustainable tourism also provides the possibility for interaction between the local community and the tourist, so enabling local people to demonstrate pride in their area’s environment, heritage and culture. However, tourism has its dangers for heritage and local communities, and while chapters in this book acknowledge the importance of heritage tourism in the Arab world, including its contribution to local economies through job creation and sustaining local businesses, they also consider the impacts (often invisible or intangible) of heritage tourism on host communities and heritage resources. Heritage can be considered in many ways: as cultural memory, as an expression of local or national identity, as a tool for remembering or forgetting, as a way of recognising differences and as a link to place and to notions of belonging. All these concepts feature in this wide-ranging and informative book, yet the most important message conveyed here is that community involvement is essential if heritage is to be sustained and given meaning and value. The authors describe a wide range of methodologies being used to promote heritage education and to utilise inclusive approaches to the safeguarding and interpretation of heritage resources, using

Foreword

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tactics that merge theory and practice from western and eastern paradigms. The fascinating examples of good practice that feature in this volume throw much-­needed perspectives on an emerging and important movement towards the involvement of local communities in safeguarding and utilising the rich heritage found in the Arab region. School of Arts and Cultures Newcastle University Newcastle upon Tyne, UK [email protected]

Peter Davis

Acknowledgements

The contributors upon whom this volume rests deserve the first acknowledgement. The editors are enormously grateful for their expertise, enthusiasm, responsiveness and patience during the production of this publication. A special thanks go to the Springer editors for their interest in our work and to the anonymous readers for their insightful comments. We would like to acknowledge with gratitude the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University, where we met and where our shared community heritage passions were so finely nurtured. Finally, our appreciation and thanks to our families, true supporters throughout.

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Introduction: Shifting the Gaze – Community Heritage Modalities in the Arab Region

Introduction Following a deep disquiet that had pervaded the Arab world for some time across all layers of society, an opportunity or opening in the historical process (Sharabi, 1988) caught the world by surprise as the revolutionary year of 2011 exploded (Rogan, 2018). As Rogan (ibid., p. 6) noted, ‘After decades of stability under autocratic rulers, a seemingly unprecedented period of rapid and dramatic change engulfed states across the Arab world. It was as though the tectonic plates of Arab politics had shifted from geological to real time’. The so-called Arab Spring, representing the latest episode in a difficult recent history ‘strewn with skewed, unfinished, or failed revolutions’ (Sharabi, 1988), however, was a ‘brief if tragic hiatus’ in a regional story that saw Arab peoples press ‘for reforms to make their governments less autocratic and more accountable to their citizens’ (Rogan, 2018, p.  7). This critical challenge at home (the struggle over the ‘basic social contract’ remains a key driver of events in 2022), and ‘a history and contemporary reality of conflict that at times appears to be endemic to the region’ (Exell & Rico 2013, p. 4), coupled with the other great theme of modern Arab history – attempts to escape the dominance of foreign powers – are principal coordinates in the cartography of the region’s heritage debates. Destruction as a theme saturates discourse, coalescing around the ‘relationship and place of heritage in conflict and post-conflict contexts’ (Exell & Rico, 2013, 2016, p. 3), with key debates addressing issues allied to the widespread looting and illicit trafficking of artefacts, theft and devastation (both targeted and ‘collateral damage’) in war (Stone & Bajjaly, 2008), the way violent conflict shapes conditions in which archaeological knowledge is produced and used (Pollock & Lutz, 1994; Pollock & Bernbeck, 2005), and relationally, the entanglement of conflict with disciplinary histories and interventions (Meskell, 1998, 2020a; Boytner et al., 2010).1

 Popular narratives are also thematically inculcated with destruction, as they feature a ‘caricatured “Islamic” attitude to different forms of heritage’, within which an aversion for preservation is articulated through outrageous acts of iconoclasm (Rico & Lababidi, 2017, p. 95). 1

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Tracing a broad arc from the twentieth to the twenty-first century, Meskell (2020a) argues that just as ‘archaeological materialities and imaginaries’ are deeply interwoven in colonial contestation and struggles for self-determination, scholarship today has found purpose and funding in the region’s sites and times of crisis (see Cabot, 2019), its interlocutors and practitioners drawn to a new heritage industry of post-conflict documentation, training programmes and re-building. In these geographies of struggle, there are further destructive forces, the primary anchors of which are economic poverty, inequity and vulnerability.2 However, while violent conflict is a conditioning factor in the domain of heritage in part of the Arab constituency (Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq), in others (the Arabian Peninsula), a diaphanous calm problematises their inclusion in this established discourse, and more recent debates surrounding concerns inherent in cultural resource safeguarding agendas (e.g. that extend asymmetrical, colonial relationships) and with Western and expert opinions dominating the production of knowledge (Daher & Maffi, 2013) have more relevance. The tandem reaction of museological and cultural projects to the rapid rate of development and globalisation,3 fuelled by decades of vast hydrocarbon wealth flooding into the Peninsula (extra Yemen), underpins these discussions, but it is the explosion of museum building since the mid-2000s – particularly as manifest in multiple ‘mega-museums’,4 architecturally spectacular, managerially top-down and based on the contested ‘universal’ model – that has (Western media attained) prominence. Scholarly efforts have been made to explore previously obscured practice inside these museums (from the inside looking out), and significantly, the museological landscape that exists outside (Exell & Wakefield, 2016; Erskine-Loftus et al., 2016; Erskine-Loftus, 2013), but literature on more recent signs of shifts towards localising the sector and a divergence from ‘outsourcing’ cultural development as the region adjusts to less of a dependency on oil needs development. This lack of uniform trajectories emphasises the importance of nuance in understanding heritage formations located across the Arab collectivity as these debates develop, and thus defining the ‘the Arab Region’ geographically and as a constituency of enquiry for this volume was challenging. Although the region is united to some degree by geographic contiguity, associated institutionally through the Arab

 According to United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) data, 116.1 million people across 10 Arab countries (40.6% of the total population) were classified as poor, of whom 38 million (13.4%) live in acute poverty; another 25% were vulnerable to poverty (UNESCWA et al., 2017). 3  Exell and Rico (2016, p. 4) note that ‘Saudi Arabia and Yemen are potentially excluded from the same degree of global pressures, responding instead to internal dynamics and political reconfigurations that nonetheless resurface, transformed into global heritage concerns’. 4  These projects include: The National Museum of Qatar, The Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, The Zayed National Museum (UAE), The King Abdelaziz Center for World Culture (Saudi Arabia), The Museum of Islamic Art (Qatar) and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (Qatar). 2

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League,5 and societally bound by a common identity grounded in language6 and religion,7 with socio-political markers that have commonality in their neopatriarchal structures (see Sharabi, 1988), it is diverse, and contexts, histories and challenges are disparate – the Arabs are, as Rogan (2018, p. 15) observes, ‘at once one people and many peoples’. The authors recognise that labelling the region monolithically as ‘Arab’ could also be misleading, with a tendency to create narratives that ‘recede to a thin crescent of one pan-ethnic group’ (Barakat, 2018); not all the region’s inhabitants are Arab or indeed want to be defined as Arab (Hoyland cit. Barakat, 2018), and the conflation ‘tends to obviate the multiple affiliations and the different Pre-Islamic cultural backgrounds of “Arab” countries’ (Hassan & Youssef, 2008, p. 3).8 However, although there is a danger in artificiality and the simplifying, telescoping tendencies of creating a regional theme, the Arab region  – the Arabian Peninsula, the Fertile Crescent9 and North Africa10 – is sufficiently distinct to warrant specialised study in this volume, and its examination is a re-centring attempt around its suite of heritage debates, discourses and practices. We also endeavour to unsettle binaries (e.g. Orientalist approaches, placing heritage constructs and debates within or outwith a Western heritage paradigm; defining the Arab states as ‘liquid’, in opposition to the solid, safe and stable West, see Shafak, 2017) and offer a counter-narrative to traditional scrutinisation of the region that tends to focus on setbacks and the underestimation of achievements (cf. Ferabolli, 2015, p. 4). Heritage theory and practice presented by contributors to this volume is not depicted solely and exclusively in dualistic or negative terms; it is lively and engaged, with repertoires of meaningful, distinct activity deployed in different registers across the region. While those repertoires and local discourses do have vulnerabilities to dominant views and imposed value-systems (Rico, 2016, p.  27), i.e. formatted models synonymous with the heritage ‘holy trinity’  – UN/ UNESCO, international consultants/networks of expertise versed in Western

 The Arab League, first institutionalised as the League of Arab States in 1945, currently comprises 22 member states and is the oldest active regional organisation in the world. 6  There are, however, approximately 35 dialects of the Arabic language spoken across the Middle East and North Africa. 7  The majority of people adhere to Islam, although there are some Christian adherents as well as smaller ethno-religious minorities such as the Yezidis and Druzes. 8  Hassan and Youssef (2008, p. 3) also argue that the ‘historical integrity of the region… requires the inclusion of non-Arabic speaking countries like Turkey and Iran for a better understanding of the social dynamics of this part of the world’. 9  The authors recognize that the term ‘Fertile Crescent’ is a discursive formation ‘left over from the colonial production of knowledge’ (Bahrani cit. Exell & Rico 2013) and thus complicates its ‘pasts’. We use it for its specificity in embracing those countries to the north of the Arabian Peninsula - Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. 10  The authors have tried to do justice to the diversity of the Arab region by balancing the community heritage experiences of the Arabian Peninsula, the Fertile Crescent and North Africa. Inevitably, some countries take up more of the narrative and others – notably in North Africa – are neglected, which we regret. 5

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traditions, and states parties (Butler, 2010),11 it can be argued that alignments to a Western heritage tradition are becoming less rigid as more socially integrated practice/site management styles blur paradigmatic distinctions (Näser & Tully, 2019; Moser et al., 2002).12 Also, as Abu-Khafajah (2014, p. 150) notes vis-à-vis community archaeology in Jordan, the notion of a willing embrace and blind copying of Western approaches is often problematic as, paradigm shifts in archaeology that are based on engaging people’s perceptions of, intervention in, and interpretation of archaeology are hard to ‘copy’ from the West, as they imply a real engagement of, and with, people as part of a ‘democratic process’ that is community archaeology.

Distinctions are further obscured as participation is uncoupled from routinised endangerment narratives that frame heritage significance through reference to perceived threats (inf.); alternative, more ‘resilient heritage futures’, May (2020) argues, are created by such movement. In tackling and problematising heritage and community engagement, we enter a domain that elsewhere has received substantial scholarly attention – in Europe and the United States community heritage has been central to heritage developments since the 1970s but has emerged only recently in the Arab world and remains under-­ researched in Arab regional discourse. Community Heritage in the Arab Region: Values and Practices was conceived as a response to this lacuna, with accounts that open up awareness of what regionally informed community heritage can be, from ‘defiant memory’ (Said, 2000, p. 17) and a platform for a quiet politics of liberation (Palestine, Chap. 11), to advancing traditional ethnographic studies (e.g. oral history) through modern technology (Sharjah, Chap. 7), and integrating unconventional fields (e.g. visuality and landscape theory) to more broadly understand heritage perceptions (Syria and Iraq, Chap. 12). Shifting the gaze to the Arab region contests the comfortable stasis of the community heritage debate – the new norm (Chitty, 2016), in which the ‘community and heritage connection is one that is considered so natural an affinity that it hardly needs justification or explanation’ (Crooke, 2011, p. 25), and that ‘everything by way of engagement has been done and there is little left to achieve’ (Waterton & Watson, 2011, p. i), as it strives to explore the diversity, synergies and meanings of community engagement beyond well-rehearsed issues in this ‘new’ geographic location.

 It is important to note that these ‘holy trinity’ vulnerabilities also comprise the limited, and sometimes dysfunctional, bureaucratic tools and frameworks within which heritage administrators operate (Meskell cit. Bortolotto et al., 2020). These can appear Sisyphean, mechanistic and heavily technical (order, control, audit) (Müller, 2013, p. 2); project intentions at grant application are to involve local communities, but when implemented, the collaborative community footprint can be eclipsed by time spent on partner dynamics, budgeting, project phases, outcomes and publishing. 12  Erskine-Loftus (2016) also observes indistinct paradigmatic boundaries within Gulf museology; in this instance, a receptiveness to ways of synchronizing localism within globalism among Arab Gulf States has created ‘melded’ institutions. 11

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Community Heritage: Contextualising Emergences Heritage today is broadly recognised as a manifestation of the past conditioned by the present and its social construct, a ‘version of the past received through object and display, representation and engagements, spectacular location and events, memories and commemorations and the preparation of places for cultural purposes and consumption’ (Waterton & Watson, 2015, p. 1). Thus, it is through the public sphere that heritage in its myriad expressions can be appreciated beyond the fascination of studying ‘antiquities’ or objects within a circle of academics (Hassan et al., 2008), and through communities that heritage is imbued with political tension, without which it becomes a ‘unifying spectacle’ (Wright, 1985, p. 69) shorn of meanings outside the professional or aesthetic (Watson & Waterton, 2011, p. 3). From an early twenty-first century view, acknowledging the centrality of this interface and positing the idea that heritage/museum institutions and practitioners are more in concord with their communities than ever before13 would be relatively easy (Davis, 1999, p. 34). However, it is important to realise that institutionalised public access to, and engagement with heritage, and the knowledge associated with it, has a long history – Abt (2011, p. 115) refers to ‘two millennia of intersections among the uses of objects, the spaces of display, learning practices, and communities’ – and any discussion of community engagement and its intrinsic theoretical and practical challenges needs to be situated through contextualising its emergence historically and as part of Western-led heritage praxis. In Europe, recognition of the importance of public access to heritage is commonly traced back to the late Renaissance and articulated through the modality of the museum, as collections were transferred from private hands to form the foundations of institutions such as the Ashmolean (1683) and the Louvre Palace’s Grand Gallery (1793). The establishment of these and successor ‘public’ museums has been well documented (e.g. for the UK, see Lewis, 1992), with accounts linking their development to a much larger series of empowering social, political and economic changes that swept the Western world over centuries, precipitated by inter alia the intellectual activity of the Enlightenment and support for scientific reasoning, urbanisation and industrialisation, civic pride, an ethic of self-improvement and educational and recreational imperatives. There have been degrees of ‘going public’ (Abt cit. Macdonald, 2011, p. 112), with the scale and nature of public involvement waxing and waning, from a readily identifiable closeness in the middle and late nineteenth century to an evolving elitism in the early twentieth century (Davis, 1999, pp. 34–35). Since the 1970s, however, the practice of community engagement has been fundamental to heritage developments in the Euro-American sphere, when museums

 Macdonald (2011, p. 8), for example, notes the take up (although critiqued) of the prominent ‘new’ museological orthodoxy that is bound up in the sovereignty of the visitor, ‘and various linked ideas, such as “accessibility”, “diversity”, “community”, “interactivity”, [and] “visitor involvement”’. 13

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became ‘more wholly public’ (Abt, 2011), starting to play an actively constitutive social role and undergoing a radical reassessment of their didactic authority to represent narratives of the past and identity in the context of the so-called ‘culture wars’, a development of postmodernism and a rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment (Macdonald, 2011). At the same time, the arrival of post-­ processual archaeology acknowledged the difficulty in obtaining an objective truth and called for multivocality in interpreting the past, also leading to a growing awareness that constructing the past could no longer remain an authority held in the hands of archaeologists, rather a process influenced by the public (Ucko, 1983). Another key driver was the World Archaeological Congress held in 1986, the first large-­ scale, global discussion of the relationship between people and their heritage, where debates focused on ‘the political context in which archaeology is and always has been practiced and of the social role which its enquiries and its interpretations have historically played’ (Golson, 1988), proceedings that were later disseminated through the One Archaeology Series (e.g. Layton, 1988; Stone & MacKenzie, 1990). ‘Public Archaeology’ was proposed for the first time by McGimsey (1972) to describe the public in archaeology and has since been widely used and researched (Merriman, 2004; Matsuda & Okamura, 2011; Skeates et  al., 2012; Moshenska, 2017). It is one of several terms adopted by academics and practitioners seeking to pin down and define the variations14 in forms and levels of public engagement in the past, a cohort of expressions helpfully articulated by Moshenska (ibid., p. 6) in his seven-part, different and distinct yet overlapping typology: archaeologists working with the public (e.g. community archaeology run by heritage and academic institutions), archaeology done by the public (e.g. archaeological societies), public sector archaeology (e.g. CRM carried out on behalf of the public), archaeological education (e.g. schools and museums), open archaeology (e.g. public access to information), popular archaeology (e.g. TV) and academic public archaeology (e.g. studying archaeology in its various economic, political and social contexts). Although his typology is specific to archaeology, its application across all forms of heritage is inevitable. Of the seven types mentioned above, community archaeology  – or heritage  – emerges again, most certainly imbricating with others that refer to public participation in the production and consumption of heritage (e.g. ‘archaeology by the public’, see Thomas, 2017 for metal detectorists). At the other end of Moshenska’s pragmatic typology is a much broader outlook on community heritage proposed by Watson and Waterton (2011) as community engagement in its various manifestations in a global context. In recent years, this outlook has taken a more critical approach to exploring engagement in its fluid, multifaceted nature, leading to further scrutiny of some of the ‘taken for granted’ concepts of, inter alia, communities, dissonance, ownership, representation, politics, sense of place, memory, and  Perhaps the most noticeable of these variations within Western discourse is between the UK and the USA, where, for the latter, the concept of managing and protecting heritage for and on behalf of the public falls under Cultural Resources Management (CRM) (Okamura & Matsuda, 2011; Franklin & Moe, 2012; Moshenska, 2017). 14

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identity (ibid.; Smith & Waterton, 2009) that emerged from a multidisciplinary and cross-cultural theoretical and practical base. These debates, thought to have reached maturity, are still tantalising, revived again in what Waterton and Watson (2015, p. 1) describe as ‘an intellectual upheaval… flourishing in its incompleteness, relishing the chance to rake over the coals and construct its own perspicuous criticism from within – by those who are immersed in its projects’. The emergence of community heritage in the East – in the Arab region – is a different story. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to analyse the region’s past and present political, economic and social context surrounding the concept of ‘public’ (see e.g. Brichs, 2013; Hopkins & Ibrahim, 1997; Massad, 2001; Penner, 2019), it is worth noting that the gradual rise of societal power in the West did not have equivalence in the East. The Medieval period is perceived as the zenith of Islamic scholarship and scientific pursuit in the East, inspired by their Greek predecessors. During this time, the principles of secularism were advocated for most famously by Averroes, albeit quickly suppressed. Nonetheless, those principles and ideas soon travelled to Venice and through trade to the rest of Europe, paving the way for scientific reasoning and social movements. The Islamic Empire, conversely, was in decline, reaching its end with the fall of Andalusia in the fifteenth century, soon after which large swathes of the Arab region fell under Ottoman rule. This status quo persisted for four centuries until the end of the First World War when promising attempts to introduce a democratic political system by a group of influential Arab leaders were hurriedly steered away by colonial interest and mandate across the region, setting the trajectory for a gradual establishment of authoritarian government (Thompson, 2020). Opportunities for change were then further curtailed in a post-independence nation exhausted by political upheaval and conflicting interests, and the building blocks of democratic society – including inclusiveness and equality, freedom of speech and multivocality – were unable to gain traction. This narrative is, of course, by no means as simplistic, linear or regionally unified, neither is it intended to align to a polarised discourse (as sup.) on democracy; the intention is rather to position the concept of ‘public’ in the Arab states. Conversations about archaeology and heritage practices in the Arab region often draw on the colonial interest in the antiquities of the East and the legacy of that period. What began as exploration expeditions in the eighteenth century driven by a European Nationalist agenda, later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries developed into organised excavations, a vision of ‘museums’ and site management, and even the creation of legislation and structure for the sector (Hassan & Youssef, 2008). Some would even go as far as emphasising how heritage is currently managed overseas by former coloniser states (Mourad, 2008). Western input into the scholarship and management of archaeology in the Arab region deserves recognition, but there were drawbacks, notably related to how communities’ involvement in antiquities evolved around the archaeological activities of foreign expeditions. An exemplar of this involvement is the hiring of local communities as labour in excavations, a mutually beneficial interaction that provided a low-cost, practical option for archaeologists and income for communities. In time, however, community participation became restricted to menial work that rarely involved the documentation or

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interpretation of excavated sites, a limitation that undervalued potential knowledge-­ sharing between archaeologists and local communities (Mickel, 2020). This modus operandi was quickly adopted, and is still practiced, in excavations run by local heritage authorities and universities of the newly independent states across the region, and has proved instrumental in establishing the current top-down approach to the management of heritage resources. Even museums lost sight of the public dimension as they were overshadowed by political and economic agendas aiming to strengthen constructed national identities and serve mass tourism (Schadla-Hall, 2006). In most countries in the region, the state has taken control of heritage management on behalf of the public, an arrangement driven by a belief that only experts can facilitate greater heritage appreciation amongst populations. This approach has been critiqued in Western discourse (see e.g. ‘the Deficit Model’ in Merriman 2004, p. 6). Although the wave of critique of the authoritative approach that ignores public, multiple values of heritage emerged mostly from within Western discourse, there were some influential critics from the East who expressed similar concerns. In the first half of the twentieth century, progressive scholars such as Taha Husayn from Egypt and Dhu Al-Nur Ayyub from Iraq recognised the importance of multivocality and promoted public engagement in the interpretation of the past (Meital, 2006; Bashkin, 2006). Towards the second half of the twentieth century, more critics from other Arabic countries, including Jordan and Libya, also began to advocate for the engagement of children in the critical investigation of heritage resources (e.g. Sarkaz, 1977; Al-Burai, 1984; Abu Amma, 1988; Malas, 1997; cf. Badran, 2018). More recently, there has been a noticeable growth in criticism in the region of state control over heritage and the lack of public consultation over its management, with discussions highlighting governments’ loss of sight of public needs and interests in their pursuit of agendas that shift between constructing local identities and serving the tourism industry (Daher, 2007; Mourad, 2008; Abu-Khafajah, 2010; Perelli & Sistu, 2013; Al-Rabady et al., 2014; Al Rabady & Abu-Khafajah, 2015; Saif, 2017). Some of these criticisms refer specifically to the harsh reality of the widespread use of fences and guards to protect heritage sites, leading to further alienation of the people from this material culture (Hassan, 2008; Abu-Khafajah, 2007; Corbett & Ronza, this volume). Ironically, the deployment of these measures has not deterred vandals, looters or illicit traders in antiquities, cohorts that continue to ply their trade in a climate of economic poverty, lack of awareness (Kersel, 2012) and the interplay of factors in areas of armed conflict (Stone & Bajjaly, 2008; Bajjaly, 2011; Kanjou, 2018). A change in how communities are perceived, as allies in the protection of heritage rather than a threat to it, is being advocated by critical voices in the Arab region. In her research on heritage and meaning-making in Jordan, for example, Abu-Khafajah (2007) demonstrated how communities ascribe values and attributes to heritage based on their social and cultural contexts. The concept of multiple ownership, however, sits uncomfortably with deeply entrenched state ownership and control over heritage in many Arab countries. From one standpoint, this ‘absolute’ freedom to claim ownership over heritage has in some cases been abused to serve political agendas, and in the process caused

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irreversible destruction of heritage (e.g. Palmyra, in Paynter, this volume). Conversely, the sense of ownership and attachment to heritage has led many communities across the region to take responsibility and act, often spontaneously, to safeguard their heritage. This is particularly relevant during the events of the socalled ‘Arab Spring’, from Syrian civilians voluntarily reporting on looting and destruction occurring under fire (Perini & Cunliffe, 2015; Kanjou, 2018; Sabrine, this volume), to the formation of a human shield around the National Museum in Cairo by the Egyptian public as the revolution raged, an act of collective defiance to potential looters (Ikram, 2013). While the above narratives reflect two different developmental paths for community heritage practice, such clear distinctions are no longer present, nor helpful, today. The mingling of ideas and practices, whether by scholars in the Arab region studying in the West (e.g. two editors of this volume) or by Western scholars working in the Arab region who are critically self-reflexive in their practice and in how communities want to engage (Matsuda & Okamura, 2011), is now widespread, and previously obscured indigenous notions of heritage and expressions of cultural identity are gradually becoming accommodated in more nuanced, compound paradigms. The colonial past casts a long shadow and will most probably always be part of heritage conversations in the Arab region, with archaeology, in particular, arguably still a vector in the replication of centuries-old ambitions and practices (e.g. the new technics of ‘oversight’ in Meskell, 2020a). Nevertheless, it is the grip of colonial legacy narratives on, and in defining heritage practices in the region that we need to loosen, and community heritage provides that vital leverage.

Sustainable Development and Cultural Heritage A central thematic strand cross-cutting many discussions in this volume concerns sustainability, engaging with its conceptual breadth through issues of inclusion (Chap. 3), decentralisation and ‘good’ neoliberalism (Chap. 9), interdisciplinary approaches and integrating unconventional fields with heritage (Chap. 12), urban development (Chap. 8), management processes (Chap. 4) and engagement (Chap. 14). Although ‘sustainability’ has contemporaneity in that it has a ‘lack of interpretive closure’ (i.e. greater attention is still required for its conceptual aspects), and is perhaps ‘more useful, and closer to what we see as the goals or context of heritage and culture, than sustainable development’ (Auclair & Fairclough, 2020, p. 5), it is the latter, not a new idea, with over a quarter of a century of coming to public visibility, that holds sway over heritage projects in the Arab region. This, nevertheless, represents a significant shift from heritage destruction so typical of modernisation projects in the first half of the twentieth century. Modernisation projects and development were viewed ‘not as a cultural process (culture was a residual variable, to disappear with the advance of modernization), but instead as a system of more or less universally applicable technical interventions intended to deliver some “badly needed” goods to a “target” population’ (Escobar, 1995, p.  44). Projects in this

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mould ignored tangible and intangible cultural aspects, a stance which served only to aggravate the problems they were designed to tackle (Schech & Haggis, 2020, pp. 11–12). Heritage-based schemes, undertaken ‘in the name of civic betterment and uplift’ became exercises in community alienation and spatial cleansing, as showcases for archaeology were created (Meskell, 2020b, p. 5; 2005) following community evacuations. This was the case in Petra, whose local community  – a participatory cohort sustaining two projects presented in this volume (Chaps. 3 and 6) – was removed from the archaeological site in 1983 to facilitate its nomination as a World Heritage Site. Sustainability implies the continuity of a project’s positive impact when it finishes, whether duly concluded or stopped for an unforeseen reason, and it is increasingly recognised that this can be achieved in heritage development when projects are integrated within the cultures of their contexts.15 Indeed, UNESCO’s World Decade for Cultural Development acknowledges that ‘culture cannot be dissociated from development in any society, whether its level of economic growth or its political and economic orientation’ (UNESCO, 1988). This recognition is manifest in UNESCO-initiated and funded, community-based development projects in World Heritage Sites, two case studies of which are presented in this volume – Dahshour (Chap. 4) and Petra (Chap. 6). The former provides a rare critical insight into the application of rhetoric that posits the engagement of local communities in heritage-­ based development projects as a sustainability indicator and facilitator. In examining UNESCO’s Mobilization of Dahshour World Heritage Site for Community Development project, Hassan and Ehab’s critique affords a salutary lesson of how ambitious plans for inclusion and prosperity are scuppered by multi-agency (intra and extra-national) managerial challenges, resulting in attenuated community engagement and sustainable development outcomes. Such critical reflection, on quality, impact and dynamics, provides grist to the mill for an approach that is less reliant on outside ‘aid’ and more on local cultural values for sustainable impact. As an introduction to culture and local values application in heritage-based development projects, the authors recall their central and defining role in the first report of the United Nations Development Program on Arab Human Development (AHDR, 2002, p. 8): [Culture and local values are] the soul of development. They provide its impetus, facilitate the means needed to further it, and substantially define people’s vision of its purposes and ends… they are also formative because they mould people’s ideals and inspire their dreams for a fulfilling life for themselves and future generations.

Understood here as the wellspring of development, rather than its servants (ibid.), local cultural values and concepts are mechanisms that projects can rely on to attract international funding and be locally accepted and sustained. One mechanism identified in this volume is awneh, a cultural concept and practice rooted in the Arab

 Culture has finally been recognised as the fourth pillar of sustainable development, alongside its more longstanding companions  – social, environmental and economic factors (Agenda 21 for Culture, 2020). 15

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region and related to community engagement and empowerment. Taha and Sacca (Chap. 11) recognise awneh as ‘the act of community participation and volunteerism… [that is] deeply rooted in traditional Palestinian society [and] binds together the Palestinian community in response to social, economic and political challenges’. It is an excellent example of how an intrinsic socio-cultural feature is utilised to initiate community participation and activate sustainable practices, and an instance of social and cultural provision becoming, in Meskell’s (2020b, p. 4) words, ‘necessary goods [for development] rather than as a platform for laudatory claims’. Activating and engineering cultural concepts such as awneh in heritage practice offers the potential for heritage-based development projects to function beyond the ‘blunt instrument of a governing elite, who is both nostalgic and aspirational for a model of culture and society that is more cosmopolitan than homegrown’ (Nakamura, 2014, p.  280). Approaching cultural values as drivers and enablers in development strategies at both local and global levels also requires scholars and practitioners to ‘[conceptualise] development beyond economic growth’ (Al-Zo’by, 2019, p. 559). Tapping into extant living cultural practices, such as community events (e.g. the Emirati celebration of Hag Al Lailah, Chap. 7), to initiate community participation and intensify community engagement in heritage action, is part of this conceptualisation that is usually carried out by NGOs and international bodies operating in the Arab region. In parts of the Arab region, as elsewhere globally (cf. India, Meskell, 2020b), NGOs, international bodies and foreign funding agencies intervene ‘where the state has demurred’ by attending to the needs of the living through ‘small-scale initiatives [that] connect heritage and development in modest ways’ (ibid, p. 4). In these ‘modest’ ways, the burden of heritage endangerment over vast swathes of patrimonial landscape and the weight of conventional narratives are eased off, providing space for creative approaches to sustainability. De Vries in this volume re-introduces Umm el-Jimal with alternative narratives to the conventional tropes that marked its history. These narratives are constructed to ‘[braid] together the community’s and archaeology’s stories’ by evoking heritage that local people can relate to. Choosing to highlight histories of local relevance confers a significance to communities outwith touristic and economic value, and engineers ancient archaeology to initiate connection and establish belongingness. Communities do share in the proceeds from site administration and tourism services here, but are encouraged to participate in research and site management programmes, as well as plan and execute heritage celebrations  – a distinct position within the management process, rather than ‘removed from the equation’ in a role so often found at the end, in the form of educational or informational criteria (Waterton, 2005, p. 319). In this sense, heritage sites are eventful places which ‘provide opportunities for participation, intensifying interactions and developing networks, and create a sense of belonging within a place and of wellbeing’ (Stevenson, 2020, p. 3). The provision of a sense of belonging and well-being is stressed in UNESCO literature that triangulates community engagement, sustainable development and heritage conservation (e.g. UNESCO, 2018). While this has found practical museological application in democratised, community-based culture and heritage

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initiatives (e.g. ecomuseums, Davis, 1999, Elliott, 2007, Sutter et al., 2016; Salt, this volume),16 conventional engagement that is seasonal and project-oriented has proven superficial and unsustainable, and a re-conceptualisation of heritage and concomitant re-invention of community engagement can be an effective counter. One of the concepts in heritage-based sustainable development is to move from the notion of heritage endangerment as ‘endangerment can only motivate action in the near future. The very act of imagining perpetuity undermines it’ (May, 2020, p. 82). Furthermore, ‘moving beyond endangerment narratives and recognising heritage as wild, multifaceted and potentially dangerous… causes a myriad of possibilities for heritage to present themselves’ (Fredheim, 2018, p.  629). In the two projects in Petra described in this volume, we detect the narrative of losing heritage receding into the background and heritage instead being presented as an opportunity for engagement, empowerment and sustainable development. Clearly, heritage endangerment still shapes the reason for community engagement, but this time it drew the local community to the site instead of evacuating them from it, as was the case in 1983. Heritage in this sense, and as Cesaro and Delmonaco explain in Chap. 6, is activated ‘to reconnect the communities with the surrounding environment, their moral and social traditions, which nurtured a wealth of cultural expressions and specialized skills linked to the archaeological site and its landscape’. Nurturing the relationship between heritage and its local community is a long-­ term process that needs institutionalisation to become sustainable. Corbett and Ronza present a unique case where community engagement is institutionalised through Sela, a non-profit, vocational training, local company established in 2015 by members of a local team, itself initiated through the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resources Management (TWLCRM) Initiative. The Initiative, started in 2009, employed, trained and educated hundreds of the local community in a process of establishing a stronger and more sustainable relationship between the local people and the site. Corbett and Ronza provide an insight into the social dimension of the engagement process that aimed for, and resulted in Sela. The institutionalisation of community engagement in heritage management needs to be embraced by government and its related bodies, specifically the Department of Antiquities, to prosper and have a more influential effect. This implies law and regulation amendments and an accreditation system that acknowledges the training and education of local people and embraces their professional engagement in heritage management. Cultural diversity and narratives are increasingly intertwined in sustainable development projects in the Arab Gulf States. Al-Zo’by (2019, p. 564) recognises that ‘forms of cultural representations, cultural narratives, and heritage artefacts have emerged as pivotal in the promotion of state legitimacy, political interest, and  The Ecomuseum of Salt is explored in this volume, but Davis (2011, p. 228) notes the paradigm’s potential elsewhere in Jordan: ‘Jordan… has recognized the potential for ecomuseum development in tourist areas such as Wadi Rum, and could use ecomuseum practices to link together its archaeological sites. It might be argued that a dispersed site such as Petra could be considered as an ecomuseum if it also encouraged community participation’. 16

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national identity formation and affirmation’. At the Sharjah Fort (Al Hisn) Museum, community participation is engineered to ‘regenerate the area and ensure a suitable mix of the old and new for a sustainable cultural sector’, and is demonstrated by the oral history the community provides. As Ataya and Page note, ‘Oral history research at Al Hisn has proved not only to be an important tool for enriching museum displays, but also crucial in facilitating [inclusive, i.e. nationals and non-nationals] community engagement.’ The museum’s responsibilities are shared with the local community in a way that brings the people to the centre, engendering sustainability through depoliticising, inclusivising and informalising history. Although this delegation of ‘power’ and responsibility to local people mobilises ‘culture and cultural discourse… [as] a cornerstone of national and sustainable development strategies’, ‘the visions and missions of… [the states’] hegemonic cultural identity and dominant socio-political elites’ implicitly persists (Al-Zo’by, 2019, p. 564). The essentiality of the participatory approach to social sustainability is appreciated, but as Ahmed (2012) stressed in his urban-based study in the Arabian Gulf, it should be preceded by both the empowerment of local people to make their participation influential, and the capacity of scholars to capitalise on the uniqueness of the local context to compose a localised framework, even if it is based on global principles. After all, sustainable approaches should take into consideration local specificities if they are to be described as such (Apostolopoulou, 2020). Education and sustainability are entangled. As defined by Dempsey et al. (2011), education is one of the intangible aspects of social sustainability. Indeed, UNESCO’s discourse on sustainability is infused with education through its different programmes, including Education for Sustainability (SFS) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) (UNESCO, 1992, 2002, 2012), and the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development from 2005 to 2014 has raised awareness among governments and NGOs of the intricate relationship between education and sustainable development worldwide (UNESCO, 2002). In this sense, ‘[e]ach educator is a key agent for educating and bringing about changes in students’ learning behaviour in formal educational settings’ (Kidman et  al., 2020). In Jordan, the UNESCO project, Engaging Young People in their Cultural Heritage, is designed to make ‘a sustainable long-term impact on… [schoolchildren’s] knowledge of their past, whilst improving their understanding of its value and the need for conservation’ (Chap. 13). The project is located within NGO-­ established initiatives that seek to introduce archaeology clubs into schools and work on their sustainability within the education sector, and tracks recent UNESCO-­ developed themes (e.g. Building Knowledge Societies) that concern the loss of cultural heritage information. School curricula, viewed here as extant heritage and history preservation frameworks, are well-placed to stymie this loss. Badran, Paolini and Nasser examine Tangible Cultural Heritage (TCH) in school curricula in Jordan and acknowledge the intersection/interchange/triangulation between heritage, history and citizenship. As the TCH of Jordan is introduced within an historical framework and typically as part of the History curriculum, the authors examine their experience in ‘I am Jerash’, a project that introduced heritage to schoolchildren in a lively and dynamic way. The project effectively put cultural heritage information to

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use – essential for it to be sustainable (Koya & Chowdhury, 2020, p. 2), thus activating it on social, economic and political levels. Projects such as ‘I am Jerash’, then, activate heritage and history in daily life, and function as driver and enabler in the lives of future generations.

Compass of the Volume Contributions to this volume have been arranged under four themes: a consideration of (non-binary i.e. not east or west) community-shaped paradigm shifts in Arab states, an indication of the diversity of practice across the region, a reflection on heritage in crisis, and looking forward, educational imperatives. This introductory chapter explores dominant themes and concerns within Arab region heritage debates, traces trajectories of community heritage emergence and locates and essentialises sustainability within heritage action. The dominance of sustainable development approaches  – and the regnant philosophies of participation  – are then explored by Shatha Abu-Khafajah and Riham Hussien Miqdadi (Chap. 1) within the contemporary neoliberal context of Jordan. They establish a theoretical framework that examines the shift of local communities in the Arab region from the periphery to the centre in archaeology and heritage practice, situating the fields within two seemingly different contexts – colonialism and neoliberalism. As exclusionary policies are contrasted with the inclusivity promoted by neoliberal policies, both are seen to force shifts in perception and attitude, but despite participatory paradigms, those shifts have always come ‘from the outside’, operating on sites and peoples alike. Bert de Vries (Chap. 2) explores questions of legitimacy in community relationships with ancient sites through his research at Umm el-Jimal, northern Jordan, focusing on groups of recently settled/arrived people for whom the antiquities are not an essential component of their own historical experience. Distinct from issues of estrangement of the living present from the archaeological past (discussed elsewhere in the tradition of Said’s orientalist critique), the questions are an attempt to re-orient approaches to be more positively assertive – why such communities should be included – and posit the coupling of archaeological heritage (pre-Islamic and Islamic) to the Islamic literary and artistic heritage in Jordanian education to make this right of inclusion meaningful. Glenn Corbett and Maria Elena Ronza (Chap. 3) focus on mechanisms that facilitated more productive local community engagement with the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Petra, Jordan, reversing trends of indifference and antagonism to more commonly shared notions of the importance of cultural heritage management and preservation. They chart (also sup.) the highly successful social engagement strategy of the American Center of Oriental Research’s (ACOR) Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management (TWLCRM) Initiative, a project that invited members of Petra’s communities to participate directly – through hundreds of employment, training and educational opportunities – in the conservation, restoration and presentation of the important but threatened Temple of the Winged Lions

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monument. The project’s legacy is Sela, a not-for-profit company that continues to build local capacity by creating a formally-trained, technically specialised workforce that ‘give[s] professional and vocational definition to Jordan’s CRM sector’. In Chap. 4, Fekri Hassan and Enas Ehab (also sup.) report on managerially flawed attempts to capitalise on the exceptional archaeological, natural and rural heritage resources for local community beneficiaries in Manshiet Dahshour, Egypt, through the collaborative (UN agencies/Egyptian counterparts), USD 3.1 million project, Mobilization of Dahshour World Heritage Site for Community Development. Part II challenges perceptions of the homogeneity of Arab communities and culture, providing the reader with diverse community heritage projects that emerged out of their localities in attitudes and needs. Colleen Morgan and her colleagues (Chap. 5) begin with an exploration of the tensions in the Doha landscape through a project that examines the foundation and historic growth of the former pearling town to its modern ascendancy as Qatari capital, utilising archaeological investigation, historical research and oral testimony. The challenge in the Origins of Doha and Qatar (ODQ) project is to engage the dynamic, rapidly changing and diverse population of Qatar with an increasingly threatened past that ‘stands’ in contrast with its futuristic architecture. As a variety of outreach approaches, both digital and face-to-­face, are deployed, the project’s public archaeology strategy is shaped through an active dialogue with community members. While the ODQ team ‘develop strategies of personal engagement with the archaeological remains… through identification of, and dialogue with, living individuals, close relatives or descendants who are directly and personally associated with the sites, buildings, artefacts or inscriptions under investigation’, Giorgia Cesaro and Giuseppe Delmonaco (Chap. 6) present local engagement strategies within the Siq Stability project that harness the skills (i.e. climbing) of the local Bedu communities of Petra, Jordan, for conservation and risk prevention measures. The authors believe that this heritage conservation-related initiative ‘represents a meaningful tool to reconnect the communities with the surrounding environment and their moral and social traditions, nurturing a wealth of cultural expressions and specialised skills linked to the archaeological site and its landscape’. Manal Ataya and Hazelle Page’s (Chap. 7) account of community heritage work in Sharjah is located within a renewed interest regionally in the presentation of local historic material and intangible heritage, and where ‘historic buildings, such as forts, have been branded as the historic backbones of the cities’ (Scharfenort, 2016, p.  200). Stressing the close involvement of H. H. Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, they detail the initiatives developed in Sharjah Fort (Al Hisn) Museum to foster community engagement, notably through oral history capture and display using interactive touchscreens. These initiatives, including Sharjah Lives outlined in this chapter, denote a maturing interface with diverse communities and provide a unique insight into how the digitalisation of oral history has effectively activated the museum. The section concludes with Leen Fakhoury and Naif Haddad’s (Chap. 8) assessment of multi-disciplinary, participatory projects developed to protect the ‘face’ of the city of Salt, Jordan, an urban fabric of traditional residences and mansions built between 1890 and the late 1920s, and mobilise it for

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development. The authors focus on the project, Heritage for Development (Her4Dev), an EU-funded scheme ‘aimed at building and reinforcing the capacities of cultural actors and networks – local public, private and civil society actors – in the development of rehabilitation plans’ for the historic centre of Salt. The local community, as identified in this chapter and by the actors involved, comprises the municipality, professionals and young architects, a cohort whose engagement with the city is quite different to communities who are ‘the putative beneficiaries of such attention’ (Watson & Waterton, 2011, p. 10). Part III addresses heritage in crisis, exploring the theme through notions of resilience, recovery and reconfiguration as it arrays the mostly positive reactions to heritage at risk, driven by local communities, against deliberative acts of heritage destruction led by ISIS. Alison Damick and Hermann Genz (Chap. 9) also capture a deliberateness in heritage destruction in Lebanon, but their exploration is couched in terms of a nimiety of development projects, transacted in (and enabled by) a transitional politics of decentralisation, with actors buying into ‘futurity’, ‘an ideological reimagining of what modernity for Lebanon means’. Through their experiences at Tell Fadous-Kfarabida, a small Early and Middle Bronze Age settlement located in a politically secure but development-subsumed region on the northern coast of the country, the authors investigate ‘the conditions under which archaeology in conflict zones but outside [italics added] of conflict itself interacts with environmental research, administrative infrastructures, and public perceptions of history and modernity’. In Chap. 10, Isber Sabrine weighs heritage management strategies in Syria before and during the armed conflict that began in 2011, drawing linkages between the destruction of heritage in both times. The systematic alienation of local people from their heritage exacerbated problems during the conflict, while UNESCO’s role in protecting heritage under fire remains limited and constrained by politics. Nevertheless, Sabrine presents cases where local communities organised themselves, at times jeopardising their lives, to protect heritage in the absence of international and national bodies. Hamdan Taha and Iman Saca (Chap. 11) then provide an expansive survey of community involvement in heritage projects in Palestine since 1994, covering schemes that involved establishing an archaeological park in the neglected site of Tell Balata, conserving the historic centres of Hebron and Bethlehem, establishing ethnographic museums, and the preparation of World Heritage Site nomination files. In the nuances of these projects, the authors gently expose the dynamics of heritage as resistance, as they position, for example, ethnographic museums and individual, ‘lay’ person collecting within an ‘archival impulse’, a strategy that ultimately provides a bulwark ‘against historical erasure’ (Said, 1999, pp. 182–183), or imply sumud, or steadfastness (staying put, a rooted behaviour) in their care for heritage (De Cesari, 2010) and a notion of heritage dignity.17 Projects are characterised by social coalitions of Palestinian Authority, academic institutions, non-governmental societies and community representatives,  Projects such as the Conservation of the Old City of Hebron arguably have a good fit with the ethical-philosophical vision of ‘restoring heritage to dignity’, as restoring social fabrics as well as physical ones tap into the ‘dynamic of heritage as wellbeing, as care/cure/curation/preservation bound up in aspirations to sustain a transformed future’ (UCL IRIS n.d.; Rowlands & Butler, forthcoming). 17

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creating unique, cosmopolitan ascriptions of local community (e.g. ‘local authority’ as ‘local community’ in Tell Balata) in a political context in which the coloniser is not completely absent. The section concludes with Nicole Payntar’s (Chap. 12) analysis of the intersection of UNESCO’s ‘universal heritage’ discourse and images of heritage destruction generated by Da’esh from 2015 to 2016 at UNESCO affiliated sites in Syria and Iraq. Despite the profound differences between the two approaches, Payntar represents them both as strategies aimed at gaining control and imposing power over the past that constrain heritage’s ability to be ‘produced, negotiated, and renegotiated across landscape’. As armed conflict becomes ‘social’ through media, we enter an age of social armed conflict, in which images, and the world’s engagement with them, become part of heritage landscape remaking. The fourth part sees contributors propose a regionally unique approach to education, one based on opening vistas to the past for children to explore and learn from. Arwa Badran, Anna Paolini and Nofa Nasser (Chap. 13) showcase their work on an educational resource that would familiarise and valorise cultural heritage in Jordan for the country’s schoolchildren, making a sustainable long-term impact on their knowledge of the past and embedding an understanding of the need for conservation. The I am Jarash kit (also sup.), a collaborative venture between UNESCO Amman, the Friends of Archaeology and Heritage, national experts, teachers and pupils, and designed to complement curriculum delivery, introduces concepts to which pupils had limited exposure at school and beyond – the nature of archaeology, interpreting the past, aspects of social, political, economic and religious life  – through studying theatres, places of worship and pottery, and celebrating various cultural contributions to the history of Jarash.

The final chapter (Chap. 14) documents the trailblazing quest of a solitary school teacher/archaeologist – Khawla Goussous (Ahliyyah School for Girls) – in Jordan to engage schoolchildren in archaeological enquiry through the creation and operation of an archaeology club. Established in 1996, the club is still a rarity in the Arab region, but as the longest-running endeavour of its type, it has had a significant impact, with generations of alumni taking up professional archaeological or heritage-­related careers. Both chapters in Part IV, clarion calls for enabling children’s learning across museum, heritage and cultural settings, recognise challenges that tie into the larger theme woven throughout the volume – and explored in this introduction – that of sustainability. Formerly of the Department of Archaeology Durham University Durham, UK [email protected] Independent Scholar London, UK  [email protected] Department of Architectural Engineering Faculty of Engineering The Hashemite University Zarqa, Jordan  [email protected]

Arwa Badran

Sarah Elliott

Shatha Abu-Khafajah

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Butler, B. (2010). ‘Keys of the past: Keys to the future’ – A critical analysis of the construction of the Palestinian National Museum policy as an alternative deconstruction of routinised international heritage discourse. Present Pasts, 2(1), 113–125. Cabot, H. (2019). The business of anthropology and the European refugee regime. American Ethnologist, 46(3), 261–275. Chitty, J. (Ed.). (2016). Heritage, conservation and communities. Engagement, participation and capacity building. Routledge. Crooke, E. (2011). The politics of community heritage: Motivations, authority and control. In E. Waterton & S. Watson (Eds.), Heritage and community engagement: Collaboration or contestation? (pp. 24–37). Routledge. Daher, R. F. (Ed.). (2007). Tourism in the Middle East: Continuity, change and transformation. Channel View Publications. Daher, R., & Maffi, I. (Eds.). (2013). The politics and practices of cultural heritage in the Middle East: Positioning the material past in contemporary societies. I. B. Tauris. Davis, P. (1999). Ecomuseums – A sense of place. Leicester University Press. Davis, P. (2011). Ecomuseums – A sense of place (2nd ed.). Continuum. De Cesari, C. (2010). Creative Heritage: Palestinian Heritage NGOs and Defiant Arts of Government. American Anthropologist, 112(4), 625–637. Dempsey, N., Bramley, G., Power, S., & Brown, C. (2011). The social dimension of sustainable development: Defining urban social sustainability. Sustainable Development, 19(5), 289–300. Elliott, S. (2007). Rescuing Hasankeyf: Ecomuseological responses to large dams in Southeast Turkey. Unpublished PhD thesis, Newcastle University. Erskine-Loftus, P. (2013). Reimagining museums: Practice in the Arabian peninsula. MuseumsEtc. Erskine-Loftus, P. (2016). Introduction. In P. Erskine-Loftus, M. Al-Mulla, & V. Hightower (Eds.), Representing the nation: Heritage, museums, national narratives, and identity in the Arab Gulf States (pp. 9–12). Routledge. Erskine-Loftus, P., Al-Mulla, M., & Hightower, V. (Eds.). (2016). Representing the nation: Heritage, museums, national narratives, and identity in the Arab Gulf States. Routledge. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development: The making and un-making of the Third World. Princeton University Press. Exell, K., & Rico, T. (2013). ‘There is no heritage in Qatar’: Orientalism, colonialism and other problematic histories. World Archaeology, 45(4), 670–685. Exell, K., & Rico, T. (2016). Introduction: (De)constructing Arabian heritage debates. In K. Exell & T. Rico (Eds.), Cultural heritage in the Arabian peninsula – Debates, discourses and practices (pp. 1–15). Routledge. Exell, K., & Wakefield, S. (Eds.). (2016). Museums in Arabia: Transnational practices and regional processes. Routledge. Ferabolli, S. (2015). Arab regionalism: A post-structural perspective. Routledge. Franklin, M.  E., & Moe, J.  M. (2012). A vision for archaeological literacy. In R.  Skeates, C. McDavid, & J. Carman (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of public archaeology (pp. 566–580). Oxford University Press. Fredheim, L. H. (2018). Endangerment-driven heritage volunteering: Democratisation or ‘changeless change’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24(6), 619–633. Golson, J. (1988). The world archaeological congress: A new archaeological organisation. Australian Archaeology, 26, 92–103. Hassan, F. (2008). Heritage for development: Concepts and strategic approaches. In F.  Hassan, A. de Trafford, & M. Youssef (Eds.), Cultural heritage and development in the Arab World (pp. 13–52). The Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Hassan, F., & Youssef, M. (2008). Introduction. In F. Hassan, A. de Trafford, & M. Youssef (Eds.), Cultural development in the Arab World (pp. 1–12). Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Hassan, F., de Trafford, A., & Youssef, M. (Eds.). (2008). Cultural heritage and development in the Arab World. Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Hopkins, N. S., & Ibrahim, S. E. (1997). Arab society: Class, gender, power and development. American University Press.

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Contents

Introduction: Shifting the Gaze – Community Heritage Modalities in the Arab Region���������������������������������������������������������������������   xiii Part I Paradigm Shifts: The ‘Communities’ Factor 1

Prejudice, Military Intelligence and Neoliberalism: Examining the Local Within Archaeology and Heritage Practices in Jordan ����������������������������������������������������������    3 Shatha Abu-Khafajah and Riham Hussien Miqdadi

2

Community Archaeology at Umm el-Jimal: Including the Recently Settled Umm el-Jimal Community in the Heritage of the Ancient Site����������������������������������������������������������   25 Bert de Vries

3

Making Social Engagement Sustainable: Insights from the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management Initiative in Petra, Jordan���������������   49 Glenn J. Corbett and Maria Elena Ronza

4

Mobilizing Heritage Resources for Local Community Development: Dahshour as a Case Study����������������������������������������������   65 Fekri A. Hassan and Enas M. Ehab

Part II A Cross-Section of Practices 5

Public Archaeology and Engagement in the Origins of Doha and Qatar Project����������������������������������������������������������������������   91 Colleen Morgan, Robert Carter, Fatma Abdel Aziz, and Mariam Al Thani

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6

The Siq Stability Project: a Pilot Approach to Community Engagement and Public Awareness in Petra����������������  109 Giorgia Cesaro and Giuseppe Delmonaco

7

Heritage and Community Involvement: The Case of Sharjah Fort (Al Hisn) Museum����������������������������������������  133 Manal Ataya and Hazelle Page

8

Protecting the Heritage of Salt: Multidisciplinary Participation and Community Engagement ����������������������������������������������������������������  159 Leen Fakhoury and Naif A. Haddad

Part III Heritage in Crisis: Acts of Resilience, Recovery and Reconfiguration 9

Conflicting Futures for Non-conflict Archaeology: A Lebanese Case Study ��������������������������������������������������������������������������  189 Alison Damick and Hermann Genz

10 The  Management of Syrian Archaeological Heritage Before and During the Syrian Conflict: A Comparison Study������������������������  209 Isber Sabrine 11 Invoking Awneh: Community Heritage in Palestine����������������������������  235 Hamdan Taha and Iman Saca 12 Renegotiating  Landscapes Through Digital Imagery: Heritage Destruction in Syria and Iraq ������������������������������������������������  261 Nicole D. Payntar Part IV Giving Children Keys to the Past 13 ‘I  am Jarash’: An Educational Kit for Schoolchildren in Jordan������������������������������������������������������������������  281 Arwa Badran, Anna Paolini, and Nofa Nasser 14 Who  Wants to Be an Archaeologist?������������������������������������������������������  305 Khawla Goussous and Arwa Badran

Notes on Editors

Arwa Badran is an independent researcher and consultant on museums and heritage education. She trained as an archaeologist at the University of Jordan, working in the field across multiple sites, before gaining her MA and PhD from Newcastle University, degrees that focused on building connections between museums and the public and introducing museums to the Jordanian school curricula. Her subsequent work as a lecturer in Museum Studies at the Hashemite University in Jordan was instrumental in the development and establishment of the first BA degree in Cultural Heritage and Museology in the Middle East. More recently, she worked as a course tutor and co-director on the International Cultural Heritage Management MA programme at Durham University, and as a researcher on an AHRC-funded project on youth engagement in Jordan’s museums. She has worked as a consultant on many heritage education and community development projects and has been involved at a senior level with the World Archaeological Congress for over a decade.  

Shatha Abu-Khafajah is an associate professor in the Architectural Engineering Department at the Hashemite University in Jordan. She graduated as an architect from the University of Jordan in 1997 and went on to specialise in the documentation and conservation of archaeological heritage while completing a Master’s degree in Archaeology. Her PhD in Cultural Heritage Management from Newcastle University, obtained in 2007, enabled her to synthesise architecture and archaeology with a special interest in establishing a sustainable approach to heritage management in the Arab region that is community-based and context-oriented.  

Sarah Elliott is an independent scholar with research interests in ecomuseology, community museology and the theories of new museology, all positioned recently within Turkish Area Studies. The emergence and significance of postmodern approaches in contemporary Turkish museology have been the focus of British Academy funded work, and previous Arts and Humanities Research Council  

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(AHRC) and British Institute at Ankara (BIAA) funded PhD research at Newcastle University examined the impact of large dams on the cultural heritage of southeast Turkey, addressed through an ecomuseum-centred methodology. Hasankeyf, a sui generis medieval town threatened by the Ilisu Dam, was the case study for the latter. Building on these projects, her current research concerns the historical and contemporary representation of ethnic minority communities in Turkey’s museums.

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 A Western archaeologist and a local worker in Iraq in 1911. (Photograph © Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University)�������������������������������������������������������������������    8 Fig. 2.1 Antiquities and community. Map showing the Byzantine site at the core, a tier of modern village neighborhoods and agricultural fields. (Umm el-Jimal Project staff, Architects Dana al-­Farraj, Mais Haddad and Jehad Suleiman)����������������������������������������������������������������������   26 Fig. 2.2 The Hisban Project, 1968 season staff photograph. (Courtesy of Madaba Plains Project)���������������������������������������������   27 Fig. 2.3 The Umm el-Jimal Project, 1996 season staff photograph. (Umm el-Jimal Project Archive)����������������������������������������������������   28 Fig. 2.4 Regional map showing relationship between Umm el-Jimal and the Jabal al-Arab in the northeast. The journey from the mountain to Umm el-Jimal was about 40 km with an elevation drop of about 800 m. (Drawn by the author)�������������   31 Fig. 2.5 Community Archaeology in action. Ladies from the Umm el-Jimal community meet to discuss their participation in archaeology generated micro-businesses. (Photograph by the author)������������������������������������������������������������   42 Fig. 3.1 The excavated remains of the Temple of the Winged Lions complex within the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Petra, southern Jordan. (Photograph by G. Delmonaco © TWLCRM Initiative, American Center of Research, Amman)��������������������������������������������������������������������   51 Fig. 3.2 TWLCRM conservation trainee Ghadeer Jdeilat applies a layer of protective mortar to the temple walls. (Photograph by Halema Nawafleh © TWLCRM Initiative, American Center of Research, Amman)����������������������������������������   55

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Fig. 3.3 TWLCRM documentation trainee Halema Nawafleh draws and documents the temple’s exposed architectural remains. (Photograph by Eman Abdassalam © TWLCRM Initiative, American Center of Research, Amman)��������������������������������������������������������������������   57 Fig. 3.4 Members of the TWLCRM team, all hailing from different tribes and villages, work together to move an ancient capital fragment to the site’s architectural gallery. (Photograph by Ghaith Faqeer © TWLCRM Initiative, American Center of Research, Amman)��������������������������������������������������������������������   58 Fig. 3.5 Sela regularly hosts on-site activity programs to teach young children and others about the importance of protecting Petra’s cultural heritage. (Photograph by Franco Sciorilli © TWLCRM Initiative, American Center of Research, Amman)��������������������������������������������������������������������   60 Fig. 3.6 Sela trainees sign formal training contracts which provide for rights and responsibilities under the law, but also signify inclusion in a real vocation. (Photograph by Shaker Faqeer)�����������������������������������������������������   62 Fig. 4.1 Location map of the Dahshour Project area, showing the five villages on the Nile floodplain, and the North, Bent, and Senusert 111 pyramids. (Image by Fekri A. Hassan, based on a Google Earth map, 2020 Orion-ME)�������������������������������������������������������������������   68 Fig. 4.2 Dahshour Archaeological Site, showing the Bent Pyramid (left), and the North Pyramid (right, behind the Senusert 111 Black Pyramid), with Birket Dahshour in the foreground, looking southwest. (Photograph © Fekri A. Hassan)���������������������������������������������������   69 Fig. 4.3 The Dahshour pyramid field, west of Dahshour Lake (Birket Dahshour, Birket Al-Malik). (Photograph © Fekri A. Hassan)���������������������������������������������������   70 Fig. 4.4 Palm groves in Dahshour. (Photograph © Fekri A. Hassan)���������   71 Fig. 4.5 A celebration in Manshiet Dahshour, showing a broad spectrum of ages and costumes, and capturing a moment in community life. A new generation of Egyptians in need of work opportunities can be seen, as well as children, who are witnesses of a cultural transformation and long-­term beneficiaries of heritage mobilization for socio-economic development. (Photograph © Fekri A. Hassan)���������������������������������������������������   72

List of Figures

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Fig. 5.1 Map of excavations and historic recording performed by the Origins of Doha and Qatar project. (Map © the ODQ project)�������������������������������������������������������������   93 Fig. 5.2 Map showing the location of Fuwairit. (Map © the ODQ project)�������������������������������������������������������������   94 Fig. 5.3 DOHA: Doha Online Historical Atlas Interface. (Image © the ODQ project)�����������������������������������������������������������   97 Fig. 5.4 Outline of a wall, as colored in by a student. (Image © the ODQ project)�����������������������������������������������������������  100 Fig. 6.1 Location of Petra (left) and satellite image of the Siq and the Petra Archaeological Park core area (right)����������������������  111 Fig. 6.2 (a and b) Aerial view of the Siq (left) and close-up upper view of the Siq final sector (right). (Photograph © UNESCO)�������������������������������������������������������������  112 Fig. 6.3 Local community members executing project work in the Upper Siq. (Photograph © UNESCO/G. Delmonaco)��������  115 Fig. 6.4 (a and b) Block dislodgement operations in the Siq of Petra. (Photograph © UNESCO)�������������������������������������������������������������  116 Fig. 6.5 Landscape inventory map, produced as part of the Siq Stability project, Phase I. (Photograph © UNESCO/ISPRA)����������������������  118 Fig. 6.6 Debris terracing along a water channel in the Upper Siq. (Photograph © UNESCO/G. Delmonaco)�������������������������������������  121 Fig. 6.7 Group photograph of trainees at the end of a climbing session. (Photograph © UNESCO)�������������������������������������������������������������  122 Fig. 6.8 Local trainee supports the execution of the landslide risk mitigation interventions in the Siq, sector 3. (Photograph © UNESCO)�������������������������������������������������������������  123 Fig. 6.9 Local community members covering the Nabataean channels along the Siq with geotextile material. (Photograph © UNESCO/N. Daoud)��������������������������������������������  124 Fig. 6.10 Flyer of the risk mitigation works, 2016. (Photograph © the authors)�����������������������������������������������������������  127 Fig. 6.11 Banner of the risk mitigation works, 2016. (Photograph © the authors)�����������������������������������������������������������  128 Fig. 6.12 Communication session on landslide mitigation works to a group of visitors. (Photograph © the authors)������������������������  128 Fig. 7.1 (a, b) Views of Sharjah Fort (Al Hisn) Museum. (Photograph © Sharjah Museums Authority)��������������������������������  134 Fig. 7.2 Graphic display panel showing images of extant and lost (Burj Al Meyali) towers. Most surviving towers have been restored/consolidated to minimalize further deterioration. (Photograph © Sharjah Museums Authority)���������  144 Fig. 7.3 H.H.’s 2015 sketch of the defence system of Sharjah. (Sketch © Sharjah Museums Authority)���������������������������������������  145

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Fig. 7.4 (a, b) Original 1820 map showing the town wall, towers and fortified houses bombarded in 1819 (left), and a copy, annotated with the tower names in Arabic and English (right). (Original map © United Kingdom Hydrographic Office)�������������  145 Fig. 7.5 British Royal Naval marine survey of 1933. (Map © Reproduced with permission from the UK Hydrographic Office, www.ukho.gov.uk)�������������������������������������  147 Fig. 7.6 Coastal sketches, accompanying the British Royal Naval marine survey of 1933, document the remaining complete towers, those in ruins and other features of Sharjah that aided navigation. (Sketches © Reproduced with permission from the UK Hydrographic Office, www.ukho.gov.uk)����������������  148 Fig. 7.7 Aerial survey of Sharjah from 1923/33, clearly showing Al Hisn right of centre. (Photograph © H.H. Private Collection, the Mackay Collection)�����������������������������������������������  148 Fig. 7.8 Graphic display panel, entitled ‘Guarding and Defending Sharjah’, showing a compilation of all sources of information described in the case study. (Photograph © Sharjah Museums Authority)��������������������������������  149 Fig. 7.9 Family Education Programme: examining the Al Qasimi Quran stand. (Photograph © Sharjah Museums Authority)����������  153 Fig. 8.1 The hill of Jada towering over the Saha. (Photograph © the authors)�����������������������������������������������������������  161 Fig. 8.2 RSS study and the protection zones. (Image by the authors, courtesy of CulTech)���������������������������������������������������������������������  164 Fig. 8.3 (a) Municipal council members and the mayor attending an Her4Dev workshop with the local community for the proposed regulations for Daraj Ar-Rummanat. (Photograph © the authors). (b) Invitation to a collective memory workshop for Spring Square. (Photograph © the authors)�����������������������������������������������������������  168 Fig. 8.4 (a) Training workshop (June 2013) in assessing the deterioration of lime mortars and rising damp. (Photograph © the authors). (b) Level of expertise specified for restoring each problem. (Image by the authors, courtesy of CulTech). (c) ‘Repointing’ card. (Image by the authors, courtesy of CulTech)��������������������������������  170 Fig. 8.5 Lunch served for tourists at one of the heritage houses included on the trail. (Photograph © Salt Development Corporation)����������������������������  171 Fig. 8.6 Nomination File for inscription of Salt on the World Heritage List. (Image by the authors)��������������������������������������������  173

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Fig. 9.1 Tell Fadous-Kfarabida, as seen from the north. (Photograph © the authors)�����������������������������������������������������������  192 Fig. 9.2 View of the coastal stretch along which TFK is situated, showing the extent of urban development. (Photograph © the authors)�����������������������������������������������������������  193 Fig. 9.3 Locals and project members discussing trash dumping on the archaeological site area in 2014. (Photograph © the authors)�����������������������������������������������������������  194 Fig. 9.4 Bulldozer profile on the west side of the archaeological tell, as it was being recorded by AUB archaeologists in 2004. (Photograph © the authors)���������������������������������������������  195 Fig. 9.5 AUB students describing ongoing excavations to the local community during visitor’s day events. (Photograph © the authors)�����������������������������������������������������������  198 Fig. 9.6 AUB students describing ongoing excavations to the local community during visitor’s day events. (Photograph © the authors)�����������������������������������������������������������  199 Fig. 9.7 Project members and community members at a locally organized half-day seminar on the archaeological project. (Photograph © the authors)�����������������������������������������������������������  200 Fig. 10.1 Children visit Tell Mozan. (Photograph © the author)������������������  212 Fig. 10.2 The destruction of Maarat al-Numan Museum. (Photograph © the author)�������������������������������������������������������������  219 Fig. 10.3 Raqqa Museum after liberation form ISIS. (Photograph © the author)�������������������������������������������������������������  226 Fig. 10.4 Member of the Syrian Heritage Center for Cultural Heritage Protection. (Photograph © the author)������������������������������������������  229 Fig. 10.5 Restoration of a mosaic by the Ministry of Culture in North and East Syria at the site of Shiuk Tahtani. (Photograph © the author)�������������������������������������������������������������  229 Fig. 11.1 Activities of the open day at Tell Balata. (Photograph courtesy of the Tell Balata Archaeological Park)�����  242 Fig. 11.2 Public meeting with the local community at Sabastyia. (Photograph © Hamdan Taha)�������������������������������������������������������  243 Fig. 11.3 Consultation meeting with representatives of the local community, Bethlehem. (Photograph courtesy of the Centre for Cultural Heritage Preservation)�����������������������������������������������  245 Fig. 11.4 Rehabilitated Houses in the Old City of Hebron. (Photograph © Hamdan Taha)�������������������������������������������������������  248 Fig. 11.5 Opening day of Al Bad Museum in Bethlehem. The Minister of Tourism and Antiquities and community members visiting the exhibits. (Photograph © Hamdan Taha)������  251 Fig. 11.6 World Heritage Site of Battir, Cultural Landscape. (Photograph © Hamdan Taha)�������������������������������������������������������  255

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Fig. 12.1 Still frames of Da’esh’s destruction of Hatra, Iraq captured from video (a & c) (Associated Press). A still of a soldier destroying the Nergal gate at Nineveh (b) from video (Associated Press). Still of militants destroying a frieze at Nimrud (d) from video (see also Jones, 2015). Boxes denote visual similarities between the photos added by the author����������������������������������������  267 Fig. 12.2 Retouched images of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (center). (Photograph by George R. Caron, United States Department of Energy, and Charles Levy, United States Department of Energy, 1945). A cropped still frame of the explosion of the Temple of Baal-­Shamin, Palmyra, Syria (right) released by Da’esh (see also BBC, 2015). Boxes denote points of visual similarity across images added by the author��������������������������������  268 Fig. 12.3 Image of the archway of the Temple of Bel, Syria (left) released by Da’esh (see also Stanton, 2015) and a torri gate in Nagasaki, Japan captured by photographer Yosuke Yamahata on August 10, 1945 (right photograph courtesy of Shogo Yamahata) both unintentionally survive destruction. Boxes denote points of visual similarity across images added by the author��������������������������������  268 Fig. 12.4 The Temple of Bel at Palmyra photographed on April 10, 2013 (above) prior to its destruction by Da’esh (Judith McKenzie, Manar al-Athar Photo Archive). Below, the remaining archway of the Temple of Bel imaged on March 15, 2017 (DGAM, Syria)����������������������������������  269 Fig. 13.1 Relative proportion of references to heritage sites, museums and artefacts in the National Curriculum ���������������������  284 Fig. 13.2 Degree to which TCH is included in the 12 mapped curricula textbooks in Jordan���������������������������������������������������������  284 Fig. 13.3 Level of reference to TCH by grade for the 12 mapped curricula textbooks in Jordan ��������������������������������������������������������  285 Fig. 13.4 Examples from I am Jarash Educational Kit  (Images © UNESCO) �������������������������������������������������������������������  291 Fig. 13.5 The team of experts discussing kit content and working on its creation (Photograph © UNESCO)����������������  291 Fig. 13.6 A team member visiting Jarash and gathering resources for the kit production (Photograph © UNESCO)��������������������������  292 Fig. 13.7 The piloting of the kit started with classroom lessons at Al-Huda School (Photograph © UNESCO)������������������������������  294 Fig. 13.8 The ‘Costume Activity’, Jarash Museum (Photograph © UNESCO)�������������������������������������������������������������  296

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Fig. 13.9 The ‘Mask Activity’ at the Southern Theatre (Photograph © UNESCO)���������������������������������������������  296 Fig. 13.10 Percentages of pupils’ responses to five areas of satisfaction regarding kit implementation ����������������  298 Fig. 14.1 A group photograph taken in 1974, showing the University of Jordan Archaeology Department students standing with late King Hussein bin Talal on his visit to their excavation in Khilda, Amman. Mrs. Goussous is standing to his right. (Photograph © Khawla Goussous)��������������������������������  306 Fig. 14.2 Participating in fieldwork and excavations. (Photograph © Khawla Goussous)��������������������������������  311 Fig. 14.3 Workshop on pottery restoration at the Ahliyyah School for Girls (ASG). (Photograph © Khawla Goussous)��������������������������������  311 Fig. 14.4 The usual arrival on the school bus. (Photograph © Khawla Goussous)��������������������������������  312 Figs. 14.5 and 14.6 Field trip to Qusair Amra World Heritage Site, and a drawing by one of the club members. (Photograph © Khawla Goussous)��������������������������������  314 Fig. 14.7 The ASG Archaeology Club new joiners filling questionnaire forms on their first day. (Photograph © Khawla Goussous)��������������������������������  316

List of Tables

Table 6.1 Overview of target groups and related activities����������������������������  125 Table 7.1 Surviving towers in and around Sharjah City���������������������������������  143 Table 8.1 Major planning studies and participation indicators����������������������  175 Table 8.2 Implemented projects and participation indicators������������������������  177 Table 10.1 The number of archaeological missions in Syria before and during the conflict. (Table by the author)��������������������������������  210 Table 12.1 List of current UNESCO World Heritage Designations for Syria and Iraq as of August 2019����������������������������������������������  262

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Part I

Paradigm Shifts: The ‘Communities’ Factor

Chapter 1

Prejudice, Military Intelligence and Neoliberalism: Examining the Local Within Archaeology and Heritage Practices in Jordan Shatha Abu-Khafajah and Riham Hussien Miqdadi

1.1 Introduction A particular theme dominates the contemporary scene of archaeology and heritage in the neoliberal context of Jordan today: sustainable development on the basis of local participation. The United Kingdom’s Art and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Newton-Khalidi fund announced in February 2019 that they had awarded financial support to seven projects submitted for the Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development Programme in Jordan. The winning projects were to establish cooperation between British and Jordanian universities and scholars in an interdisciplinary approach to archaeology and heritage sites in order to deliver sustainable development to related communities’ lives. Similarly, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) shifted from its 1980s tourismoriented Cultural Resource Management Programme (CRM) when, in 2014, it established its community-based project entitled, the Sustainable Cultural Heritage through Engagement of Local Communities Project (SCHEP). The four-­year project (recently extended until 2022), implemented by the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR), has operated on nine different sites in different parts of Jordan with an aim to preserve, manage and promote ‘cultural heritage resources… through Note  This chapter was first published as an article in the journal, Contemporary Levant 2019, vol. 4, issue 2, pp.  92-106 under the same title. It was awarded the 2019 Council for British Research in the Levant Prize for Best Article. S. Abu-Khafajah (*) Department of Architectural Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan e-mail: [email protected] R. H. Miqdadi Department of Tourism and Heritage, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_1

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job creation and capacity building for communities around archaeological sites’ (ACOR, 2019). Remarkably, literature and public lectures, often presented by foreign archaeological teams to explain their work, have increasingly embraced the rhetoric of sustainable development based on local participation. The teams turn archaeological and heritage sites into development projects, where they engage with selected locals, educate them, and ultimately empower them as part of their projects. Project literature and presentations are laden with images and videos documenting locals’ engagement with the teams and sites. Sometimes locals attend these lectures to speak live to the audience about their ‘empowering’ experiences in the projects. We might rightly consider the current trend of participatory approaches to archaeology and heritage in Jordan as capacity building projects that provide opportunities for disempowered, marginalized and underemployed members of local communities. After all, socio-economic empowerment is ‘central to the ethical and practical forces that shape the work of archaeologists and heritage professionals’ (Gould, 2018, p. 137). For example, the Umm el-Jimal project in the north-eastern borders of Jordan (see de Vries, this volume; de Vries, 2013), the Temple of the Winged Lions project in Petra (see Corbett & Ronza, this volume; Tuttle, 2013) and the Tall Hisban project (see Ronza & Smith, 2013) have created seasonal job opportunities in some of the most deprived areas of Jordan. In fact, engagement with the locals has been part of the Tall Hisban team’s agenda since 1968 (Abu-Khafajah, 2007). Given the colonial history of archaeology in the region, however, we aim to critically examine the ethical and practical forces behind these contemporary practices. Only in the early twentieth century, such projects were answering to military intelligence agents as part of the colonial process that shaped the Arab region. In this process local communities were trivialized, marginalized, and labeled as ‘ignorant,’ ‘thieves,’ and a ‘threat’ to archaeology and heritage; labels that linger on especially among local scholars today. Why and how have the locals in colonial and postcolonial archaeological practices shifted from the margin to the centre in contemporary neoliberal archaeology and heritage projects is at the heart of this article. To answer this question, we critically review the history of archaeology in Jordan as we situate it in the context of colonialism in the wider Arab region. We explore the ways Western1 scholarship has shaped the adverse image of local communities’ relationship with their material past in Jordan, an image that has persisted from the early twentieth century until the rise of ‘local participation’ as a rhetoric that has recently sought to actively engage locals. We examine this rhetoric in sustainable development projects that are funded by international agencies, such as the World Bank and USAID, and show how they mark a shift from an economy-based neoliberalism to an ‘inclusive’ one. We use neoliberalism in its conceptual and analytical scope to examine the projects’ frames of reference (local, national and international) and the mechanisms of power between the expert and the local. This is important  We particularly refer to the different colonial regimes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and contemporary powers that have shaped and continue to shape the current spatial, socio-political and economic context of the Arab Region. 1

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because we believe local scholarship in the Arab region has tended to be passive and descriptive in approaching archaeology and heritage issues.2 We of course acknowledge critical approaches that many Arab scholars (whether in the region or abroad) have developed, and we cite some of them in this article. But our critique is based on an absent Arab critical engagement with archaeology and heritage-related conventions. While many parts of the world have broken from the universality of conventional practices and have formulated their own charters to fit their socio-cultural and historical contexts, when it comes to heritage perception and practice, the Arab region has yet to contribute to these universal charters by engaging critically to reshape and redefine them. We join Meskell (2015, p. 6) in emphasizing that ‘examining heritage requires a more anthropologically nuanced and theoretically informed understanding if scholars are to address the motivations behind heritage regulation.’ Acknowledging politics in archaeology is at the heart of this examination, as archaeology reconstructs times and places in the Arab region (and elsewhere) while exposing, electing, and shaping material of the past according to political needs. We believe that it is no longer acceptable for local scholars, particularly in light of the colonial history of archaeology and the recent complexities in the field, to simply report and document changes, without analyzing, criticizing, and ‘doubting’ (Waterton & Watson, 2013, p. 547). Such a critical approach might raise and answer questions about the history of archaeology and heritage in the Arab region before Western colonialism.

1.2 Pride and Prejudice: Archaeology in Action in the Arab Region In this article, we engage with the history of archaeology in the region to find a theoretical framework to explore the ‘reception’ of archaeology as an exogenous discipline and practice during colonial time, and how this reception has influenced the perception of archaeology by locals, communities and scholars alike. Given that archaeology is ‘the making of a present that also entail[s] the excavation of a past’ (Abu El-Haj, 1998, p. 174), we believe that local archaeologists can only contribute to the development of the field when they ‘become more politicized, certainly more “theorized”… and more active in their negotiations in a fuller global setting – and that includes the local level’ (Meskell, 2006, p. 167). Archaeology in the Arab region came into modern being when Western scholars became interested in the regions’ material past while it was governed by the Ottoman Empire. This kind of ‘imperialist archaeology’ (Trigger, 1984) explored peoples and lands with particular economic, political and cultural interests that suited Western empires of that time (Seymour, 2004). Imperialist archaeology preceded

 We would encourage a meta-analytical approach to this literature on which we can begin to build a solid critique. 2

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and facilitated Western colonialism as ‘archaeology developed at the core of the relationship between capitalist advancement and the cycle of dispossession, appropriation and annexation of territories’ (Mourad, 2007, p. 154). It also shaped contemporary conceptual and practical approaches to materials of the past. Together with other disciplines such as anthropology, geography, biology and geology, archaeology provided a ‘practical knowledge of the conquered or conquerable lands and as such it is acknowledged by colonial administrators and theorists’ (GonzálezRuibal, 2010, p. 40; see also Meskell, 2006). Shaped by a complex matrix of Western philosophy, history, science, technology, nationalism and colonialism (AbuKhafajah & Badran, 2015), western archaeology cultivated a sense of superiority in opposition to its inferior oriental ‘other’ (Bernbeck & Pollock, 2007; Kohl, 1998, p.  227); pride and prejudice in action at a global scale. Ultimately, archaeology became entangled in the process of colonialising peoples, their lands and their pasts (Anderson, 1991), not least through its activities, for example, excavation and tourism that were introduced to the Arab region in the colonial context. To what extent does neoliberal archaeology still nurture this ‘pride and prejudice?’ We attend to this question in the second part of our article. Colonialist archaeology was selective about the cultures that shaped the Arab region. It anchored itself in the ancient cultures, referred to as ‘the cradle of civilisation’ (Seymour, 2004, p. 325), while intentionally dismissing more recent ones. For example, ancient cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt were divorced from their connections to Arab-Islamic cultures and were instead associated with European culture as part of the broader development of human civilization (Bahrani, 1998; Reid, 2002). At the same time, ‘the Islamic past, Arab history and Turkish conquests were ignored. Islam as a unifying factor was (and still is) viewed as a threat to any hegemonic power. “Islamophobia” in the 19th century led to a disregard for the Islamic past and its remains’ (Mourad, 2007, p.  155). Furthermore, materials of the past from the Arab region were considered placeless and decisions to transfer archaeological artefacts to western countries were sometimes made lightly. For example, Gertrude Bell, a prominent British female traveller, politician, and the Director of Antiquities in Iraq until 1926, was known to decide on the artefacts that were to be kept in Iraq and those that were to be transferred to museums abroad by ‘spinning a coin’ (Bernhardsson, 2005, p. 144). Archaeology contributed to fragmenting the pasts of the region, segregating them from their land, times and peoples, and connecting a substantial part of these pasts to European cultures. In this sense, archaeology reinforced the cultural superiority of the coloniser while depriving the colonised of their past, thus leaving them with an arbitrary present and an uncertain future. Interestingly, while Western discourses took pride in learning from, and advancing on, the ancient cultures of the Arab region (Larsen, 1989, pp. 229–230), and while they introduced people to the past as part of their national agendas, through education, museums, and touristic trips (Silberman, 1989, p. 4), the Arab people – and their past and land – were experiencing prejudice first hand through archaeological expeditions in the region. This pattern of pride and prejudice with its dominant negative imagery of Arabs continues in contemporary Western news coverage of archaeology, particularly through

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recent conflicts. For example, Pollock and Lutz (1994) and Seymour (2004), who analyzed news reports on ‘archaeology under fire’ in the region, make three observations. Firstly, following nineteenth century orientalist perceptions, Western reporting continues to view the people of the region as ignorant, greedy and destructive. Secondly, these reports seem to value archaeology over the lives of the locals in this particular region of the world. And finally, they value the ancient past over the Arab Islamic one: ‘during the invasion of Iraq [in 2003], full attention was given to what was considered as part of the “cradle of civilization” construct, yet Islamic remains were given a subordinate position’ (Mourad, 2007, p. 155). Our turn to this brief history sheds light on the power of archaeology to (continue to) shape the region. We strongly agree with Corbett (2011) that we need to take seriously biblical archaeology in the ‘Levant’ since the early twentieth century and its role in shaping Jordan, confiscating Palestine and establishing the state of Israel. We see the political use and abuse of archaeology in the region as a constant practice and thus argue that exploring the power dynamics behind these uses and abuses is essential for theorising archaeology and heritage practices. The following explores the intersections between archaeology, military intelligence and religio-politics in the region.

1.3 Archaeology, Military Intelligence, and Religio-Politics: Pushing the Locals to the Margin During the American military preparation for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, politicians and military forces consulted with archaeologists over the sites to be avoided during military operations (Stone, 2005, p.  934). This incident is not unique; orientalist scholars and archaeologists have in the past worked for military intelligence in the region before, during and after WWI (Mourad, 2007, p. 161). Their political influence contributed to the production of modern political and national entities in the Arab region. T. E Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’) and Gertrude Bell (‘the Arab king-maker’) are among the most influential orientalists who shaped the modern political history of the Arab region. Their prejudice against the locals was sometimes subtle, but it can be discerned clearly in statements documented in their diaries and correspondence. For example, ‘the Arabs can’t govern themselves… no one is more aware of that than I’, reported Gertrude Bell to Mark Skyes in 1915, just before the Skyes-Picot Agreement, in which the Arab region was divided between the United Kingdom and France, was signed (Wallach, 2005, pp. 152–153). Indeed, ‘[a]rchaeologists, employed as colonial officers in imperialist settings were engaged in a form of nationalist archaeology in the sense that their work was used to puff up the glory and sense of self of their employer’ (Kohl, 1998, p. 227). A photograph captured by Bell in the 1930s of an archaeologist and a local worker in an archeological site in Iraq, shown below (Fig. 1.1), captures the prejudice implied in archaeology by that time.

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Fig. 1.1  A Western archaeologist and a local worker in Iraq in 1911. (Photograph © Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University)

While Lawrence and Bell were openly political, other scholars had a subtler religio-political presence. Their accounts, a ‘blend of anthropology and archaeology, would become common currency… and would play an important role in justifying colonial conquest’ (González-Ruibal, 2010, p. 39). These accounts rendered the locals ‘inferior’, ‘ignorant’, and ‘greedy’, and their recent past as irrelevant and unimportant. In this literature, it is ‘the small, the simple, the elementary, the face-­ to-­face’ (Appadurai, 1986, p. 357) encounters that shape the image of the locals and their relationship with the past. The complex, the literate, and the historically deep connection with the past in the Arab and Islamic culture remained unexamined (Abu-Lughod, 1989, p. 279). For example, the lack of interest in archaeology among locals is often attributed to religious reasons. Trigger (2005, p.  267) ascribes the

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failure of Arabs to develop an interest in materials of the past to the association of the latter with jahiliyya, pre-Islamic life. Such interpretations were fed with accounts of Western travellers in the region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They related the destruction of ancient sculptures found in classical archaeological sites in the region to iconoclasm in Islam. It is telling that it is the same reasoning that explained the spectacular destruction of the Bamiyan statues of Buddha in Afghanistan in 2001 by the Talban, who also claimed religion as a reason for destroying the statues (Flood, 2002). Yet, one might argue that Afghanistan has been ‘Islamic’ since the seventh century AD, long before the statues were destroyed. The possibility that this destruction had political motives rather than theological ones was hardly entertained. Archaeologist Nelson Glueck’s work in Jordan is exemplary of the misrepresentation of locals, especially given his respectable academic status among Jordanian archaeologists. Although he was interested in biblical investigations, Glueck’s vivid anthropological accounts of the locals are worth exploring. In his book The Other Side of Jordan, Glueck (1940, p. 36) suggested that the only way to control local workers’ cupidity and prevent them from ‘carrying off’ archaeological findings was by offering them easy money for every artifact they handled. Beside cupidity, he argued, locals demonstrated ignorance of the past and biblical history to an extent that it was only through him, Glueck, that the locals were able to gain some insights into that past (Glueck, 1968, p. 202). In reading his account, one cannot help but wonder why his subjects, Muslim Arabs who are believed to be acquainted with the Bible – at least through their awareness of their holy book, the Quran – showed very little knowledge of this religious past. Was it a lack of communication between him and the people that led him to such a conclusion? Or was he using dominant orientalist tropes that presumed Arab inferiority? What interests us here is that whereas orientalist discourses have been heavily critiqued in Western scholarship since at least Edward Said’s publication (1978), these questions have not been raised among local scholars, perhaps because the authority of Glueck – and generally other foreign scholarship – remains unquestioned. As we grapple with the question of why local scholars have not been more vocal about questioning archeological discourses embedded in military intelligence and political agendas, we follow Pfaffl (2010, p. 6) in her proposition that ‘[t]he identity and socio-political views of the researcher turn him [/her] into a tool for manifesting the theoretical concept of politics and a political set of ideas as a tangible, however possibly constructed, reality within his [/her] area of expertise.’ We find it important to highlight the political repercussions of Glueck’s (and other archaeologists’) scholarship, which we believe has shaped contemporary archaeology and heritage in the Arab region. While we acknowledge that these archaeologists, considered by many to be ‘the father(s) of archaeology’, laid the foundations of the discipline in Jordan, we argue that there is so much room to revisit the nature of this parentage through critique and a rethinking of the political nature (and consequences) of their paradigms. This self-reflexivity will infuse much needed ‘critical reinvigoration, even if that means injecting doubts about the ontological quality of much that passes for heritage and its research’ (Waterton & Watson, 2013, p.  547). Such doubt is

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precisely what is needed to strengthen archaeology and heritage studies and move them forward in the Arab region. It is mainly in postcolonial scholarship of archaeology and heritage that prejudice against locals was most noticeably critiqued and where locally-inspired and context-oriented approaches toward the past and its materials were developed. The focus on the local challenged the universality of Western values and practices and conventional heritage practices in World Heritage Sites. Local views on material pasts soon began to receive governmental and international recognition (Bowdler, 1988; Ucko, 1989) and reflected in international charters concerned with archaeology and heritage (Taylor, 2004). Among others,3 the World Archaeological Congress (WAC) was established in 1986 to mitigate Western influences on local communities and to acknowledge their perceptions of and attitudes towards material pasts. Its founder Peter Ucko, for example, argued that the main issue in archaeology and heritage practice is not the lack of people’s interest in materials of the past but the ‘lack of awareness [among professionals] of other peoples’ cares and concerns’ (Ucko, 1989, xvii). This newfound interest in ‘the other’ shifted the local from the margin to the centre in archaeology and heritage studies. The second part of the article examines this shift with particular interest in neoliberal, heritage-based development projects operating in Jordan.

1.4 Neoliberalism at Work Contrary to Clarke’s (2008) call for the retirement of neoliberalism as a concept, we argue that archaeology and heritage practices still have a lot to gain from this concept. Neoliberalism varies from ‘a socially constructed term of struggle… that frames criticism and resistance… [to] a rigorously defined concept that can guide research in anthropology and other social sciences’ (Jessop, 2002, p.  65). We acknowledge the bulk of diverse literature that disentangles neoliberalism and its complication, and realize that this is no place for investigating it. However, as Coombe and Weiss (2015, p.  43) rightly note, ‘[h]eritage studies need a more anthropologically nuanced and theoretically informed understanding of neoliberalism, governmentality, and human rights to address the changing conditions of heritage regulation and to understand the political struggles in which new “heritagized” claims are now imbricated’ [emphasis added]. In the following, we draw on lessons

 Since its establishment, WAC has emphasized diversity and inclusion in the discipline of archaeology (Stone, 2006, p. 63). Concepts of locality, diversity and inclusion were also used to mitigate universality in the 1979 Australia ICOMOS Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance (Burra Charter), the 1983 Canada ICOMOS Appleton Charter for the Protection and Enhancement of the Built Environment, the 1992 New Zealand ICOMOS Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Heritage Value, the 2002 Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China and the 2003 Indonesian Charter for Heritage Conservation. 3

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learnt from research on neoliberal heritage projects in different contexts.4 We use this analysis to reflect on the Jordanian context where we draw connections between neoliberalism and neocolonialism. Critical scholarship of neoliberalism (Andah, 1995; Peet, 2009; Venugopal, 2015) has seen it as a modern colonial power conducted by the ‘unholy trinity’ of neoliberalism’s agents, to use Peet’s (2009) words: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Together with other organisations such as the United States Treasury, these agents ‘imposed [a neo-colonial agenda] upon an unwilling and vulnerable third world… [thus] creating deformed, paralysed or dependent trajectories of development’ (Venugopal, 2015, pp. 176–177). Scholars of neoliberalism maintain that its techniques, even if unintentionally, nurture the colonial idea of development as being something exogenous, applied by foreigners and practiced on those who are ignorant, incapable of evolving and in need of help and guidance (Peet, 2009; Venugopal, 2015, p. 176). These scholars maintain that neoliberalism deepens the dichotomy between foreigners as donors and locals as recipients. They argue that neoliberalism fosters the idea that recipients are ‘completely unprepared to resist whatever inroads foreign powers as well as their multinationals and world bank bodies maybe making into various areas of their social fabric’ (Andah, 1995, p. 155); they are already crippled by corrupted political systems and deteriorated economies. The rhetoric of neoliberalism emerged in international development policies after WWII. Neoliberalism depended heavily on efficient allocation of resources in order to increase economic value and mobilize international aid in developing countries. This efficiency relied on applying a set of political and socio-economic concepts, such as free-markets, decentralization, privatization, and delegation of governmental responsibilities towards citizens to private bodies associated with foreign agencies such as the World Bank and USAID (Harvey, 2007, p. 13). In this sense neoliberalism creates a channel of power dynamics that connect international bodies directly with locals in an attempt to generate revenues and magnify profits. In relation to heritage, the cultural resources programme (CRM) that emerged in the 1980s in many parts of the world is a form of neoliberal governmentality that ‘legitimizes new relations of power and knowledge as it creates new subject positions for individuals and social groups, while fostering the articulation of collective subjectivities holding possessive relationships to culture’ (Coombe, 2013, p. 380; see also Coombe & Weiss, 2015; González, 2014). Culture in this perspective is a resource to be exploited – mainly through tourism. This earliest application of neoliberalism in archaeology is responsible for converting conventional excavation and conservation projects into rehabilitation projects for touristic purposes, and all the sociocultural changes that came along. Neoliberalism is evident in Jordan through privatization policies and practices that dominated the country since 1989 in response to the government’s failure to fulfill its financial obligation to international aid agencies. The delegation of the

 For example, Ghana (Mawuko-Yevugah, 2010), Spain (González, 2014) and Russia (Plets, 2016).

4

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government’s responsibilities to the private sector and the establishment of new public-private partnerships were backed up by ‘amendments’ in the administrative framework of the Jordanian state to support private investment and free-market enterprise in the country. This ‘fundamentally altered the nature and structure of Jordanian space’ (Corbett, 2011, p.  186). A prominent example of neoliberalism functioning in the Jordanian urban space is the Abdali Project in Amman. Initiated in 2005, a private investment body possessed and immediately demolished the Abdali governmental and residential neighborhood, a prominent part of the modern history of Jordan and its capital Amman (Daher, 2011). Jordanians saw the Abdali being sold, sieged, demolished, rebranded, rebuilt and managed by private companies. In the heritage context, neoliberalism is manifested in the World Bank-funded cultural heritage projects conducted since 1997 in five ‘key historically and culturally important secondary cities’ in Jordan (World Bank, 2006). A close examination of these projects concluded that they ‘neutralise, fragment and reproduce space as a “tourist product”… As they deliver unity and organisation, they eliminate variety and locality; the very components that give spirit to a place’ (Abu-Khafajah et al., 2014, p.  455). The adverse impact of such neoliberal ‘development’ projects on peoples’ lives led to wide-scale criticism of the World Bank and foreign agencies’ policies in foreign media and literature (Western and otherwise).

1.5 ‘Inclusive Neoliberalism’ and the ‘Obedient Other’ Towards the end of the second millennium it became clear that the local communities where neoliberal projects took place were rapidly degrading (Mawuko-Yevugah, 2010; Soederberg, 2004). The decline was explained on the basis of the donor-­ driven, locally-imposed and economic-oriented neoliberal policies that failed to even mitigate poverty. In response, neoliberal policy-makers called for designing and implementing poverty reduction policies on the basis of social development ‘by incorporating a role for civil society through the participation of NGOs’ (Mawuko-­ Yevugah, 2010, p. 108). Consequently, the concept of ‘inclusive neoliberalism’ that relies on participatory approaches emerged in the rhetoric of the World Bank projects to indicate ‘good governance’, sustainable development, and community inclusion and empowerment (Bergh, 2012; Craig & Porter, 2003). In order to be ‘inclusive’, neoliberal policy-makers realized that they had to surpass economic politics and focus on socio-cultural ones. This realization emerged in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attack on the United States. In this culturally charged context, the United States formulated the 2002 Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) as ‘an attempt … to tie its aid and development policy to the so-called War on Terror’ (Mawuko-Yevugah, 2010, p. 113). While the obvious purpose of ‘inclusive neoliberalism’ is to facilitate ‘economic, juridical and social governance in order to create ideal conditions for international finance’, the managerial system of foreign aid under the MCA indicates ‘a disciplined inclusion of the poor… and technical management of marginal economies, governance and populations

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unprecedented since colonial times’ (Craig & Porter, 2003, pp. 54–55). But unlike colonial times, power in ‘inclusive neoliberalism’ is hardly top-down. Rather, it takes a subtle form of domination where, in the new rhetoric of neoliberalism, people are considered capable but in need of guidance, ‘good governance’ and discipline (Abrahamsen, 2004, p.  1464; Hickey & Mohan, 2004; Cooke & Kothari, 2001). Governing those who ‘can’t govern themselves’ thus now comes in the form of neoliberal sustainable development. Beside economic reformation, for developing countries to be included in foreign aid, they have had to abide by political and socio-cultural positions that support the war on terror led by the United States. Accordingly, those who unconditionally support the United States policy and its war on terror have been subject to aid, and those who have dared to differ have faced exclusion. These exclusionary policies evoke early colonial constructions of the uncivilized other. This time ‘the other’ is ‘a passive and silent homogeneous unit that is unwilling to embrace neoliberal modernization and thus remains a potential threat to the “West”’ (Soederberg, 2004, p. 297). For the ‘obedient others’, they have had to live up to the expectations of the donors in order to continue receiving their money (Abrahamsen, 2004, p. 1464). But mechanisms of ‘inclusive neoliberalism’ in ‘obedient countries’ have also enforced a further search for ‘obedient citizens,’ thus neglecting and marginalizing those who are otherwise ‘unempowerable’. Plets (2016, p.  377) describes this process as a systematic ‘structuring of local subjectivities, governmentality and local power relations’. Participatory approaches may well reverse top-down approaches, as participants become ‘agents of change and decision-making’ (Mawuko-Yevugah, 2010, p. 185). Undoubtedly, they mitigate the market logic that dominated development discourses in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet, they also mark new power dynamics that international donors exercise over recipient countries (Ferguson & Gupta, 2002; Mosse & Lewis, 2005). Following Michele Foucault’s writings on power and other scholars’ analysis of power in the context of neoliberalism, we explore power dynamics in participatory approaches and reflect on heritage projects in Jordan.

1.6 Heritage Projects in Jordan: The Neoliberal Effect Understanding participation in terms of power dynamics is at the heart of the analysis and critique of neoliberalism in the twenty-first century. Many studies use Foucault’s ‘technologies of control’ to analyse neoliberal projects in developing countries (e.g. Abrahamsen, 2004; Behrent & Zamora, 2016; Dean, 2016; Leshem, 2016; Mawuko-Yevugah, 2010). Subjectification, as a technology of control used within participatory approaches, shapes the core of this critique. The technologies and rationalities of ‘partnership’ imply ‘creation of norms and social and cultural practices at all levels’ (Kothari, 2001, p. 141) to govern the ‘interplay between race, power and counter-hegemonic ideology’ (Seedat, 2012, p.  490). These processes aim to repackage, rebrand and socially activate neoliberal politics, policies and

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orientations, to stand for the resentment of, and threats to, conventional neoliberal principles (Cahill, 2012; Mawuko-Yevugah, 2010, p. 112). To achieve these aims, neoliberal agents contextualise the principles of neoliberalism in the local settings of development projects by establishing ‘institutional and epistemological [reconfigurations], while cultivating subjectivities textured by the rule of the market and economic commodification’ (Plets, 2016, pp.  376–377). With this, neoliberalism has shifted from being a global condition into being ‘an assemblage of technologies, techniques, and practices that are selectively appropriated’ (Coombe & Weiss, 2015, p. 52) to create and sustain ‘associations between diverse constituents’ (Anderson et al., 2012, p. 174), i.e. locals and international agents. In Jordan, the diversity of these constituents is well-marked by the involvement of foreign universities and scholars in archaeology and heritage projects on the basis of cooperation with local universities and scholars. The projects mentioned in the introduction of the article (the seven AHRC-funded projects in the Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development Programme) provide a prominent example. Jordan, as many other Arab countries, has long been accustomed to the presence of foreign universities and scholars working on archaeological and heritage expeditions in the country. Their presence was predominantly based on long-term projects, divided into seasonal ones, with the specific aim of building and accumulating knowledge about the sites in question over time. However, these long-term, knowledge-­building projects witnessed a neoliberal shift when in the last few years a relatively large number of projects, collectively funded by similar funding bodies, began to operate at the same time on diverse archaeological and heritage sites in Jordan. Project time is now relatively short (up to 2–3 years), and the aims are basically concerned with sustainable development on the basis of community engagement. In this sense, heritage has been redefined to situate these new aims. Bill Finlayson (2018, p. 6) captures the new approach to heritage in his report on Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development in Jordan as the following: Heritage is a potential educational resource for the development for local communities, employment, a driver for professionalism, enhances urban environments (social wellbeing, good citizenship), and is a driver for innovation by motivating creativity. Work needs to be undertaken to realise this potential.

Thus, the perception of heritage is transforming under neoliberalism. The term archaeology is rapidly fading from project agendas and is replaced with heritage, a term more inclusive and dynamic than archaeology (see Abu-Khafajah & Badran, 2015), to accommodate the rhetoric of sustainable development. However, these projects are based on archaeological sites; they carry the ‘archaeology gene’, the scientific and academic value of heritage, within them. In a neoliberal sense, heritage is perceived as an assemblage machine of ‘[t]he most varied elements… from… cultural representation… to European funding programmes, aesthetic tastes and evaluations, urban planning policies, old plows and agricultural tools, and many others’ (González, 2014, p.  7). This machine is run through a dynamic cultural technology ‘constantly in the making in relation to the constantly changing landscapes where different players’ interests are often

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intricately juxtaposed’ (Plets, 2016, p. 378). This dynamicity transforms heritage from being approached directly as a resource to be exploited into being a process of ‘fluid social practice(s)’. Heritage in this sense is conceived as a socio-cultural issue that needs to be run by new experts; scholars who can at once advance the ‘scientific’ scope inhibited in the ‘archaeology gene’ of heritage and negotiate convenient power relations with locals in order to run heritage as a socio-cultural process. The experts are forced into this kind of duality in handling heritage because their neoliberal funding bodies are pushing towards participation as a condition for funding. These experts are not necessarily conventional agents of neoliberalism; they tend to be research-­focused and humanitarian-oriented. The socio-cultural dynamics of ‘inclusive neoliberalism’ are increasingly recognised as a creative power (Didier et al., 2013; Brenner et al., 2010 p. 199) that operates on peoples and things. It reproduces ‘spaces, states, and subjects in complex and multiple forms’ and reconfigures ‘bodies, households, families, sexualities and communities’ (Larener, 2003, pp.  511–512). It reinvents involved individuals as ‘agents of agents’; those who function in the space between the locals and funding bodies (i.e. World Bank, USAID, NGOs, research organisations, etc.). They are the experts and the entrepreneurs who ‘displace social risks away from the state and out to an array of “responsibilized” individuals, associations and communities’ (Brenner et al., 2010, p. 199) in order to achieve development. While functioning in this tense space between those with power and those to be empowered, these experts practice subjectification, ‘the self-application of power, making oneself conform to a normalized standard’ to achieve development (Bonta & Protevi, 2004, p. 130). In the context of subjectification, ‘politics is reduced to… value creation and appropriation under a public sphere organised by socio-scientific knowledge, which… reinforces the forging of individuals as entrepreneurs’ (González, 2014, p. 6). In terms of heritage projects – especially those conducted in monumental sites with anticipated financial profit, subjectification is an efficient mechanism where ‘the self-empowerment of capacitated citizens and self-organized communities… facilitate rapid permit granting for commercial development of tourist heritage zones’ (Coombe & Weiss, 2015, pp. 43, 47). The creative power of ‘inclusive neoliberalism’ capacitates individuals to run the heritage machine to achieve sustainable development by ‘engineer[ing] social change from below’ (Coombe, 2013, p. 378) using rhetoric, policies, and practices of ‘inclusive neoliberalism’. This engineering implies interaction between the experts and the locals through which locals are supposed to be empowered, jobs created, and development achieved. The role of Western-funded experts (locals and foreigners) in forging locals into entrepreneurs is crucial for investigating the neoliberal effect on heritage projects carried out in Jordan. Most, if not all, heritage projects are conducted by Western agencies that come equipped with knowledge and experience and the power that comes along with them; not dissimilar to the archaeological expeditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As part of the creative power that runs the heritage machine, experts have to synthesise the ‘archaeology gene’ with the rhetoric of sustainable development. This implies ‘constant reiteration and renewal of

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technical language, methods and orthodoxies’ (Crewe & Harrison, 1998, p.  109) and amalgamation between conventional vocabularies (conservation, restoration, and management) and activist ones (empowerment, capacity building and job creation). While doing that, the experts gain more power and accumulate cultural capital that tightens the rhetoric of development as being foreign, imported and bestowed from above (Mawuko-Yevugah, 2010, pp. 189–190). Kothari (2005, p. 428) builds on the role of experts in the development process to conclude that prejudice, inherited in ‘cultural capital acquired by being from or of the West’, governs the power mechanisms in the participatory relationship between the expert and the local. The cultural capital of the experts allows them ease of movement in the space between the local and the international, the powerless and the powerful, the recipient and the donor. While being ‘fluid’ they ‘move resources, authority and concepts from donors to recipients, and return images, information and legitimisation from recipients to donors’ (Townsend et al., 2002, p. 832). Arguably with different motivations, experts’ power and ease of movement resemble those of military intelligence agents who occupied the space between locals and international powers in colonial times. However, the promise of prosperity that is based on empowerment, capacity building and job creation almost completely obscures the power dynamics behind their hybrid job, as scholars and as development agents of foreign funding bodies. The following section uses this discussion of power dynamics to analyze heritage-­based sustainable development projects in Jordan. The aim is not to provide a detailed study of a specific project but to establish a much-needed theoretical framework that helps us approach archaeology and heritage practices in Jordan through a lens that is more critical than the current tools.

1.7 Power Dynamics Within Participatory Approaches: Rebranding Scholars and Locals Under neoliberalism the authority over heritage has shifted from the state to ‘new agencies and coalitions of agencies, joint partnerships, public-private alliances, global-local or multi-scalar assemblages of NGOs, international authorities, and transnational agencies’ (Coombe, 2013, p.  378). In the case of Jordan, the ‘new agencies’ are not entirely new. Many of them, such as ACOR, the French Institute of Archaeology of the Near East (IFABO), the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) and the German Archaeological Institute in Jordan (DAI), have existed in the Arab region, in one form or another, since colonial times. They persisted in the postcolonial context, only to be faintly monitored, reported, and inspected by representatives of the newly independent states of the Arab region. In Jordan, as in other Arab counties, the ‘joint’ management of archaeological and heritage sites by relevant foreign bodies and the state represented the earliest forms of decentralization, before the entrenchment of neoliberalism. In these agencies

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new roles amalgamated the scientific with the social in accordance with the politics of project funding bodies. Decentralisation of power in heritage projects hardly implicates the neoliberal state in absolute withdrawal, but a mere ‘devolution of authority’ (Coombe & Baird, 2015, p. 145) creates a collective approach to heritage in which scholars operate as experts and development agents of foreign funding bodies. In this approach ‘NGOs, state and privately sponsored museums, local associations, women’s organizations, professional societies, and many other structures can take on heritage preservation as an explicit cause, becoming devoted custodians of local patrimony assets while deriving economic and educational benefits for themselves’ (Cernea, 2001, p. 76). The devolution of power and subjectification of individuals optimize the economic and educational benefits of heritage. Heritage becomes ‘a force of production in itself… [and] a means of making development strategies more socially and environmentally sustainable’ (Long & Labadi, 2010, pp. 1–2). This force of production can be seen in action during ‘heritage project season’ in Jordan, as project sites become independent entities, platforms with their own power hierarchies and dynamics. These entities are hybrid, globally integrated and locally responsive. Their experts connect the local to the global, internationalise the local, and ‘localise’ the international. In such hybrid contexts ‘it is no longer possible to capture the scope of international heritage without proper consideration of global institutions, national politics, and local developments and social movements’ (Meskell, 2015, p. 5), especially that contemporary national and international politics of heritage are ladened with neoliberal ‘actors and concepts, such as NGOs and their rhetoric, to consolidate control over value-laden spaces such as historic centers, national heritage, and so on’ (Meskell, 2015, p.  13). These spaces are hybrid with juxtaposed values, agents, and powers that come together under the label of sustainable development projects. To see this as a dramatic shift from the colonial exclusion and marginalization of locals is perhaps true and just. However, a comprehensive examination of the power dynamics of these entities may reveal a subtle resemblance between colonial and neoliberal approaches. Before archaeology, scholarship was infused with neoliberalism, its scholars were basically trained as archaeologists and conservationists whose work was mostly restricted to excavation, documentation and preservation. The inclusion of locals remained optional, arbitrary, unstructured and mundane. But when international funding bodies began to request partnerships with locals, as part of their ‘inclusive neoliberal’ agendas, this reconfigured the institutional and epistemological structures of projects. It affected their theoretical and practical frameworks, their aims and objectives, team structures, and power dynamics between team members (scholars and involved locals, on one hand, and the team and the rest of the local community on the other). This implied rebranding scholars as development agents, educators, job creators, and capacity builders. Scholars now have to juggle their new managerial roles with their archaeology scholarship to meet funding agendas. In their mission to secure funding and to meet project aims, scholars and experts have tended to simplify and universalise complex communities, cultures and

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histories ‘to a few underlying, guiding principles’ (Patterson, 2006, p. 377). Part of this simplification is the lack of awareness of, or maybe indifference to, the structuring of subjectivities and power dynamics the experts create when they select ‘obedient locals’ to be included in their projects. We outline two kinds of locals: the ‘empowered’ and the ‘powerless’, both constituting part of the project team, and both under pressure to improve, develop, and contribute to the project as a function of their membership and for the sake of continuity and inclusion. The ‘empowered’ are usually the educated youths and the women, who are brought to the foreground, while the ‘powerless’, usually assigned mundane jobs, operate in the background, thus providing depth to a globally integrated, locally responsive, and self-organised platform. As a result of this selection, three different levels of power dynamics appear. The first level is the embedded power tension created between those ‘included,’ the ‘empowered’ and the ‘powerless,’ and those excluded, the ‘unempowerable’. This tension is derived from the fact that the selected ones are associated with the experts and the presumable ‘privilege’ of this association. They develop socio-cultural capital that differentiates them from the excluded. This nuanced power dynamic, associated with neoliberal heritage projects that operate on the local level, is worth examining, especially when these projects consider themselves socially sustainable. The second level is the power dynamics between the ‘empowered’ and the ‘powerless’. It is generated from the fact that the ‘empowered’ are delegated with responsibilities of certain importance in comparison to the ‘powerless’. But the tensions that might rise as a result of this dichotomy are contained by the rhetoric of empowerment and continuous development. The third level is embedded in the process of subjectification experts practice over the included locals. Projects provide ‘new ways of representing and performing socio-economic and political relations and identities, in a process of selection and purification that emerges relationally in social contexts of interaction’ (González, 2014, pp.  6–7). Selection and purification are mechanisms of subjectification, as ‘the practices of encouragement, motivation, incitement, and inducement’ turn into guidance, governance and discipline ‘in the name of empowerment and participatory management’ (Coombe & Weiss, 2015, p. 49). The social context of interaction is where the complex power dynamics take place in the name of delivering neoliberalism’s promise of prosperity. It is a fascinatingly hybrid context where academic values juxtapose with new meanings and uses generated from transforming archaeology into development projects. The hybridity is also evident in the merging between the local and the foreign, something that has always taken place in archaeological sites since colonial times. However, this time neoliberalism has shifted ‘the local’ from the margin to the centre. This shift implies new responsibilities for the locals and the experts alike. It is in the space of responsibility-creation and promise-­ realisation that power dynamics operate and neocolonialism takes place.

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1.8 Shifting People from the Margin to the Centre Breaking with what we see as a passive and descriptive approach to archaeology and heritage in the Arab region, and drawing on our observations and analysis of practices in these fields, we examined the power dynamics that govern archaeology and heritage in Jordan. We specifically explored powers that pushed the locals to the margin, as ‘ignorant and thieves’, during colonial times only to be brought back to the centre recently, as part of the ‘inclusive neoliberalism’ wave that has swept the world. We examined archaeology as a colonial process that has shaped Arab contemporary political spaces, whether through the foregrounding of specific pasts, peoples and cultures while obscuring others, or through orientalist (mis)representations of the region’s peoples, which had violent political repercussions still resonant today. As regional politics shift and turn in the region, we traced the changing perceptions and practices of archaeology and heritage in neoliberal projects in Jordan – a country considered to be one of the most politically stable in the region. We examined how neoliberalism transforms archaeology and heritage into hybrid entities, juxtaposing the global with the local, foreign expert with the ‘obedient local’, and conventional archaeology scholarship with the rhetoric and practices of ‘inclusive neoliberalism’. By coupling the colonial with the neoliberal, our aim is to establish a framework through which archaeology and heritage  - their concepts, practices, peoples and power dynamics  - can be critically approached in the Arab region. We by no means deny the importance of participatory approaches in empowering locals; after all, contemporary Western scholars who reach out to locals in order to educate, empower, and create opportunities are very different from colonial scholars. However, it is worth remembering that while the latter facilitated colonization, the former might have encouraged ‘dependent trajectories of development’ (Venugopal, 2015, p.  177). Obviously, policies that encourage participatory approaches are far more subtle than the ones of colonial times, and in some cases are research-focused and humanitarian-oriented. But we should still allow ourselves to question the nature of participation, how it operates within heritage-based development projects and what kind of inequalities it produces. In criticising the conventional and questioning the marginalisation of the local, postcolonial literature has advanced theories and practices in archaeology and heritage. We have argued that applying a similarly critical approach to neoliberal heritage-based development projects would uncover both the challenges and the potentials in local involvement in these projects. This might contribute to a better project management that would work towards the sustainable development of the peoples and the places of heritage. Acknowledgments  Professor Peter Stone of Newcastle University provided the much-needed encouragement to initiate the critical approach in this article back in 2007, when the first author was his PhD student. Professor Zeyad Al-Salameen and Dr. Aahed Khliefat recently read and commented on earlier versions of this article. Our friends and colleagues at the Hashemite University and the United Arab Emirates University contributed to this article through supportive structured and casual conversations. The CBRL Prize for Best Article Committee and the editor of Contemporary Levant provided intense revisions of the ideas and the language of this article. We are grateful to all of them.

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Coombe, R., & Baird, M. (2015). No the limits of heritage: Corporate interests and cultural rights on resource Frontiers. In W. Logan, M. N. Graith, & U. Kockel (Eds.), A companion to heritage studies (pp. 337–354). John Wiley & Sons. Coombe, R. J., & Weiss, L. M. (2015). Neoliberalism, heritage, regimes, and cultural rights. In L. Meskell (Ed.), Global heritage: A reader (pp. 43–69). Wiley Blackwell. Corbett, E.  D. (2011). Hashemite antiquity and modernity: Iconography in neoliberal Jordan. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 11(2), 163–193. Craig, D., & Porter, D. (2003). Poverty reduction strategy papers: A new convergence. World Development, 31(1), 53–69. Crewe, E., & Harrison, E. (1998). Whose Development? Zed Books. Daher, R. (2011). Discourses of neoliberalism and disparities in the city landscape: Cranes, craters and an exclusive urbanity. In M. Ababsa & R. Dher (Eds.), Cities, urban practices, and nation building in Jordan (pp. 273–296). Institut Français. de Vries, B. (2013). Archaeology and Community in Jordan and Greater Syria. Near Eastern Archaeology, 76(3), 132–141. Dean, M. (2016). Foucault, Ewald, neoliberalism, and the left. In M. C. Behrent & D. Zamora (Eds.), Foucault and neoliberalism (pp. 85–113). Polity Press. Didier, S., Morange, M., & Peyroux, E. (2013). The adaptative nature of neoliberalism at the local scale: Fifteen years of city improvement districts in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Antipode, 45(1), 121–139. Ferguson, J., & Gupta, A. (2002). Spatializing states: Toward an ethnography of neoliberal govern mentality. American Ethnologist, 29(4), 981–1002. Finlayson, B. (2018). UK-Jordan Newton-Khalidi Fund Workshop: Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development [UK Arts and Humanities Research Council website]. https://ahrc. ukri.org/funding/apply-­for-­funding/archived-­opportunities/cultural-­heritage-­and-­sustainable-­ development-­in-­jordan/. Accessed 5 July 2020. Flood, F. B. (2002). Between cult and culture: Bamiyan, Islamic iconoclasm, and the museum. The Art Bulletin, 84(4), 641–659. Glueck, N. (1940). The other side of the Jordan. American Schools of Oriental Research. Glueck, N. (1968). The river Jordan. McGraw-Hill Book Company. González, A.  P. (2014). The heritage machine: The neoliberal order and the individualisation of identity in Maragatería (Spain). Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 22(4), 397–415. González-Ruibal, A. (2010). Colonialism and European archaeology. In J.  Lydon & U.  Rizvi (Eds.), Handbook of postcolonial archaeology (pp. 37–47). Left Coast Press. Gould, P. G. (2018). Empowering communities through Archaaeology and heritage: The role of local governance in economic development. Empowering Academy. Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. Hickey, S., & Mohan, G. (2004). Towards participation as transformation: Critical themes and challenges. In S. Hickey & G. Mohan (Eds.), Participation: From tyranny to transformation? Exploring new approaches to participation in development (pp. 3–24). Zed Books. Jessop, B. (2002). Liberalism, neoliberalism, and urban governance: A state-theoretical perspective. Antipode, 34(3), 452–472. Kohl, P. L. (1998). Nationalism and archaeology: On the constructions of nations and the reconstructions of the remote past. Annual Review of Anthropology, 27, 223–246. Kothari, U. (2001). Power, knowledge and social control in participatory development. In B. Cooke & U. Kothari (Eds.), Participation: The new tyranny? (pp. 139–152). Zed Books. Kothari, U. (2005). Authority and expertise: The professionalisation of international development and the ordering of dissent. Antipode, 37(3), 435–446. Larener, W. (2003). Neoliberalism? Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 21, 509–512. Larsen, M. (1989). Orientalism and near eastern archaeology. In M.  Miller, M.  Rowlands, & C. Tilly (Eds.), Domination and resistance (pp. 229–239). Unwin Hyman. Leshem, D. (2016). The origins of neoliberalism: Modeling the economy from Jesus to Foucault. Columbia University Press.

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Long, C., & Labadi, S. (2010). Introduction. In S. Labadi & C. Long (Eds.), Heritage and globalisation (pp. 1–16). Routledge. Mawuko-Yevugah, L.  C. (2010). Governing through Developmentality: The politics of international aid reform and the (re)production of power, neoliberalism and neocolonial interventions in Ghana. PhD Thesis. University of Alberta. Meskell, L. (2006). The practice and politics of archaeology in Egypt. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 925(1), 146–169. Meskell, L. (2015). Introduction: Globlaizing heritage. In L.  Meskell (Ed.), Global heritage a reader (pp. 1–21). Wiley Blackwell. Mourad, T. O. (2007). An ethical archaeology in the Middle East: Confronting empire, war and colonisation. In Y. Hamilakis & P. Duke (Eds.), Archaeology and capitalism: From ethics to politics (pp. 151–168). Routledge. Patterson, T. C. (2006). The turn to agency: Neoliberalism, individuality, and subjectivity in late-­ twentieth-­century Anglophone archaeology. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, 17(3), 373–384. Peet, R. (2009). Unholy trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO (2nd ed.). Zed Books. Pfaffl, M. (2010). Archaeology and politics: Myth, identity and constructed history regarding archaeological sites in Europe, [the] Middle East and Africa. Mag. Phil. (Masters) dissertation. University of Vienna. Plets, G. (2016). Heritage statecraft: When archaeological heritage meets neoliberalism in Gazprom’s resource colonies. Russia. Journal of Field Archaeology, 41(3), 368–383. Pollock, S., & Lutz, C. (1994). Archaeology deployed for the Gulf war. Critique of Anthropology, 14(3), 263–284. Reid, D.  M. (2002). Whose pharaohs? Archaeology, museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to world war I. University of California Press. Ronza, M. E., & Smith, M. (2013). Building guidelines for a restoration project to promote public awareness: The Nabulsi’s farmhouse in Hisban – Jordan partnering architecture (pp. 535–541). Archaeology and Community Development, XI. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Penguin Books. Seedat, M. (2012). Community engagement as Liberal performance, as critical intellectualism and as praxis. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 22(4), 489–500. Seymour, M. (2004). Ancient Mesopotamia and modern Iraq in the British press, 1980–2003. Current Anthropology, 45(3), 351–368. Silberman, N. A. (1989). Between past and present: Archaeology, ideology, and nationalism in the modern Middle East. Holt. Soederberg, S. (2004). American empire and ‘excluded states’: The millennium challenge account and the shift to pre-emptive development. Third World Quarterly, 25(2), 279–230. Stone, P. (2005). The identification and protection of cultural heritage during the Iraq conflict: A peculiarly English tale. Antiquity, 79(306), 933–943. Stone, P. (2006). ‘All smoke and mirrors …’ the world archaeological congress, 1968-2004. In R. Layton, S. Shennan, & P. G. Stone (Eds.), A future for archaeology: The past in the present (pp. 53–64). UCL press. Taylor, K. (2004). Cultural heritage management: A possible role for charters and principles in Asia. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 10(5), 417–433. Townsend, J., Porter, G., & Mawdsley, E. (2002). The role of the transnational community of non-government organizations: Governance or poverty reduction? Journal of International Development, 14, 829–839. Trigger, B. G. (1984). Alternative archaeology: Nationalist, colonialist. Imperialist. Man, 19(3), 355–370. Trigger, B.  G. (2005). Romanticism, nationalism and archaeology. In P.  L. Kohl & C.  Fawcett (Eds.), Nationalism, politics, and the practices of archaeology (pp.  263–279). Cambridge University Press.

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Tuttle, C.  A. (2013). Preserving Petra sustainably (one step at a time): The Temple of the winged lions cultural resource management initiative as a step forward. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies, 1(1), 1–23. Ucko, P. J. (1989). Forward. In H. F. Cleere (Ed.), Archaeological heritage management in the modern world (pp. ix–xiv). Unwin Hyman. Venugopal, R. (2015). Neoliberalism as concept. Economy and Society, 44(2), 165–187. Wallach, J. (2005). Desert queen: The extraordinary life of Gertrude bell. Anchor Books. Waterton, E., & Watson, S. (2013). Framing theory: Towards a critical imagination in heritage studies. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19(6), 546–561. World Bank. (2006). Jordan – Cultural heritage tourism and urban development project. Project information document appraisal stage. World Bank. Shatha Abu-Khafajah is an associate professor in the Architectural Engineering Department at the Hashemite University in Jordan. She graduated as an architect from the University of Jordan in 1997 and went on to specialise in the documentation and conservation of archaeological heritage while completing a Master’s degree in Archaeology. Her PhD in Cultural Heritage Management from Newcastle University, obtained in 2007, enabled her to synthesise architecture and archaeology with a special interest in establishing a sustainable approach to heritage management in the Arab region that is community-based and context-oriented.  

Riham Hussien Miqdadi obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Archaeology from Mu’tah University and the University of Jordan, respectively, before pursuing a PhD in Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Tübingen, Germany. She subsequently participated in several archaeological excavations in both Jordan and Syria. She is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Tourism and Heritage in the United Arab Emirates University, Abu Dhabi. Her research focuses on ancient near eastern archaeology, Arabian Gulf archaeology, typology of ancient pottery and manufacturing techniques, and cultural heritage studies and practices.  

Chapter 2

Community Archaeology at Umm el-Jimal: Including the Recently Settled Umm el-Jimal Community in the Heritage of the Ancient Site Bert de Vries

2.1 Introduction During research at Umm el-Jimal,1 northern Jordan, on the history of the community’s relationship to the ancient site (Fig. 2.1), an intriguing question keeps surfacing: How can the recently ‘arrived/settled’ community legitimize its relationship with antiquities which are not an essential component of their own historical experience? This question is somewhat different from the issue of estrangement of the living present from the archaeological past, about which some of us have written in the tradition of Edward Said’s orientalist critique. The author expects the answers to the above question to redirect our approach from the more negatively critical, ‘Why “they” were excluded’, to a more positively assertive, ‘Why they should be included’. One of the key theses of the chapter is that an essential way of making this right of inclusion meaningful to the modern community is the coupling of the

 For current research of the Umm el-Jimal Archaeological Project (UJAP) see de Vries et  al. (2016). UJAP conducted traditional archaeology at Umm el-Jimal sporadically from 1972–1998 and architectural conservation from 1983. From 2007 onwards, UJAP has concentrated on site documentation, preservation and presentation with community archaeology as the overriding goal. UJAP is lodged at Calvin University, partnered with the Department of Antiquities and Ministry of Tourism of Jordan, affiliated with ACOR (American Center of Research in Amman) and ASOR (American Schools of Oriental Research in North America), and works in close cooperation with the community and Municipality of Umm el-Jimal for the development of local cultural-economic resources. UJAP enables research and publication for project participants from Jordanian, American and international academies. Since 2007, UJAP’s support has come from Calvin University, the American Institute of Archaeology, NORAD/NORHED (Norway), the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation (USA), USAID/SCHEP (see below), UNESCO, Al Hima (Jordan), Gerda Henkel Stiftung (Germany), the Pax Foundation (Nevada), the Clean Water Institute of Calvin University (CWICU), ACOR and private donors. 1

B. de Vries (Deceased) (*) Department of History, Calvin University, Grand Rapids, MI, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_2

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Fig. 2.1  Antiquities and community. Map showing the Byzantine site at the core, a tier of modern village neighborhoods and agricultural fields. (Umm el-Jimal Project staff, Architects Dana al-­ Farraj, Mais Haddad and Jehad Suleiman)

archaeological heritage – pre-Islamic and Islamic – to the deep Islamic literary and artistic heritage in Jordanian education.

2.2 Community Archaeology and Heritage Connectivity: Descent and Continuity Community archaeology, the practice of engaging local people in the management and celebration of the archaeological remains in their midst, is an emergent variant on traditional archaeology. In traditional or ‘new’ archaeology, sites were studied as scientifically measurable objects without involvement of the modern community in which they were located. The community might have been used as a source of untrained labor or as a local expediter, such as the ubiquitous ‘dragomans’, professional arrangers and guides of nineteenth century lore and literature (de Vries, 2013a, b). Rather, the community was excluded from this ‘scientific’ process,

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whether as a component of the object of study or as a participant in the research itself. Thus, the work of local community members was ancillary to the work of the team of experts who often came from distant universities where experts received a training of which the ‘locals’ remained ‘ignorant’. In this framework, local ‘hires’ learned to keep what they knew to themselves and to consider the expertise of the archaeologists as a permanently impenetrable realm in which their own knowledge meant nothing (Mickel, 2016). This situation began to change thirty years ago, and a growing respect for local people in the archaeological venture began to appear in publication. For example, excavation team photos early in the author’s own career (ca. 1970) were carefully posed in hierarchical order, with low-ranking members positioned in rows of inferiority measured by distance from the row of senior staff (Fig. 2.2). By the 1990s, team photographs were much more integrated with no visible hierarchy  - senior staff and local workers often posed with arms across each other’s shoulders to signify camaraderie (Fig. 2.3). While community participation was practiced earlier in Africa (Schmidt, 2017), it became a feature of post-processual theory in the 1990s with deliberate application to field strategy at key sites such as Çatal Höyük (Hodder, 2008). By 2017, equitable local participation in projects had become visible world-wide (Thomas, 2017, pp. 14–30; Gould, 2018, pp. 19–24) and had also taken place in museology and digital media (Onciul et  al., 2017). On the 40th anniversary of its 1972 Convention, UNESCO had begun to recognize community participation as a key factor in World Heritage Monument inscription and management (UNESCO, 2012a, b). In the western academic world, particularly in Europe, this fed a traditional thirst for amateur participation, while in the Americas, Africa and Australia (Gould, 2018;

Fig. 2.2  The Hisban Project, 1968 season staff photograph. (Courtesy of Madaba Plains Project)

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Fig. 2.3  The Umm el-Jimal Project, 1996 season staff photograph. (Umm el-Jimal Project Archive)

Thomas, 2017), it entailed the inclusion of previously excluded indigenous communities with already existing connections, either through ancestral memory  – ‘descent’, or through uninterrupted habitation – ‘continuity’. Inclusion came relatively easily in situations in which local participants could claim direct descent from the ancient inhabitants. For example, when the Ziibwing Center was established in Saginaw, Michigan, the local Chippewa Indians were enrolled in the archaeological study of the remains of their ancestors. Though there is a significant break between pre-colonial and modern Chippewa cultures, the rationale for the right of engagement of this modern community was almost automatic once this principle of connection by descent was accepted. This localization of leadership led to the broadening of archaeology from purely technical scientific research to inclusion of the views and heritage of the living Chippewa community. Pre-Columbian Native American archaeology was ‘decolonized’ by this shift of leadership from academia to the local community (Atalay, 2012, pp. 240–253). One could expect similarly that continuity between archaeological antiquity and modern heritage of the Maya would be apparent and functional because the modern populations of Central America have retained their native languages and have preserved ancient shamanist religious practices and traditional artistic patterns in costume embroidery and rug weaving. However, the Aztec invasion into the Maya sphere followed by the Spanish conquests created such a radical restructuring of Maya cultures that the heyday of the classical Maya temple states was erased from popular memory and subsumed in the scholars’ myth of the ‘Maya Collapse’. Reasons for this [estrangement] are many: historical connections, though preserved in folk memory, are more imagined than real; sacrificial ceremonies by shamans at fire pits in the ruins mix New-Age with traditional practices; dislocation and massacre from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries have created a culture of suffering and alienation;

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a­ rchaeologists’ preoccupation with “collapse” has given the misleading impression that the modern Maya “are the evil descendants of a culture that failed” (Pyburn, 2011, p. 39); and violent, damaging site looting by armed gangs seems unstoppable (de Vries, 2013b, p. 138).

Patricia McAnany (2016), observes that, while hers is among several serious attempts at community-based archaeology in the Maya sphere, these efforts have yielded only moderate success. As we have done at Umm el-Jimal (de Vries, 2013a, b) in Jordan, she locates absence of community engagement in the lingering effects of colonization. This means that bridging the gap between archaeology and heritage is part of the slow and difficult process of decolonization (McAnany, 2016, pp. 50–91; de Vries, 2012, 2013a, b, p. 137). Her case studies of community archaeology demonstrate that the state of the art in Mexico and Central America is about the same as it is in Jordan. In both situations, there are initial successes in penetrating the academic discipline of archaeology with the actual engagement of communities (see also the case of Cancuén, Demarest, 2004, p.  293), but in neither has community archaeology become a dominant and essential ingredient so far. The author’s impression is, however, that Native American communities took an active lead in pressing for their rights whereas in Jordan (and in Central America) communities have tended to be less pro-active and there, pressure for change is coming more from the academies.

2.3 Why they Belong: Umm el-Jimal as a Case of Remote Heritage Connection While the case for inclusion as a restoration of rights lost by colonial exclusionary practices is important and powerful, in this chapter we presuppose that this essentially negative argument has been won. In fact, the current disarray in world leadership and waning confidence in colonial intellectual paradigms may result in the obsolescence of this argument. The realization is sinking in that the tradition of the intellectual primacy of the Enlightenment is itself closely intertwined with the history of Western economic and political imperialism (Mishra, 2017). An emerging outcome is that attribution of meaning is no longer the monopoly of select intellectual elites from a single cultural corner, but instead is a multi-vocal process accessible to people of all cultures and all levels of societies. This is decolonization wrought large and brought to its logical conclusion. Here, the point of departure can therefore be a democratization of meaning in which all, including local people, have a voice (see further below). However, their inclusion need not simply be taken for granted; positive reasons give substance to the claiming of that right. As noted, at Umm el-Jimal there is an apparent discontinuity between the historical experience of the modern residents and the communities inhabiting the site in antiquity. In the colonial critique the explanation for this gap was the preoccupation of scholars with the archaeological past combined with a lack of interest in connecting that past to the living present. This disconnection seemed an obvious ‘truth’ in

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the case of people who, like the Masa’eid of Umm el-Jimal, settled on the site only recently, but once scholars began to study it, the gap faded away and the historical reality of linkage became clearer. Following is a listing in two parts of positive reasons why the heritage of the living Umm el-Jimal community (UJP, n.d.-a, -b) is connected to the archaeological past. The first part develops the argument from proximity; the second from the realization they are historically connected after all. These will be followed by an integrative attempt to make these connections meaningful in local experience.

2.3.1 They Belong Because They Are There The Masa’eid lived in the ancient ruins of Umm el-Jimal from at least 1936 to 1972, so their experience on the site became an occupation layer as much as that of the Mamluk inhabitants six hundred years earlier. They came to Umm el-Jimal before that in nomadic transhumance movement between the Jabal al-Arab and the Hauran plain, attracted by the copious waters in its reservoirs (Fig. 2.4). After they moved in, various families staked their claim to specific houses as family possessions for themselves and as stables for their animals. Their homestead domain included rights of access to specific reservoirs, which they refurbished. This was learned while the Umm el-Jimal Archaeological Project (UJAP) was cleaning and repairing reservoirs in its Water System Reactivation Project (Maxmen, 2017). The Masa’eid, therefore thought of the site as their own living settlement rather than dead ruins abandoned by others. But, one may object, the Masa’eid are nevertheless really newcomers, who cannot trace their presence as a ‘return’ to the glorious ruins of Byzantine-Umayyad ‘ancestors’. Answers include: neither can we foreign archaeologists, nor most Jordanians. This is a new country, in which even the rich mosaic heritage of Madaba lay abandoned until it was resettled by Keraki immigrants in the 1870s.2 However, as the ‘native’ population of the region, the Masa’eid qualify better than most of us, especially when considering their nomadic heritage. Masa’eid geography is far flung, ranging from southern Iraq to western Palestine as well as south Syria, but as nomads they were unable to prove title to the land across which they grazed their flocks. Hence, they settled in the ruins as they would establish any camp site, without owning the land on which they lived in the modern legal sense of real estate held by title. During the modernization of property laws, they lost not only access to the antiquities in which they were living, but also much of the surrounding land to which others took title. Because this happened all over Jordan, estrangement from the land by ordinary people is part of its modern heritage, and estrangement from the antiquities is part of this larger story.

 Between 1871 and 1880 about 800 Christians from Kerak resettled previously deserted Madaba to escape from a tribal feud (Harrison, in preparation; Tristram, 1874, p. 81). 2

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Fig. 2.4  Regional map showing relationship between Umm el-Jimal and the Jabal al-Arab in the northeast. The journey from the mountain to Umm el-Jimal was about 40 km with an elevation drop of about 800 m. (Drawn by the author)

To be sure, this modern experience of local inhabitants is less a story of illegitimate settlement than a story of tragic dispossession. The case of the Masa’eid and many modern Jordanians may be more like that of native North Americans, than say, of the Maya of Central America. The Anasazi of Chaco Canyon were forced from their pueblos by drought centuries ago, and now it is difficult for their descendants, modern Navajos, to prove any direct connection between themselves and their late classical central shrine. The Kaqchikel Maya of south-central Guatemala, on the other hand, can prove their historical connection to Iximche, the fortified redoubt their ancestors were constructing when the Spanish invader Pedro Alverado dispossessed them. The Kaqchikel can prove a direct line of heritage to the ruins of Iximche (Kraemer, 2008), but the Navajo cannot do that for Chaco Canyon any

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more than the Masa’eid can do it for Umm el-Jimal. The Navajo and Masa’eid were both people of the land who were disconnected from their ancient heritage through natural catastrophes like long periods of drought. But they can prove their deep regional heritage in ways that the rest of us cannot, whether as Americans or as Jordanians. Other modern native peoples, like the Kaqchikel, have a more direct link to archaeological remains, and in their case, have also preserved a local language. The Masa’eid have lived at Umm el-Jimal for over three generations. Therefore, the site is in their heritage in a way that other ancient places, say, Chaco Canyon, are not in the experienced heritage of the Navajo. During their ‘century’ at Umm el-­ Jimal they have developed their own knowledge, comprised of stories built on memories passed on for generations. These stories form a body of experiential knowledge, a mixture of history and lore, about the place, in which the archaeological site figures significantly. In place-making theory this communal body of knowledge plays an important role in the planning of public spaces. In ethnography, this body of lore is the community’s ‘intellectual property’, or, ‘intangible heritage’ (Abu-Khafajah & Rababeh, 2012). In future site planning this communal body of knowledge needs to be counted as a voice alongside that of scholars. Processual archaeologists of the twentieth century presupposed that application of proper scientific method would lead to a singular set of truths, arrived at through carefully measured analysis of the material samples collected. Post-processual archaeologists have worked from the assumption that material remains reflect the actions and thoughts of the ancient people who designed the artifacts and shaped sites. By this, interpretation of remains became more historical, id est. they reflect the actions of thoughts and people associated with them (Renfrew & Bahn, 2010, pp. 276–277). This new approach to meaning fits anthropologists’ emphasis on ‘story’, which at Umm el-Jimal led to the creation of a ‘site story’. The project has also included interviews in which residents tell their own stories of life in the antiquities. These narratives have been posted as short films on the project’s website in a section entitled ‘Community’ (UJP, n.d.-a). ‘Multivocality’ recognizes that communities have the right to add their ‘voice’ to the shaping of the story and its meaning. This does not mean that this story is to be shaped for consumer appeal, but that key interest groups besides professional archaeologists be given their voice in its creation (Hodder, 2008, pp.  196–200). Multivocality frames the discussion of the right of local communities to add their voice to others’ – archaeologists, antiquities departments, UNESCO, etc. (Atalay, 2012, p. ix). At Umm el-Jimal multivocality is taken seriously in the work of a task force assigned to prepare the dossier for Umm el-Jimal’s inscription on the World Heritage Monument List (World Heritage Convention, 2018). As humans, we have equal rights of access to archaeological heritage locations. False arguments for exclusion or special privilege have been based on nationalism, religious affinity, race-based identity and, as in the case of the residents of Umm el-Jimal, historical disconnect. Fortunately, at Umm el-Jimal and in Jordan such exclusion has not been as nationalist as it has been elsewhere (de Vries, 2012). The fact that Umm el-Jimal is on the World Heritage Monument Tentative List

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recognizes the site’s universal value for all humanity. However, in preparing this dossier the inclusion of the local community is taken seriously. This proximity in space and memory should put the local community in a position of privilege in comparison to, say, tourists from Korea, and in a position of responsibility in hosting those very tourists and for sharing their own ‘story’ with them. When taking a group of local ladies on a teaching tour of the site, the author heard one of them exclaim, ‘This is the third time in my life I’ve visited the site, but the first time I understand it!’ While local people have the right to have their own stories heard, they must also learn the meanings attributed to the place by archaeologists. Site management planners are increasingly convinced that protection of a site like Umm el-Jimal, including the prevention of looting and vandalism, cannot succeed without the local community. To appreciate the value of site protection it is essential for residents to understand the meaning of site integrity and the importance of preserving that. Similarly, to participate in site preservation, local people need to understand the national and international standards of conservation. In sum, the community’s sense of the meaning of Umm el-Jimal’s antiquities must combine two sets of knowledge, one embedded in its own ‘intangible heritage’ and the other learned from the archaeological analysis of the site. In turn, archaeologists must respect the community’s voice in presenting the site to the public.

2.3.2 They Belong Because They Are Connected After All Standing monumental ruins have an inevitable impact on local communities regardless of any level of educated awareness. One cannot imagine growing up in Cairo or Umm Sayhoun3 without having the Pyramids or rock-cut facades as a key factor in the shaping of one’s cultural identity. The visual impact alone is so powerful that one has no choice but to incorporate these monuments in one’s self-awareness, particularly one’s sense of place. Less famous but visually dominant sites like Umm el-Jimal play similar roles in shaping personal and communal identity. However, such a sense of awareness is not automatically positive. For example, the memory of having once lived on the site may cause older residents to see it as forbidden space. Younger people may have grown up with a feeling that the antiquities are irrelevant to them because their upbringing has included neither instilling understanding, nor expectation of benefit. Mothers may perceive the place as dangerous for their children, where hoodlums hang out to dig for the ‘gold’.4 Thus, the overall  Umm Sayhoun was pre-planned and built by the Jordanian Government to accommodate the Bedul residents when the authorities forbad their residing within the antiquities of Petra. They moved reluctantly between 1985 and 1990 (Brand, 2001). 4  In Jordan, the universally told myth is that when their army withdrew from the region at the end of World War I, the Turks buried their gold in thirty chests. At just about every village in Jordan, including Umm al-Jimal, some people are convinced that this gold is buried in their ruins. Many supplant their dream for the ‘gold’ with digging for artifacts like pots, which they attempt sell on 3

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impact of nearby ruins may be negative, of a culturally distant, mysterious place enjoyed by others, but for themselves only seen through a fence. As an archaeologist working in Jordan, the author noticed a baffling gap of values separating archaeologists and local people. Archaeologists were passionate about everything from the Bronze ages to the Byzantine periods, but often treated Islamic remains as an inconvenient overburden. Ironically, these archaeologists, working as trainers and teachers inculcated the same neglect of their own immediate material heritage in them. Even works on history of Islamic architecture by outstanding scholars like K. A. C. Creswell and Oleg Grabar did not penetrate this bias of archaeologists, perhaps because the study of Islamic art and architecture was more continuous with orientalist painting and photography, whereas archaeological method was pioneered on classical sites in Italy and Greece, outside the Islamic world (Said, 1993). Conversely the predominantly Islamic local people tended to take the pre-Islamic periods as a prelude to the coming of Mohammad (jahilliyyah). Because that picture came from writings of Islamic era historians and theologians rather than from archaeology, this was a crucial communication gap separating the work of archaeologists from the historical-cultural traditions of local communities. Over the last fifteen years this situation has been changing in the archaeology of Bilad ash-Sham.5 A significant event was the extending of ceramic chronology from the classical into the Islamic periods by the outstanding work of scholars. Examples of this are Alan Walmsley’s (1997) work on Umayyad and Abbasid ceramic typology at Pella, and Bethany Walker’s (2011) focus on Mamluk and Early Ottoman pottery types. Such work has promoted the worth of Islamic Archaeology at academic conferences in Jordan and abroad. Walker (ibid.) has played an important bridging role because she combines her ceramic study with historiographical analysis of handwritten Mamluk administrative archives in Cairo. Serious work in epigraphy has also helped to bridge the gap between pre-Islamic and Islamic cultures. Extensive work on pre-Islamic inscriptions led to the realization that Arabic language and identity was emergent centuries before Islam (de Vries, 2010b). This includes especially the study of Nabataean, Thamudic and Safaitic and other early Arabic inscriptions. At Umm el-Jimal it is clear from hundreds of grave-stone inscriptions in Greek (also Nabataean and Safaitic texts) dated three centuries before Islam that the personal and tribal names of local people were Arabic (Littmann et  al., 1913; Bader, 2009, p.  83–278). Examples of early Arab ethnicity include names such as Abdullah, Aboud, Asad, Aqrabah and Kafi. Umm the antiquities market. In this they mimic archaeologists and sometimes even leave very professional looking trenches. Kersel (2020) provides a study of this phenomenon in Jordan. 5  Bilad ash-Sham is essentially the northern lands of Arabia, today encompassing Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan, as distinct from the Bilad al-Yaman, the southern lands of Arabia today encompassing Yemen, Oman and parts of Saudi Arabia. The geographic point of view is from Baghdad in the Abbasid period, when Bilad ash-Sham was a formally named province of the empire. Later it became the northern portion of the Mamluk state centered on Damascus (ash-­ Sham), as distinct from the Egyptian half, centered on Cairo. It is coterminous with al-mashreq, the territory on the east end of the Mediterranean without Iraq, and overlaps with but is not identical to the Levant or Greater Syria.

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el-Jimal proved to be an Arab community even in the Nabataean and classical periods. At local levels this meant a cultural continuity from pre-Islamic times to the present, which survived the succession of exterior empires like the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine. This emergence of Islamic archaeology and its continuity with the pre-Islamic era has brought greater visibility to the Islamic strata at Umm el-Jimal and sites across Jordan. However, such cultural Islamization of professional archaeology has barely changed popular understanding and appreciation of archaeological sites in Jordan.

2.3.3 Cementing the Connection: Islamic Archaeology and Classical Islamic Civilization In 2004 singer-poet Patti Smith lamented the bombing of Baghdad in the ‘Shock-­ and-­Awe’ invasion with a raw, emotional protest song, ‘Radio Baghdad’, which included the following lyrics: Suffer not your neighbor’s affliction Suffer not your neighbor’s paralysis But extend your hand Extend your hand Lest you vanish in the city And be but a trace Just a vanished ghost And your legacy All the things you knew Science, mathematics, thought Severely weakened Like irrigation systems In the tired veins forming From the Tigris and Euphrates In the realm of peace All the world revolved All the world revolved Around a perfect circle City of Baghdad City of scholars Empirical humble Center of the world (Smith, 2004)

The song recalls the glory of the Arab intellectual civilization of Abbasid Baghdad – and by extension Bilad ash-Sham – as a heritage destroyed with a flick of the whip of ‘regime change’. These lyrics tap into a historic usurpation of intellectual high culture, which, flowing north through Spain and Sicily, was claimed by Europe as its own original creation, the Renaissance of the twelfth century. This myth of European intellectual innovation climaxed in the so-called Age of Enlightenment in the nineteenth century and allowed Europe to rationalize its imperial expansion as a

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‘civilizing mission’ (Said, 1993). American scholars Fouad Ajami’s (1999) and Bernard Lewis’ (2002) ‘laments’ of the failures of Middle East Islamic intellectual culture gave a false respectability to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an intellectual rescue mission. This story illuminates the urgent need to enlist the results of Islamic archaeology in the rescue of Bilad ash-Sham’s own intellectual cultural heritage and lift it from under the shadow of the myth of unique superiority of the Western mind. Local intellectual heritage, rooted in huge libraries filled with many centuries of scholarly achievement in Arabic, is the work of denizens of the Middle East, work that predates, informs and rivals that of the West. It is a synthesis of thought ranging from China and India, Greece and Rome, and the original thinking of cohorts of Arabic and Persian court academics that predated and fueled the achievements of Europe and the West. A complement to this intellectual heritage is our new understanding of archaeological remains from pre-Islamic times to the present as chiefly the achievement of local people, produced from a synthesis of the literary, artistic, architectural and engineering traditions ranging from China to Spain and Africa to the Baltic. Integration of these two streams of Islamic heritage – intellectual and archaeological – is essential for the successful rehabilitation of a local sense of identity imbued with a sense of pride in a heritage that is truly a possession inherited from a historical stream of cultural ancestors, and not the imposition of an essentially foreign body of knowledge. Jordan has been at a special disadvantage because the young, modern country grew on a peripheral region, where the last prior cohesive territorial role was that of a Mamluk colonial outback without a historic core identity like that of the neighboring countries. One thinks, for example, of the ‘nostalgia for empire’ in the popular novels of Orhan Pamuk, which read like laments for a recent past lost in Turkish modernization. Jordan has therefore grasped at more remote models of identity, such as the emulation of Nabataean architecture in the facades of Amman houses and businesses and the Hashemites’ search for identity as guardians of the Haram Sharif.6 Recently there has also been an emulation of Jordan as the Holy Land, mostly for attracting tourists, but penetrating locally through ubiquitous glossy advertising. At Umm el-Jimal twice in the last five years, over 1000 Jordanian and Lebanese Christians gathered for worship in and around the ruins of the Cathedral as though they were on pilgrimage to a sacred shrine. What follows from these observations is a two-fold process: (1) The return of Islamic intellectual heritage to a position of at least equal footing with that of the West (cf. Mishra, 2017) in the modern Arab/Islamic mindset, and (2) the integration of the results of modern archaeological research with traditional Islamic intellectual literature. As educator Graham Leonard (2017, pp. 2, 8–12) has stated, the rehabilitation of the Islamic (Umayyad–Abbasid) intellectual heritage should be a key element of Jordanian public education in the twenty-first century. Instead of grasping at ephemeral vestiges of misplaced and therefore meaning-poor and ineffective  The King of Jordan retains the custodianship of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, including Haram Sharif. This is a legacy from Mandatory Palestine that survived the 1967 War and that was reaffirmed by the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority in the aftermath of the Oslo Accord. 6

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heritage models, educational reform could reconnect still living local literary traditions in poetry and prose to the deep literary past of the Islamic Middle Ages – still living, but threatened by the burgeoning material artifices of cell phones and shopping malls. Corbett (2011, 2014, pp. 195–210) provides a penetrating discussion of the relationship between such competing Jordanian identity myths and archaeological heritage. Ironically, such a ‘return’ to the heritage of Islamic and Arab civilization was anticipated in the heady intellectual atmosphere that swept the Arab world from centers like Beirut and Cairo in the Ottoman era from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Corbett (2014) relates from her analysis of the contents of al-Muqtataf, a popular-intellectual journal that ran from 1876 to the 1950s, early archaeological discoveries served as a catalyst for an intellectual revival driven by efforts to reconcile the results of modern science with the great scientific and literary heritage of the ancient world that had shaped medieval Arabic-Islamic intellectual civilization. She concludes: Near Eastern archaeology’s development at the confluence of science and religion was… as natural a fit in the Arab Ottoman world as it was in the West, able to work in tandem with the long tradition of Islamic sciences and an extensive corpus of oral tradition and literature… drawn from the great thinkers of the ancient world to those of the present moment. …It [archaeology] was thus not just a vehicle for translating European knowledge; it deliberately drew on the vast and diverse corpus of knowledge that was a longstanding component of Arab and Islamic civilization (ibid, p. 70).

Unfortunately, that integrative process of heritage formation driving the intellectuals of the East Mediterranean international age was aborted by the post-WW I division of the region into nation states. After that the search for identity, and the role of archaeology in that, was driven by the needs for a unique national heritage that would give countries like Jordan a distinctive raison-d’être within the confines of newly drawn borders (Corbett, 2014, Chs. 4–7). But now, by shaping the results of Islamic archaeology as the material context of this intellectual heritage, it can serve as a catalyst for transforming the teaching of cultural-intellectual heritage in Jordanian schools. Current experience with the popularization of archaeology on a local level is mostly factual, the presentation of the material contents of sites arranged in chronological order, done in attractive ways to make it all interesting. One could call this presentation of content ‘literalist’, or, perhaps more generously, ‘photographic’ (in the extreme a distracting preoccupation with ‘selfies’ on class visits to archaeological sites). At Umm el-Jimal, site presentation seeks to transcend this literalist approach by interpreting it as a place where Jordanians can see their own roots in both domestic architectural styles and the social organization of village life around the hosh.7 A further step is to convey more intangible meaning to archaeological remains by the integration of material culture with the contents of written Islamic sources. Following are two brief examples of possible school curricular units.

 A hosh is a semi-private area in a village neighborhood.

7

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Umm el-Jimal and Tabari  A popular stereotype that is currently feeding anti-­ Islamic hatred in the West is the destructive violence of the Islamic Conquests. In this exercise, we can evaluate the depiction of the conquest as a story of set battles in which the civilian population in the countryside was left to live undisturbed in the villages. The students can be assigned the relevant sections of the History of the Conquest in the works of Al-Tabari (A. D. 839–923) (1991). To begin, we can simply insist that one of these versions of the conquest is true, and ask which is a myth, the West’s or Tabari’s? Following this, we can study the archaeology of Umm elJimal, where we learn that the site was a thriving village of many houses and churches at the time the prophet Muhammad was born, and that these buildings remained undisturbed by the Islamic conquest and continued to be improved in the Umayyad period. In fact, the first major destruction of this village was a natural disaster, the earthquake of A. D. 749. Thus, modern archaeology gives rational substantiation of the Islamic understanding of the conquest. Umm el-Jimal and Ibn Khaldun  Another surviving popular stereotype is that history before modern warfare was an irresolvable conflict between the ‘Desert and the Sown’, that is between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers. Ibn Khaldun established this thesis from his own lifetime experiences of nomadic raids on Upper Egypt and the Mongol raid on northern Syria. Passages from the Muqqadimah by Ibn Khaldun (A. D. 1332–1406) (1958) could be read by the class to illustrate this philosophy of history. Turning to archaeology, we find that Ibn Khaldun’s theory was so influential that some archaeologists interpreted destructions of their sites they were studying on its terms. They argued that states like the Roman Empire served to protect defenseless villagers from nomadic raiders on the Arabian frontiers. However, if we turn to the archaeology of places like Umm el-Jimal, we can understand the history of this settlement in the Roman and Byzantine period better if we see it as a transfer point where herders and villagers met to exchange their products – livestock from the herders in exchange for grain from the farmers. In fact, we find at Umm el-Jimal that it was settled by nomads, who became farmers in a period of high rainfall. At other times, when crops failed year after year, the site was abandoned and its inhabitants most likely went back to nomadic herding and living in tents instead of houses. As a result, anthropologists now say that peaceful coexistence between nomads and settlers was the normal pattern, and the destructive raids Ibn Khaldun experienced in his lifetime were unusual interruptions. Ideally, enough classroom time should be available to integrate these two units with a comparison of the types of information provided by these sources: Tabari tells history in a series of interesting but unintegrated stories, nuggets for storytelling. Ibn Khaldun on the other hand begins with a comprehensive theory of history in which he can then organize the details into a single story of human experience. Thirdly, the archaeology of sites like Umm el-Jimal give the material remains that help us understand how societies functioned in real life. Studying these three together helps students develop critical thinking by weighing the various types of information available for reconstructing the past.

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The Umm el-Jimal Archaeological Project has provided the archaeological information to make such a study possible, an on-line Education Manual in both English and Arabic, available for downloading by both teachers and students free of charge (UJP, n.d.-c).

2.4 How It Works: Community Archaeology at Umm el-Jimal Community archaeology at Umm el-Jimal grew out of many decades of on-site involvement by the Umm el-Jimal Archaeological Project, from the mid-seventies to the present (de Vries et al., 2016). Because local people were hired over decades, the author’s family and core staff made long-lasting connections, lasting over three generations. Therefore, when post-modern ideas, including post-colonial theory in general (Said, 1993) and post-processual archaeological interpretation in particular (Hodder, 2008), promoted the inclusion of local populations in research, the groundwork for community engagement had already been laid at Umm el-Jimal. Therefore, when in 2007 planning for digital conservation (creation of the Umm el-Jimal website) began, it seemed natural to include the modern community. From then on, it was a matter of developing and adapting methodological theory and practice for community archaeology as it emerged all over the world (see above) and here in Jordan (see the rest of this book). This section will outline the basic aspects of the theory and practice of community archaeology as it developed at Umm el-Jimal and in Jordan over the past two decades.

2.4.1 Activist Community Archaeology at Umm el-Jimal Traditional archaeological research could be described as ‘disinterested learning’, a term meant to describe objective research engaging scientific methodologies that produce knowledge for its own sake. The presupposition is that knowledge is morally neutral, and its discovery may not be biased by special interests. An example of disinterested learning is ethnographic study in which distinct cultures are documented through interviews for publication in anthropological literature, but without interest in sharing the results to help the interviewees. Community-based archaeology at Umm el-Jimal has shifted from that narrow focus on academic research to (1) restore to the community its share in the cultural heritage represented by the ancient site, (2) expand the research to include the intangible heritage of the community, (3) encourage participation of the community in research and site management programs, (4) have the community share in the proceeds from site management and

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tourism services and (5) include the community in the planning and execution of heritage celebrations at the site. Such transformational inclusion in all aspects of the archaeology of the site has been dubbed ‘activist’ archaeology (McAnany, 2014), in which the goal is social change. Writing about the inclusion of native Americans Sonya Atalay (2014, p. 51) says, ‘Activist Archaeology is not only about doing research on those who are considered “oppressed” communities. … What is central is that the archaeology matters both to archaeologists and those they are working with; it aims to improve lives and is research [which] communities help define and design’. She sees this as a ‘global transformation in the way that research is practiced, not only in the field, but also in the university where both the goal of the research and the nature of the teaching of archaeology need to change dramatically in order to conform to this new activism’ (ibid, pp. 52–53). This change from disinterested to activist, however, functions as a shift in perspective in which it is recognized that the truth of documented soil stratigraphy be ‘braided’ together with the truth of recorded communal memory as two equitably weighted knowledge systems (ibid, pp. ix, 55). Key values of activist archaeology include social and environmental justice, sovereignty (rights of indigenous people) equity between archaeologists and community, mutual respect and trust, sustainability of programs  – in contrast to the traditional dig, document, publish and depart cycle (ibid, pp. 6–18).

2.4.2 The Role of Jordanian (and Other) Universities While at Umm el-Jimal, community in the narrow sense has meant its surrounding community of 6000 residents and the Municipality (a conglomerate of nearby villages with a total population of 49,000, swollen more recently by Syrian refugees to 78,000 residents), in a broader sense ‘community’ embraces the whole of Jordan. For Jordanians’ heritage connection to Umm el-Jimal’s ruins is much closer than that of foreign archaeologists and tourists. Thus, in seeing community-based archaeology as ‘participation,’ national organizations, such as the Department of Antiquities (DoA), the Friends of Archaeology and Heritage and ‘internal’ tourists, fit this broader sense. This includes Jordan’s universities. The universities’ role includes rigorous research for the braiding of knowledge (see Atalay above) that brings out archaeology’s multi-disciplinary character. For Umm el-Jimal, a list of universities whose faculty and students have participated – mostly in cooperation with the Umm el-Jimal Archaeological Project  – includes Yarmouk, Hashemite, Al el-Bayt and Mu’ta Universities, the University of Jordan and the Jordan German University. An example of direct involvement in the UJAP research team is the work of Yarmouk University archaeometrist Khaled al-­ Bashaireh who does plaster-mortar analysis of Umm el-Jimal’s churches (Al-Bashaireh, 2016). In 2013, a group of professors from the Hashemite University’s Architecture Department conducted a heritage study at Umm el-Jimal that engaged the students

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with the archaeological site in a creative exercise in the conservation of buildings and study of the built landscape. Rather than actual alteration of the site, the goal was creative digital engagement with the material remains. The resulting display, which combined creative architectural engagement with buildings and imagined landscape tableaus, was featured in a subsequent community heritage article in which the group formulated a working definition of ‘Heritage as Practice’ (Abu-­ Khafajah et al., 2015, p. 191): This study identifies ‘heritage as practice’ as an alternative to ‘authorized’ heritage engagement… We examine the mechanisms of these engagements through an academic experiment in which architecture students were asked to analyze the representations of the local heritage site of Umm el-Jimal, Jordan. We argue that shifting from ‘authorized’ engagement to informed ‘instinctual’ one gives the students a soft authority over heritage.

Therefore, meaning is derived not from merely visiting conserved ruins explained with signage or by tour guides, but from thematically organized creative engagement  – the transition is from passive contemplation to active involvement. This concept can serve as a catalyst for active and exciting heritage celebration projects that can convey meaning in more intangible and enjoyable ways than the absorbing of facts prepared in traditional site presentation projects. Resorting to student exercises in Jordanian architecture-heritage studies is becoming increasingly popular. As Jordanian academic programs have incorporated community engagement and tourism development, an increasing number of graduate theses and faculty articles are being written. For Umm el-Jimal, examples of these include a structural analysis of buildings (Abu Aballi, 2016), the community’s role in tourism potential at Umm el-Jimal (Abu Ali, 2012), travel and tourism with Umm el-Jimal as a destination in antiquity (Al-Shorman et al., 2017), an evaluation of Umm el-Jimal’s preparedness as a tourism destination today (Darabseh et al., 2017), and an MA thesis on the pre-­ Islamic archaeological history of the site (Hazza, 2018). Complementing these are graduate theses done outside Jordan: an MA on the economic feasibility of reactivating the ancient water system (Egerer, 2018) and a PhD on the ceramics and stratigraphy of recent excavations (Osinga, 2016). At this writing five additional theses – three MA and two PhD – are in progress under the auspices of UJAP.

2.4.3 Community Archaeology at Umm el-Jimal: Current Status Community archaeology at Umm el-Jimal has been the major theme of field work from 2007 to the present (de Vries, 2013a, b; de Vries et al., 2016). Verbal and pictorial summaries of the work are readily available at the Umm el-Jimal website and linked blog (UJP, n.d.-b). In the last five years, the project has received much impetus from the support of ACOR-based USAID SCHEP, ‘Sustainable Cultural Heritage through Engagement of Local Communities Project’. SCHEP helped UJAP make larger strides toward the goal of community engagement and has helped to spread

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Fig. 2.5  Community Archaeology in action. Ladies from the Umm el-Jimal community meet to discuss their participation in archaeology generated micro-businesses. (Photograph by the author)

principles which the Umm el-Jimal Archaeological Project has modelled to other sites and communities in Jordan (Fig. 2.5). An important SCHEP funded achievement is the incorporation of Hand by Hand Heritage, a community owned and operated business offering a broad spectrum of tourism services. A key reflexive element of community engagement has been the development of the site itself to achieve accommodation and understanding as the tools by which community and visitors can engage one another. In the last four years these have included the conservation of the Commodus Gate, the creation of a trail with 33 interpretive signs, the design and creation of the Interpretive and Hospitality Center (basic tourism services, site museum and communal gathering plaza), the design and installation of the West Entry Park (for the benefit of residents and tourists), the preparation and production of bilingual brochures and guide booklets for the Ministry of Tourism and the conservation and reactivation of the ancient water system (see Footnote 1 for a listing of supporting agencies). The SCHEP program has given the impetus to using a site narrative that, as Atalay (2014) put it, braids together the community’s and archaeology’s stories. This braiding of stories is a new result of our community-based research and will therefore serve as the main topic for this section of the chapter. A Matter of Perspective  The dominant site narrative scholars developed for classical and late antique sites in Jordan took the point of view of conquering kingdoms and empires, written from the perspective of controlling authorities, essentially outsiders who had overpowered indigenous residents. These narratives tended to rely on the histories written by court historians who ignored or demeaned local conquered people. By crediting all that was done by the ‘Nabataeans’ and the ‘Romans’

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they excluded local inhabitants from this narrative. In an extreme version, the Byzantine houses of Umm el-Jimal, built by local Arabs 4–500 years later, were erroneously identified as a great achievement of the Nabataeans (Negev, 1980, pp.  23–25). This one-sided site story still prevails in popular tourist lore despite frequent publication of the alternative narrative crediting ancient local people (de Vries, 1998, 2010a, b). This scholarly acceptance of bias against local agents in literary sources extends to the literal acceptance of information on inscriptions, information which also tends to supersede the story ‘told’ by non-written material evidence. At Umm el-­ Jimal numerous inscriptions in both Latin and Greek give us historical data representational of the rulers, particularly several Roman emperors ranging from the second century’s Marcus Aurelius to the sixth century’s Anastasios, who asserted their power locally by taking credit for monumental construction and the issuing of decrees. In contrast, local people were silent, especially regarding their own role in the socio-political hierarchy, and had their ethnicity erroneously confused with their conquerors’. This habit was exacerbated by the periodization of ceramic typology using the framework of the political history of the empires: pottery at Umm el-Jimal is ‘Nabataean’, ‘Roman’, ‘Byzantine’, ‘Umayyad’, ‘Mamluk’ or ‘Late Ottoman/ Mandate’, and until recently ceramic transition dates were linked to imperial-­ succession chronology rather than to changes in culture (Lenzen in de Vries, 1998, pp. 24–28). The ludicrousness of these biasing practices can be illustrated with two brief parallels. The first is located in the author’s own early experiences as a Dutch child living under Nazi German occupation (1939–1945); one could not imagine calling the culture of the Netherlands during those years ‘German’. In fact, much of Dutch culture produced in those years and in subsequent memory was shaped by resistance to the occupation rather than by the cultural influence of the occupiers. The second case concerns Silwan in Jerusalem, where the absence of archaeological evidence has not prevented archaeological entrepreneurs from using the Biblical stories of David’s building ventures to create a site narrative for the ‘City of David’ Park (de Vries, 2012). Though this is an extreme case, it shows that archaeological evidence may not necessarily alter a preconceived but contrary site narrative. At Umm el-Jimal written sources are limited to on-site inscriptions. Besides the few historical texts reflecting external political power, the majority of these are funerary, typically giving the name of the deceased son/ daughter and his/her father. Hundreds are Arabic names, written in Greek and Nabataean, which reflect the given names of the local population rather than those of foreign overlords (de Vries, 1986). In this case, the written evidence corroborates the interpretation of the archaeological remains, namely that the town in the Byzantine-Umayyad periods was the domestic environment of local Arab people inhabiting houses they had constructed themselves.

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An Inclusive Site Narrative8  To feature the lives of local people the starting point was not the remains of the prior Nabataean and Roman periods, but the numerous still-standing Byzantine and Umayyad houses which were built by recycling Nabataean and Roman monumental masonry as ordinary building blocks into the simple but sturdy and practical houses one can still visit today. Ironically, most of the Nabataean and Roman architecture survives only as fragments in these Byzantine and Umayyad walls. The site narrative, therefore, begins with the replacement of the ruins of empire with the locally built settlement of Arab farmers and traders for whom space and resources became available as Roman imperial controls diminished and faded after the third century A.D. This era of local Byzantine and Umayyad prosperity is followed by the earthquakes, wars and climate shifts of the eighth to eleventh centuries which brought periods of ruin and abandonment. Nevertheless, the same set of buildings provided shelter with minimal repair in the Mamluk and Ottoman eras. When H. C. Butler and his team visited in 1905, they considered the place ‘empty’ (Butler, 1913). In reality, the site had had a long history of ebb and flow, partly from sporadic attempts at resettlement and partly from transhumance as local people (Ahl el-Jebel), some Druze and some Arabs of the Masa’eid tribe, moved between the mountain to the north (Jabal al-‘Arab) and Umm el-Jimal, where the ancient collection system continued to provide water over the dry summer seasons. Return of empire (British-French Mandates) and the fixing of the border between Syria and Jordan cut this pattern and forced choices; the Druze left Umm el-Jimal, but the Masa’eid settled permanently. Their tent sites and refurbished houses, stables and water reservoirs, used for a half century before 1972, form a distinct archaeological stratum with its own settlement pattern in the Byzantine-era ruins. Then in 1970, Jordan’s DoA took permanent possession of what was then considered mainly the Nabataean and Roman ruins but in truth, the Byzantine-Umayyad site. The Masa’eid villagers were required to resettle permanently outside the ruins, where now one can see a new stratified succession of structures, some constructed from Byzantine blocks, mudbrick houses surviving as sheds, concrete houses of the late twentieth century and the cinder-block plastered houses of the current construction wave. The history of the modern, living community is firmly anchored in the story of the site, which links the lives of these modern Arabs of Jordan directly to that of their Byzantine and Umayyad Arab counterparts. This reworked site story lays the foundation for braiding together the local traditions and the archaeological record. When one considers that this retelling of the site story can be repeated with minor variations in the rest of the southern Hauran and throughout the country, one can see clearly that the archaeological heritage is the heritage of today’s population of Jordan – a story waiting to be told on a country-wide level.

 Constructing a site narrative with a focus on community was a component of the USAID-SCHEP program, co-authored by Jehad Haron and Bert de Vries (SCHEP, n.d.). 8

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2.5 Conclusion The argument of this chapter establishes the role of the community as a participant in the archaeological research and management as a positive right. Execution of the principles based on this premise have altered the nature of archaeology done at Umm el-Jimal in accordance with the principles laid out in the literature consulted at the beginning of this chapter. Key results of this shift include a redistribution of power by the inclusion of residents and a strengthening of the community’s self-­ awareness rooted in heritage practice and the breakup of archaeologists’ knowledge monopoly. Adding the community’s voice broadens the understanding of heritage as a dynamic complex of meaning come to life through engagement and celebration. Heritage as action is evident from the new descriptive terms used above: ‘Activist Archaeology’ and ‘Heritage as Practice’. These new practices break ‘the silence of meanings in conventional approaches to cultural heritage in Jordan’ (Abu-Khafajah & Rababeh, 2012). At Umm el-Jimal the research team has learned that community-based archaeology involves the careful building of relationships among diverse and originally unequal sets of people. For this, patience, tolerance and time are required. It is tantamount to peace- making and requires the same slow process for reaching habits of harmonious coexistence. In the past, archaeologists came, took their data and went home to write and publish. Communities do not leave, and community archaeology as described here never finishes. Even if archaeologists plan to leave, they must stay longer to build those participatory relationships and make certain that the continuation of the ‘project’ is in competent community hands. A significant challenge raised in this chapter is the proposed joining of the Islamic literary heritage with the archaeological heritage, to be addressed in educational curricula. Should that succeed it will be another creation of equity, in this case between the intellectual traditions of the Middle East and the West. That too would mean fundamental progress towards more peaceful coexistence, built on a foundation laid at local communal levels but with impact at global levels.

Bibliography Abu Aballi, S. (2016). Damage assessment and reconstruction model: A case study from Umm El-Jimal archaeological site. MA Thesis. Hashemite University. Abu Ali, Y. (2012). Development and promotion of the tourist site of Umm El-Jimal. MA Thesis. Mu’tah University. Abu-Khafajah, S., & Rababeh, S. (2012). The silence of meanings in conventional approaches to cultural heritage in Jordan: The exclusion of contexts and the marginalization of the intangible. In M.  L. Stefano, P.  Davis, & G.  Corsane (Eds.), Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (pp. 71–83). Boydell Press. Abu-Khafajah, S., Al Rabady, R., Rababeh, S., & Al-Tammoni, F. (2015). Hands-on heritage! Establishing soft authority over heritage through architectural experiment: A case study from Jordan. Public Archaeology, 14(3), 191–213.

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Ajami, F. (1999). The dream palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s odyssey. Pantheon Books. Al-Bashaireh, K. (2016). Use of lightweight lime mortar in the construction of the west Church of umm el-Jimal, Jordan: Radiocarbon dating and characterization. Radiocarbon, 58(3), 583–598. Al-Shorman, A., Ababneh, A., Rawashdih, A., Makhadmih, A., Alsaad, S., & Jamhawi, M. (2017). Travel and hospitality in late antiquity: A case study from umm el-Jimal in eastern Jordan. Near Eastern Archaeology, 80(1), 22–28. Al-Tabari, A.  M. (1991). In Y.  Friedmann (Ed.), The Battle of Qadissiyah and the Conquest of Syria and Palestine A. D. 635–637/A. H. 14–15. The History of Tabari (Vol. 12). SUNY Press. Atalay, S. (2012). Community-based archaeology: Research with, by, and for indigenous and local communities. University of California Press. Atalay, S. (2014). Activist archaeology. In S.  Atalay, L.  R. Clauss, R.  H. McQuire, & J. R. Welch (Eds.), Transforming archaeology: Activist practices and prospects (pp. 45–59). Left Coast Press. Bader, N. (2009). Inscriptions de la Jordanie, Inscriptions Grecques et Latines de la Syrie Vol 21, La Jordanie du Nord-Est Vol 5. Institut Francais du Proche Orient. Brand, L. A. (2001). Displacement for development? World Development, 29(6), 961–976. Butler, H. C. (1913). Ancient architecture in Syria, southern Syria, umm idj-Djimal, div. II, sec. A, Pt. 3. In Syria: Publications of the Princeton University archaeological expeditions to Syria in 1904–1905 and 1909 (pp. 149–213). Brill. Corbett, E. (2011). Hashemite antiquity and modernity: Iconography in neoliberal Jordan. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 11(2), 163–193. Corbett, E. (2014). Competitive archaeology in Jordan: Narrating identity from the ottomans to the Hashemites. University of Texas Press. Darabseh, F. M., Ababneh, A., & Almuhaisen, F. (2017). Assessing umm el-Jimal’s potential for heritage tourism. Archaeologies, 13(3), 460–488. de Vries, B. (1986). Umm el-Jimal in the first three centuries A.D. In P. Freeman & D. Kennedy (Eds.), The Defence of the Roman and byzantine east. BAR international series 297 (pp. 227–241). BAR Publishing. de Vries, B. (1998). Umm el-Jimal: A Nabataean, Roman, byzantine and early Islamic town in northern Jordan, Vol. I, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Supplementary Series, 26. de Vries, B. (2010a). The paradox of power: An archaeology of security in the first millennium a. D. In L. Manger & O. LaBianca (Eds.), Global moments in the Levant (pp. 64–71). BRIC. de Vries, B. (2010b). On the way to Bostra: Arab settlement in South Syria before Islam  - the evidence from written sources. In N. Naguib & B. de Vries (Eds.), Heureux qui comme Ulysses a fait un beau voyage: Movements of people in time and space, festschrift in honour of Leif Manger (pp. 69–92). University of Bergen, BRIC. de Vries, B. (2012). Community and antiquities at umm el-Jimal and Silwan: A comparison. In E. M. Meyers & C. Mayers (Eds.), Archaeology, bible, politics and the media. Proceedings of the Duke University conference, April 23–24, 2009 (pp. 161–186). University Park, PA. de Vries, B. (2013a). Archaeology and community at umm el-Jimal. In Studies in the history and archaeology of Jordan XI: Changes and challenges (pp.  81–89). Department of Antiquities of Jordan. de Vries, B. (2013b). Archaeology and community in Jordan and greater Syria: Traditional patterns and new directions. Near Eastern Archaeology, 76(3), 132–140. de Vries, B., & Umm el-Jimal Project Staff. (2016). Archaeology for the future at umm el-Jimal: Site preservation, presentation and community engagement. ACOR Newsletter, 28(1), 1–5. www.acorjordan.org/wp-­content/uploads/2016/11/ACOR-­Newsletter-­Vol.-­28.1.pdf Demarest, A. (2004). The ancient Maya: The rise and fall of a rainforest civilization. Cambridge University Press. Egerer, K. (2018). Economic feasibility of water harvesting in Jordan: A nexus approach to reinstating ancient water infrastructure for contemporary use at umm el-Jimal. MA Thesis in Technology.

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Gould, G. (2018). Empowering communities through archaeology and heritage: The role of local government in economic development. Bloomsbury Academic. Harrison, T. (in preparation). The Resettlement of Madaba in the Late Ottoman Period. In B. Saidel & E. Van der Steen (Eds.), New insights on the Archaeology of the Ottoman and Mandate periods in the Southern Levant. Hazza, M. (2018). The pre-Islamic archaeological history of umm al-Jimal. In MA thesis in history (Arabic). University. Hodder, I. (2008). Multivocality and social archaeology. In J. Habu, C. Fawcett, & J. M. Matsumaga (Eds.), Evaluating multiple narratives: Beyond nationalist, colonialist, imperialist archaeologies (pp. 196–200). Springer. Ibn Khaldun, A. A. (1958). The Muqaddimah: An introduction to history. Pantheon Books. Kersel, M. (2020). Follow the pots project. www.followthepotsproject.org. Accessed 22 April 2020. Kraemer, A.  E. (2008). Unearthing collaboration: Community and multivocal archaeology in Highland Guatemala. Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas. Leonard, G. (2017). Redefining Arab education for the 21st century. In M. Attakfir (Ed.). Ministry of Education of Jordan. Lewis, B. (2002). What went wrong? The clash between Islam and modernity in the Middle East. Weidenfelt and Nicholson. Littmann, E., Magie, D., & Stuart, D. R. (1913). Greek and Latin inscriptions in Syria, southern Syria, umm Idj-Djimal, div. III, sec. A, Pt. 3. In Syria: Publications of the Princeton University archaeological expeditions to Syria in 1904–1905 and 1909 (pp. 131–223). Brill. Maxmen, A. (2017). Jordan seeks to become an oasis of water-saving technology. Nature, 549, 142–143. McAnany, P. A. (2014). Terms of engagement between archaeologists and communities: A view from the Maya region. In S.  Atalay, L.  R. Clauss, R.  H. McQuire, & J.  R. Welch (Eds.), Transforming archaeology: Activist practices and prospects (pp. 159–178). Left Coast Press. McAnany, P. A. (2016). Maya cultural heritage: How archaeologists and indigenous communities engage. Rowman and Littlefield. Mickel, A. (2016). Why those who shovel are silent: Local labor, unrecognized expertise, and knowledge production in archaeological excavation. PhD Dissertation. Stanford University. Mishra, P. (2017). The age of anger: A history of the present. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Negev, A. (1980). House and city planning in the ancient Negev and the Provincia Arabia. In G. Golani (Ed.), Housing in arid lands: Design and planning (pp. 3–32). The Architectural Press Ltd.. Onciul, B., Stefano, M. L., & Hawke, S. (Eds.). (2017). Engaging heritage, engaging communites. Boydell Press. Osinga, E. A. (2016). The countryside in context: stratigraphic and ceramic analysis at Umm el-­ Jimal and environs in northeastern Jordan (1st to 20th century AD). PhD thesis in Archaeology. University of Southampton. Pyburn, A. K. (2011). Engaged archaeology: Whose community? Which public? In K. Okamura & A. Matsuda (Eds.), New perspectives in global archaeology (pp. 29–41). Springer. Renfrew, C., & Bahn, P. (2010). Archaeology essentials: Theories, methods and practices. Thames and Hudson. Said, E. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. Schocken Books. SCHEP, Sustainable cultural heritage through engagement of local communities project. (n.d.). https://www.usaid.gov/jordan/fact-­sheets/sustainable-­cultural-­heritage-­through-­engagement-­ local-­communities. Accessed 16 Feb 2020. Schmidt, P. (2017). Community-based heritage in Africa: Unveiling local Research and Development initiatives. Routledge. Smith, P. (2004). Radio Baghdad, In Trampin. Album. Thomas, S. (2017). Community archaeology. In G.  Moshuska (Ed.), Key concepts in public archaeology (pp. 14–30). University College of London Press.

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Tristram, H. B. (1874). The land of Moab. Travels and discoveries on the east side of the Dead Sea and Jordan (2nd ed.). John Murray. Umm el-Jimal Project (UJP). (n.d.-a). Community. http://ummeljimal.org/en/community.html. Accessed 16 Feb 2020. Umm el-Jimal Project (UJP). (n.d.-b). Blog. http://blog.ummeljimal.org. Accessed 16 Feb 2020. Umm el-Jimal Project (UJP). (n.d.-c). Curriculum, Education manual. http://www.ummeljimal. org/en/curriculum.html. Accessed 16 Feb 2020. UNESCO. (2012a). World heritage and sustainable development: The role of communities in the management of UNESCO designated sites. Conference Program. http://whc.unesco.org/en/ events/907/. Accessed 14 Sep 2019. UNESCO. (2012b). Engaging local communities in stewardship of world heritage. In: World Heritage Papers, 40. https://whc.unesco.org/en/activities/745. Accessed 14 Sep 2019. Walker, B. J. (2011). Jordan in the middle ages: Transformation of the Mamluk frontier. Middle East Documentation Center, University of Chicago. Walmsley, A. (1997). Ceramics and the social history of early Islamic Jordan: The example of Pella (Tabaqat Fahl). Al-‘Usra al-Wusta, 9.1, 1–3. 12. World Heritage Convention. (2018). Umm el-Jimal, Tentative list 6335, UNESCO World Heritage. https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6335. Accessed 31 May 2018. Bert de Vries was Professor Emeritus of History and Archaeology at Calvin University, where he taught ancient to modern Middle Eastern History and Archaeology from 1967 to 2018. He was a field architect for several archaeological projects in Jordan from 1968 until he passed away in 2021 and directed the Umm el-Jimal Archaeological Project in northern Jordan since the 1970s. He and the team practiced ‘community archaeology’: engagement of the local community in archaeological research and conservation, site presentation (preserved buildings, signed trails, local museum, hospitality facilities and interpretive literature), as well as hospitality services, tour guiding, heritage education and celebration. He served as ACOR, Jordan, director in the late 1980s and was a long-term member of the ACOR board. He also interpreted current events in the Middle East in their historical and global contexts in public lectures and articles in North America.  

Chapter 3

Making Social Engagement Sustainable: Insights from the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management Initiative in Petra, Jordan Glenn J. Corbett and Maria Elena Ronza

3.1 Introduction Situated in the center of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Petra, Jordan, the Temple of the Winged Lions is one of the ancient city’s most prominent but threatened monuments. Since 2009, the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management (TWLCRM) Initiative, a project of the American Center of Research in Amman (ACOR, formerly the American Center of Oriental Research), has had the aim of stabilizing, conserving, and restoring this monument. First excavated and exposed in 1974, the temple’s fragile sandstone walls and columns suffered severe deterioration from both natural and human elements, while the natural landscape was badly tarnished by the trenches, spoil heaps, and rubble piles that are the byproducts of modern archaeological excavation. To address these problems, the TWLCRM Initiative assembled a team of world-class scholars and professionals to document, conserve, and ultimately bring new life to this poorly understood and languishing monument of one of the world’s great wonders.1 Note The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this chapter are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the organizations with which they are employed or have been employed.  The present manuscript discusses the scope and perspectives of ACOR’s TWLCRM Initiative during the authors’ period of engagement in it. Glenn Corbett was Associate Director of ACOR and Co-Director of the TWLCRM Initiative from June 2014 – October 2017. Maria Elena Ronza 1 

G. J. Corbett (*) Formerly of the American Center of Research, Amman, Jordan e-mail: [email protected] M. E. Ronza Sela for Training and Protection of Heritage, Wadi Mousa, Jordan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_3

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The TWLCRM Initiative quickly realized, however, that the long-term preservation of the site was not just a matter of conserving stones and clearing away rubble, but also ensuring that local communities—long marginalized by scholars and authorities alike—were invited and empowered to participate directly in the goals of the project. This realization resulted in an innovative social engagement strategy that provided members of Petra’s local communities with employment, training, and educational opportunities in site preservation and cultural resource management (CRM). In addition to providing much-needed income for one of the poorest communities in Jordan, the hundreds of employment opportunities generated through the project also helped foster a greater sense of community stewardship over an ancient site that was formerly viewed only as an occasional source of tourism-­related revenue. The project’s emphasis on local hiring, employment, and training is now being institutionalized through Sela (2017, n.d.), a non-profit company established in 2015 by five members of the TWLCRM local team. The company’s mission is to protect heritage by raising awareness and building capacity within the communities living in and around cultural heritage and archaeological sites, while also promoting best-practice field methodologies as well as integrity and gender equality in local hiring practices. The company implements vocational training programs under the supervision of scientific institutions (often within existing field projects) in order to create a technically specialized workforce that can better meet the routine and long-­ term preservation and maintenance needs of archaeological sites. By creating a specialized, formally trained workforce that also receives official contracts and benefits, Sela aims to give professional and vocational definition to Jordan’s CRM sector, which is still largely based on informal job opportunities. To that end, the company has already developed a CRM technician database that serves both to recruit trainers and offer local training opportunities, and to assist other CRM institutions in identifying and recruiting skilled laborers. Companies like Sela, the authors believe, represent the best opportunity to promote real, sustainable change in how archaeologists, local officials, and even communities themselves understand and view the role of the local community in archaeology and heritage preservation.

3.2 Petra and the Temple of the Winged Lions Petra, nestled amid the sandstone valleys and cliffs of southern Jordan’s rugged desert landscape, was built more than 2000 years ago as the capital of the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people of humble nomadic origin who grew wealthy from their control of the lucrative Arabian trade in frankincense and myrrh. For more than 200 years, Petra was the heart of a vast and powerful trading kingdom that stretched from Damascus in Syria to the Hejaz in modern-day Saudi Arabia, before finally being annexed to the Roman Empire in A.D. 106. With such wealth and position, the was TWLCRM Initiative Project Manager from 2012 – June 2014 and Project Co-Director from June 2014 – March 2017.

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Nabataeans established a first-order capital city of the Greco-Roman world, uniquely designed and engineered to take full advantage of Petra’s mountainous desert setting (Taylor, 2002). One of the key monuments of Nabataean Petra was the Temple of the Winged Lions (Fig.  3.1), an opulent colonnaded temple likely built to honor the Arabian goddess al-Uzza (Hammond, 2003; Tuttle, 2013). Located on a promontory overlooking the city center, the temple was a majestic sacred complex that featured a massive ascending staircase, a monumental entrance flanked by gigantic columns, and an inner cultic chamber with a raised podium set amid a forest of columns. While most of the columns had beautiful Corinthian-style capitals, those surrounding the main podium were adorned with the unique ‘winged lion’ capitals that give the monument its name. The temple’s original spiritual focus was possibly an unadorned standing stone, representative of the goddess (a typical feature of Nabataean religion), that was set atop the podium and around which priests and devotees would circumambulate in ritual procession. Later, it was used to worship the Egyptian goddess Isis who, during the Roman period, was often the focus of mystery cults that allowed only a select few to access secret revelations. The walls and columns of the inner sanctum were brightly painted with floral and figurative designs, while small recesses and niches surrounding the podium held offerings and idols emblematic of the goddess. Thought to have been built by the Nabataeans during the first century A.D., the temple continued to thrive well into the Roman period and only fell out of use following the devastating earthquake that struck Petra in A.D. 363.

Fig. 3.1  The excavated remains of the Temple of the Winged Lions complex within the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Petra, southern Jordan. (Photograph by G.  Delmonaco © TWLCRM Initiative, American Center of Research, Amman)

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The Temple of the Winged Lions was the focus of a long-term American excavation project directed by the late Philip C. Hammond, professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, from 1974 to 2005 and called the American Expedition to Petra (AEP) (Hammond, 1996). As the temple’s fragile sandstone walls and features were uncovered by the AEP project, however, essential conservation and restoration interventions were not consistently employed, thus much of the building has languished. As a result of nearly 40 years of exposure to both natural and manmade elements, the structure has suffered severe deterioration from wind, water and use-­ related erosion, solar radiation exposure, rising damp and salt efflorescence, geological action, and vandalism (Tuttle, 2013). What is more, the AEP excavations, like many archaeological projects, had a decidedly negative effect on the landscape surrounding the temple. In addition to severely impacting the contours of the site’s natural hillside, the excavation produced intrusive piles of earth and stone that also changed the site’s natural vegetation and drainage patterns, destroyed wildlife habitats, and impeded people’s traditional movements through and around the site. Likewise, the earth and stone piles generated from the project were haphazardly placed on unexcavated areas adjacent to the temple, thereby seriously inhibiting any future archaeological or scientific research in the immediate vicinity. In all, the archaeological ‘impact zone’ of the AEP excavation radiates outwards from the temple for around 200 m in all directions (Tuttle, 2012).

3.3 The Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management (TWLCRM) Initiative Since 2009, ACOR in cooperation with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan (DOA), the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority (PDTRA), and the Petra Archaeological Park (PAP),  has managed an innovative cultural heritage, landscape rejuvenation, and community engagement project known as the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management Initiative (Corbett & Ronza, 2014, 2015; Tuttle, 2013; TWLCRM, 2013). With major support provided by the US State Department, USAID, as well as corporate and private donors, the main goals of the project’s conservation and preservation efforts are to: • • • • • • •

Document site architecture according to best-practice standards. Evaluate and implement best-practice conservation interventions. Backfill and stabilize previous excavation areas in danger of collapse. Clear and recycle earlier excavation spoil heaps and rubble piles. Register and document pottery and other small objects recovered from spoil heaps. Increase visitors’ physical accessibility through improved access and paths. Improve visitors’ experience by installing signage, and providing updated interpretation.

At the same time, the project developed an innovative social engagement strategy that directly involved members of Petra’s local communities in preservation efforts

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through year-round employment, training, and educational opportunities (Ronza, 2016). Using an equal-opportunity, gender-blind hiring system that was open to all who wanted to work, the TWLCRM Initiative trained 300 local community members in tangible vocational skills related to heritage preservation, including documentation, conservation, excavation, and landscape rehabilitation. The TWLCRM Initiative also sought to play a more positive, constructive role within the broader local and Jordanian community, particularly regarding cultural heritage awareness and education. To this end, the project regularly hosted at least two school groups per year, as well as several university student groups, to participate in hands-on learning activities at the site. The learning activities were tailored to different age groups and were related to the four major components of the project: documentation, excavation, conservation, and landscape preservation (Tuttle et al., 2017).

3.4 Confronting the Legacy of Archaeology’s Colonialist Past The mission of the TWLCRM Initiative’s social engagement strategy, and the challenge of achieving long-term sustainability for community involvement in cultural heritage preservation, has to be set against the much broader context of Near Eastern Archaeology’s long and tortured history of alienating and indeed exploiting the local communities that live in, around, and among archaeological ruins (Rizvi & Lydon, 2010). From the region’s first scientific explorations and excavations in the late 18th and early 19th centuries until today, the local community has been most immediately a source of cheap manual labor, the physical means by which varying quantities of dirt and rubble are removed from the ground in order to reveal a buried past (de Vries, 2013, pp. 132–135; Mickel, 2019). Paid minimal salaries, with little or no say in what is being excavated or why (and even less in what happens to objects, walls, and buildings once they are uncovered), it is no wonder that many local people are rather indifferent to the ‘significance’ of the archaeological sites they live with every day. What is more, the discipline’s earliest history is squarely rooted in colonialist policies and consciousness that actively sought to appropriate archaeology for Western imperialist aims, thereby dispossessing local communities—both physically and intellectually—of their traditional connections and claims to cultural heritage sites (Silberman, 1991; Porter, 2010; Corbett, 2014, pp. 57–58). Perhaps even more tragic, this pattern of systematic alienation and appropriation has been replicated by modern state authorities responsible for the protection and promotion of archaeological sites (Porter, 2010, pp.  54–55; Abu-Khafajah & Al Rabady, 2013). Western-educated technocrats and professors, cultivated in the same intellectual tradition that fostered the cultural and intellectual appropriation of the region’s heritage, have come to view the local community as intrinsically hostile to the goals of archaeology and heritage preservation, being either too simple and backward to appreciate the significance of ‘their heritage’, or, more typically, as agents of destruction bent on pillaging sites in search of mythical buried treasure and ‘Ottoman gold’, with no regard for the real treasure of archaeology itself. As a

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result, fences and barriers are used to protect sites from their host communities, guards are posted to ensure no one comes near, and the only people allowed to visit are official governmental representatives or curious foreign travelers wanting to snap a few photos. For the local community, the message is clear: this place is not for you; you are not welcome (Abu-Khafajah, 2014, pp.  154–156). After nearly 200 years of systematic alienation from the region’s cultural heritage, the message has sunk in all too well in towns and villages throughout the Middle East that host archaeological sites. Unfortunately, the situation has been little different in Petra, which is certainly Jordan’s most researched archaeological site and, more importantly, has long been the country’s main tourist attraction. Despite the popular portrayal of Petra’s local Bedouin communities as charming vestiges of Jordan’s age-old traditions, established cultural heritage stakeholders—whether archaeologists, aid agencies, or management authorities—have typically been unconcerned with or even against involving Petra’s communities in the site’s preservation (Akrawi, 2000, pp.107–111; Angel, 2012, pp. 115–117). Archaeologists and heritage professionals, often despite the best of intentions (i.e. supporting the local economy), have traditionally viewed the community only as a source of manual labor and have had little interest in maintaining community-based partnerships outside of their short field seasons or immediate research objectives. International aid agencies and consulting firms have sought repeatedly over the years to improve Petra’s management, facilities, and service offerings but, like many such development projects, have prioritized the interests of foreign donors and tourists over the needs and concerns of the local community (Mickel & Knodell, 2015, pp. 241–242; Abu-Khafajah & Al Rabady, 2013). Perhaps most significantly, local authorities, in an attempt to preserve Petra’s natural and cultural authenticity, famously relocated the site’s traditional Bedouin occupants when Petra was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985 (Farajat, 2012, pp. 150–153). The resulting resettlements to nearby housing developments and subsequent zoning and commercial regulations created gross disparities in local and regional access to the economic benefits provided by Petra’s blossoming tourism industry (Farajat, 2012, p. 163; Ronza, 2016, p. 618). With so few opportunities to engage productively with the site, it should come as no surprise that Petra’s local communities are rather indifferent to the importance of preserving the site’s heritage and more concerned about how Petra’s tourism affects their ability to put food on the table (Hejazeen, 2007, p. 127).

3.5 Building a New Model The TWLCRM Initiative aimed to take the first steps at reversing this situation by not just making the site more open and accessible to Petra’s communities, but by making these communities the primary stakeholders in the site’s long-term preservation. First and foremost, this meant offering quality employment opportunities that build tangible vocational skills in cultural heritage preservation. Through the

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Fig. 3.2 TWLCRM conservation trainee Ghadeer Jdeilat applies a layer of protective mortar to the temple walls. (Photograph by Halema Nawafleh © TWLCRM Initiative, American Center of Research, Amman)

project, hired community members gained ‘on-the-job’ training in the documentation of archaeological features, the principles and techniques of architectural conservation (Fig. 3.2), the initial processing of pottery and material culture finds, and the sifting and sorting of archaeological spoil heaps that have negatively affected the surrounding landscape. Others learned to design and create visitor circulation paths through the site, while some were involved in the strategic backfilling and resurfacing of old (and now dangerous) excavation trenches. Indeed, it is precisely these sorts of skills that management authorities like the DOA and PAP insist are so essential for maintaining and preserving a site like Petra (Hejazeen & Jamhawi, 2014, pp.  22–23). Far from being simple manual laborers, therefore, TWLCRM local team members gained valuable work experience that will hopefully lead to quality employment opportunities in cultural heritage preservation going forward. Building upon and expanding the model of community engagement pioneered at Tell Hesban, a strategic hill site just north of Madaba (see LaBianca & Witzel, 2007, pp. 275–289; Ronza, 2016, pp. 617–618), the project attempted to move beyond the traditional wasta, or connection-based hiring system so common to Petra by instituting an equal-opportunity, first-come, first-served work registry. Anyone who

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wanted to join the project could put their name on the employment register and was listed according to their community, tribe, and family so that opportunities were offered to as many different segments of the local community as possible. Equally important, as noted earlier, the project had a gender-blind hiring policy and so, for the first time among archaeological projects working in Petra, local women were being employed not just as cleaners, tea makers, or project cooks, but to do meaningful work related to site preservation and conservation. When the project started in 2012, there was initially some reluctance to having men and women work together in the field, and only six women signed up for the project’s first season. However, the project quickly proved that it could create a harmonious and ‘culturally appropriate’ environment for mixed-gender hiring and, by the end of 2013, more than 100 women had applied for a job. The involvement of women on the team also helped outreach to younger generations. Mothers who worked on the project would go home and talk to their children about the site and the positive aspects of their new work. Many reported that the children were very excited to learn more and so in April 2012 the TWLCRM Initiative organized its first Family Day, in which team members brought their daughters and sons to the site to learn about the project and its different components (Ronza, 2016). Indeed, since the project first began hiring large numbers of people in 2012, more than 60 percent were women who were engaged as conservation technicians, documentation specialists (Fig.  3.3), pottery processing technicians, and members of the site presentation team. Finally, the project adopted a tiered pay scale by which all who joined the project started with a basic salary that could then increase based on acquired skills and commitment to the project. This incentive-­ based system allowed those who started as beginners to develop their skills and gradually attain more responsibilities (and compensation) as they progressed with the project. Perhaps most importantly, the TWLCRM Initiative worked hard to make sure that each team member felt that they were contributing to something larger than themselves. It was this sense of being part of a team, in which the unique talents of each person were harnessed for the benefit of the site’s overall preservation, that allowed the TWLCRM to be so successful in engaging the local community in heritage preservation. Rather than just being day-wage laborers, detached both intellectually and emotionally from the reasons for or products of their work, TWLCRM team members were involved directly in the site’s preservation and could recognize their contributions and those of others when a wall was conserved, a new trail built, or a spoil heap cleared from the site. This spirit of cooperation and teamwork likewise nurtured a more egalitarian work environment that tended to soften the often rigid social and cultural barriers that traditionally separate men from women, foreigners from locals, and wealthy from poor. In the field, team members of all backgrounds worked together to achieve project goals (Fig. 3.4), while outside, they met regularly to socialize, go on field trips, and engage the broader local community in the importance of Petra’s cultural heritage. In short, rather than further the divisions and hierarchies that have traditionally characterized archaeological projects, the TWLCRM Initiative encouraged teamwork, cooperation, and mutual respect for all who contributed to the project.

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Fig. 3.3 TWLCRM documentation trainee Halema Nawafleh draws and documents the temple’s exposed architectural remains. (Photograph by Eman Abdassalam © TWLCRM Initiative, American Center of Research, Amman)

Through such social engagement efforts, the TWLCRM Initiative was able to promote real change in how archaeologists, administrative authorities, and especially local people themselves understand and view the role of the local community in archaeology and heritage preservation. Far from being indifferent or even hostile to cultural heritage, the local community, when properly and directly engaged, has the potential to be a project’s greatest asset for long-term site preservation and management. This means treating the community as an equal partner in the project’s objectives and providing not just short-term seasonal employment but genuine opportunities for personal and professional growth through work in cultural heritage preservation. It means ensuring that all who want to work have equal access to available positions and that no one is privileged based on family connections or because of who they know. And it means that each team member is recognized, valued, and appreciated for what they contribute to making the project successful. Such engagement, the authors believe, will finally allow local communities the opportunity to reclaim their stewardship over heritage sites that were dispossessed from them centuries ago.

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Fig. 3.4  Members of the TWLCRM team, all hailing from different tribes and villages, work together to move an ancient capital fragment to the site’s architectural gallery. (Photograph by Ghaith Faqeer © TWLCRM Initiative, American Center of Research, Amman)

Yet the TWLCRM Initiative, for all the good it sought to do, both for the site and Petra’s communities, had to confront the problematic and vexing question of sustainability. Simply put, when the project is over and has no more funds to pay salaries, who or what will be left to ensure that the local community remains engaged in heritage preservation? How could we guarantee that those who worked for and received training through the project would have future CRM employment or engagement opportunities? The authors have long grappled with these questions and, until now, have no clear answers. Thanks to the eagerness and earnestness of a dedicated group of local team members, however, a possible solution presented itself.

3.6 Sela for Training and Protection of Heritage With the establishment of a not-for-profit company, Sela for Training and Protection of Heritage (henceforth Sela), a new vehicle for local capacity-building and fostering awareness in the fields of cultural heritage and archaeology was created. Sela’s primary mission is to provide professional development opportunities in site conservation, restoration, and maintenance by cooperating with both local and foreign institutions to implement training programs at project sites in need of urgent conservation and maintenance. Sela, which is officially registered with Jordan’s Ministry of Industry and Trade and is approved to operate by both the DOA and the Petra

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Archaeological Park (PAP), is the first company of its kind in Jordan and represents a major step forward in building long-term economic sustainability for host communities through cultural heritage resource management. By the end of 2015, Sela had received a grant from the USAID Sustainable Cultural Heritage Through Engagement of Local Communities Project (SCHEP) to develop and implement a vocational training program in site conservation and preservation at the Temple of the Winged Lions. Focusing primarily on the temple’s problematic southwest quadrant, Sela trained and certified nearly 70 individuals from Petra’s communities in archaeology, conservation, documentation, and site presentation. Sela’s mere creation, however, was a long and difficult process. As a new type of company specializing in cultural heritage training and awareness, Sela not only encountered official bureaucratic obstacles, but also faced enormous struggles in conveying its business model to government authorities, established archaeological and cultural heritage institutions, and even the local communities it aimed to benefit. Why would such a seemingly novel and well-intended approach to cultural heritage preservation raise so many questions and arouse such suspicion? The hesitancy no doubt arises from the fact that Sela was attempting to enter an economic and scientific sector that, until now, has been dominated almost exclusively by governmental institutions and foreign-led archaeological missions and research institutes (Abu-Khafajah, 2014). Indeed, the mere existence of a company like Sela poses serious challenges to the way in which state authorities and foreign missions conduct archaeological work in Jordan. Particularly challenging is the idea of entrusting any aspect of site preservation to locals who, as stated above, have traditionally been viewed by established stakeholders as threats to the country’s cultural heritage. Sela aims to upend this paradigm by opening up cultural heritage preservation and awareness opportunities to local community members so that they become the primary stakeholders in, and beneficiaries of site preservation and development efforts, a model employed successfully at sites throughout Jordan (de Vries, 2013; LaBianca et al., 2021).

3.7 A Community-Based Approach to Cultural Heritage Education As mentioned above, archaeology’s long history of alienating local populations has meant that archaeological sites tend to be associated primarily with foreigners (Abu-Khafajah, 2014) and, by extension, with wealth, related either to notions of buried treasure or, equally alluring, to tourist dollars (Hejazeen, 2007, pp. 127, 137). Again, Sela is challenging such dangerous and counter-productive notions by proposing an innovative model of cultural heritage engagement that is locally based and accessible to all in the hope that communities will become more proactive in reclaiming their stake in the heritage sites from which they have traditionally been excluded. Through this community-first approach, archaeology is treated not as a static material artifact, devoid of contemporary meaning or relevance, but rather as

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living and ever-evolving testimony to the resiliency and continuity of local engagement with a particular place and landscape (Smith & Waterton, 2009). As such, Sela promotes a new community perception that prioritizes the value of archaeology as a local cultural resource and the need to restore a sense of local stewardship over cultural heritage sites (LaBianca et al., 2021). Sela is helping to re-activate this sense of local stewardship through an innovative awareness program. Building on the TWLCRM Initiative’s practice of hosting schools and youth groups onsite for practical activities, Sela has developed a more formalized and systematic program that allows both locals and foreign tourists to experience archaeology and site preservation for themselves. The program’s hands­on activities are organized into stations, where local team members explain the project’s different components and then guide visitors as they try out different tasks, such as sifting soil cleared from the site, washing pottery removed from the excavation dumps, or mixing and applying the mortars used in architectural conservation (Fig. 3.5). The hands-on activities program, however, had to be tailored for different age groups, as well as diverse Jordanian and foreign participants, which required Sela to define each target group and then think creatively about what a particular group may find appealing or interesting in the program. For the team, it was an exercise that highlighted just how many different perspectives could be accommodated by interaction with the same cultural resource and how their local point of

Fig. 3.5  Sela regularly hosts on-site activity programs to teach young children and others about the importance of protecting Petra’s cultural heritage. (Photograph by Franco Sciorilli © TWLCRM Initiative, American Center of Research, Amman)

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view was crucial for conveying the site’s importance to outsiders, whether foreign or Jordanian. In so doing, Sela is also helping to bridge the deep divide between scholarly academic research and public perceptions of archaeology by making archaeology more directly accessible (and fun) for ordinary, everyday people.

3.8 Formalizing Local Expertise in Cultural Heritage Sela’s training programs aim to create a pool of local specialist technicians in applied CRM fields who can then actively contribute to the success of archaeological and preservation projects based on their newly acquired skills as well as their expertise in local knowhow and materials. In response to the stated preservation and conservation needs of the DOA, PAP, foreign missions, and other key heritage stakeholders, Sela began its work by defining the various categories of trained workers and technicians that would be needed to implement future CRM projects. By defining different technical categories of work (i.e. documentation specialist, conservation technician, archaeological technician), as well as different levels of experience and training (i.e. junior/senior, beginner/advanced), Sela has taken the first steps towards transforming what was formerly a seasonal unskilled labor force into a formal job sector populated by technicians trained in particular sets of vocational skills and expertise. In this way, Sela has created the possibility for an equal partnership between government/research authorities and local communities, a partnership in which trained local community members are valued technicians and advisors and not simply unskilled ‘gouffa’2 runners who have little say in the project’s goals, objectives, or execution. Equally important, all community members involved in Sela’s programs sign official training or employment contracts that, in addition to being required by Jordanian Labor Law, have the greater impact of implying formal inclusion in an occupation or profession (Fig. 3.6). For all involved, contracts are nothing less than the formal recognition of a worker’s role and contribution to a larger endeavor, but also provide a clear statement of respective rights and responsibilities under the law, including access to much-needed social security benefits. Beyond this, at a broader social level, offering employment contracts serves to raise local consciousness of worker (and employer) rights and responsibilities under the law. This awareness will instill a greater everyday commitment and responsibility to formalized work (i.e. schedules, performance, investment), but will also create a culture in which local workers come to expect more – perhaps even demand more – from potential employers, including government and local institutions who often hire for short-­ term jobs. In offering contracts, Sela is fostering a culture of accountability in which employees and trainees expect employers, whether local or foreign, to abide by the law and provide the rights to which they are entitled.  A gouffa is a basket made of old tires (with the side walls removed and a base added), used to carry soil in archaeological excavations. 2

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Fig. 3.6  Sela trainees sign formal training contracts which provide for rights and responsibilities under the law, but also signify inclusion in a real vocation. (Photograph by Shaker Faqeer)

3.9 Future Directions The formation of Sela and its early successes has proven that local communities can play constructive roles in heritage preservation, even to the point of taking on critical site conservation, management, and outreach tasks. But for the Sela model of community engagement to be truly viable in the long-term, more established cultural heritage stakeholders and especially government authorities will have to foster a legal and professional environment that recognizes and embraces local communities as equal partners in heritage protection. To some degree, the stage is already being set, at least in Jordan, by the drafting of a revised antiquities law that will allow private companies an influential role in site management and preservation activities (Al-Rai, 2016). What is perhaps needed more, however, is the creation of a certification system by which the accumulated skills and credentials of trained local technicians, whether in excavation, conservation, documentation, or site management, can be fairly evaluated according to agreed-upon professional standards and criteria. Such an accreditation system, created with the input, oversight, and approval of established heritage professionals in the academic, government, and private sectors, would ensure that any on-site work is done to the highest standards while, at the same time, creating a true path to formal employment for certified local technicians (Bradley et al., 2015). Given that government authorities in Jordan and elsewhere continue to struggle to protect all the heritage sites under their care, it will only be through the establishment of such a system, which emphasizes the community’s primary role in site preservation, that true sustainability will be found.

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References Abu-Khafajah, S. (2014). “They are hiding it... Why do they hide it? From whom, and for whom?” community heritage at work in the post-colonial context of Jordan. In S.  Thomas & J.  Lea (Eds.), Public participation in archaeology (pp. 149–159). Boydell Press. Abu-Khafajah, S., & Al Rabady, R. (2013). The “Jordanian” Roman complex: Reinventing urban landscape to Accomodate globalization. Near Eastern Archaeology, 76(3), 186–192. Akrawi, A. (2000). Petra, Jordan. In J. M. Teutonico & G. Palumbo (Eds.), Management planning for archaeological sites: An international workshop organized by the Getty conservation institute and Loyola Marymount University (pp. 98–112). The Getty Conservation Institute. Al-Rai (2016, August 17). Al Jamhawi: Qanun Jadeed l-il-Athar. al-Rai. Angel, C. (2012). The B'dul and umm Sayhoun: Culture, geography and tourism. In D. Comer (Ed.), Tourism and archaeological heritage Management at Petra (pp. 105–118). Springer. Bradley, A., Geary, K., & Sutcliffe, T.  J. (2015). Two roads: Developing routes to professional archaeological practice. The Historic Environment, 6(2), 98–109. Corbett, E. D. (2014). Competitive archaeology in Jordan: Narrating identity from the ottomans to the Hashemites. University of Texas Press. Corbett, G. J., & Ronza, M. E. (2014). What lies beneath—New insights into Petra’s Temple of the winged lions. ACOR Newsletter, 26(2), 1–6. Corbett, G. J., & Ronza, M. E. (2015). Building momentum: ACOR’s TWLCRM initiative looks to the future. ACOR Newsletter, 27(2), 1–5. de Vries, B. (2013). Archaeology and community in Jordan and Greater Syria: Traditional patterns and new directions. Near Eastern Archaeology, 76(3), 132–141. Farajat, S. (2012). The participation of local communities in the tourism industry in Petra. In D. Comer (Ed.), Tourism and archaeological heritage Management at Petra (pp. 145–165). Springer. Hammond, P.  C. (1996). The temple of the winged lions, Petra, Jordan, 1974–1990. Petra Publishing. Hammond, P. C. (2003). The temple of the winged lions. In G. Markoe (Ed.), Petra rediscovered: Lost City of the Nabataeans (pp. 223–229). Harry N. Abrams. Hejazeen, E.  G. (2007). Tourism and local communities in Jordan: Perception, attitudes, and impacts. Profil. Hejazeen, E., & Jamhawi, M. (2014). State of conservation report for Petra Archaeological Park. Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority/Department of Antiquities of Jordan. LaBianca, Ø. S., & Witzel, K. (2007). Great and little traditions: A framework for studying cultural interaction through the ages in Jordan. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan, 9, 275–289. LaBianca, Ø. S., Ronza, M. E., & Harris, N. (2021). Community archaeology in the Islamic world. In B. Walker, T. Insoll, & C. Fenwick (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Islamic archaeology. Oxford University Press. Mickel, A. (2019). Essential excavation experts: Alienation and agency in the history of archaeological labor. Archaeologies, 15, 181–205. Mickel, A., & Knodell, A. R. (2015). We wanted to take real information: Public engagement and regional survey at Petra, Jordan. World Archaeology, 47(2), 239–260. Porter, B. W. (2010). Near eastern archaeology: Imperial pasts, postcolonial presents, and the possibilities of a decolonized future. In J. Lydon & U. A. Rizvi (Eds.), Handbook of postcolonial archaeology (pp. 51–60). Left Coast Press. Rizvi, U.  A., & Lydon, J. (2010). Epilogue: Postcolonialism and archaeology. In J.  Lydon & U. A. Rizvi (Eds.), Handbook of postcolonial archaeology (pp. 495–503). Left Coast Press. Ronza, M. E. (2016). Building awareness: The challenge of cultural community engagement in Petra—The Temple of the winged lions cultural resource management initiative. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan, 12, 617–624.

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Sela. (2017, July 7). Sela for training and protection of heritage [Facebook]. https://www.facebook.com/trainingsela. Sela. (n.d.). Sela for training and protection of heritage [website]. www.selajo.org. Accessed April 16, 2020. Silberman, N.  A. (1991). Desolation and restoration: The impact of a biblical concept on near eastern archaeology. Biblical Archaeologist, 54(2), 76–87. Smith, L., & Waterton, E. (2009). Introduction: Heritage and archaeology. In E.  Waterton & L. Smith (Eds.), Taking archaeology out of heritage (pp. 1–9). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Taylor, J. (2002). Petra and the lost kingdom of the Nabataeans. Harvard University Press. Tuttle, C. A. (2012). Temple of the winged lions cultural resource management initiative—Some first steps forward (2009–2012). ACOR Newsletter, 24(2), 1–6. Tuttle, C.  A. (2013). Preserving Petra sustainably (one step at a time): The Temple of the winged lions cultural resource management initiative as a step forward. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Studies, 1(1), 1–23. Tuttle, C.  A., Corbett, G.  J., & Ronza, M.  E. (2017). Preliminary report on the Temple of the winged lions cultural resource Managment initiative (2009–2013). Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, 58, 171–180. TWLCRM. (2013, May 1). Petra Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management – TWLCRM [Facebook]. www.facebook.com/twlcrm. Glenn J. Corbett recently served as Program Director for the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) in Washington, DC. Prior to this, from 2014 to 2017, he was Associate Director at CAORC’s member centre in Jordan, the American Center of Research (ACOR). While at ACOR, he co-directed the institute’s Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management (TWLCRM) Initiative in Petra and initiated a new archival project to digitally preserve and make available thousands of photographs of Jordan’s threatened natural and historic sites. He received his PhD in Near Eastern Archaeology from the University of Chicago, where his research focused on the epigraphic and archaeological remains of pre-­Islamic Arabia.  

Maria Elena Ronza is a naturalised Jordanian, who graduated in Architecture from the Università La Sapienza, Rome, in 2000 and completed her Master’s degree in Archaeology at the University of Jordan in 2004. During this time, she served on numerous Jordanian and international archaeological and conservation projects in Jordan, including several for the Department of Antiquities. From 2004, she was Co-director of Restorations on the Tell Hesban Archaeological Park Project, and later served as a restoration consultant on the Tourist Development Project of King Abdallah I Palace in Ma’an before joining ACOR’s Temple of Winged Lions Cultural Resources Management Initiative as Project Manager in 2011; she was project co-director until 2017. With a career focusing on sustainable tourist development of archaeological and heritage sites and community engagement in heritage management, she co-founded ‘Sela’ in 2015 to build capacity within communities for a more sustainable management of Jordanian heritage.  

Chapter 4

Mobilizing Heritage Resources for Local Community Development: Dahshour as a Case Study Fekri A. Hassan and Enas M. Ehab

4.1 Introduction A decade ago, Egypt’s tourism sector, the source of one of the most important revenue streams for the national economy, had been witnessing considerable growth, with figures indicating that the country was attracting more than 12 million international visitors per year. However, the revolution in Egyptian mass tourism, which has seen tourism territories expand from the archaeological sites of the Nile Valley to the beaches of the Red Sea and Sinai coasts (Shaalan, 2005), has not embraced ecotourism or cultural heritage activities and attractions linked to the tangible and intangible heritage resources of local communities. What had also been missing in tourism strategic plans was a concern for the social and economic development of local communities. The Mobilization of Dahshour World Heritage Site for Community Development project, conceived by the first author in 2007 (Hassan, 2007) and implemented over 36 months from January 2009 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), was a response to this lacuna. Capitalizing on the exceptional archaeological, natural and rural heritage resources in Manshiet Dahshour, the project offered a model for integrating these resources in a programme for the benefit of local communities through capacity building in heritage tourism. The project was designed to promote rural and eco-tourism, both separately and in combination with visits to world renowned archaeological attractions, as a means of creating new job opportunities and increasing the income of rural communities. Although rural and eco-tourism tend to be relatively low-volume, they engender memorable experiences and attend to high-value cultural activities whilst offering

F. A. Hassan (*) Cultural Heritage Programme, Université Française d’Égypte, Cairo, Egypt e-mail: [email protected] E. M. Ehab Ministry of Tourism, Cairo, Egypt © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_4

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higher than average rates of return (Page & Getz, 1997). Rural and eco-tourism are also known to encourage local sourcing and the promotion of traditional crafts (Honey, 1999). It has already been demonstrated elsewhere in the literature that tourism can be a force in combating poverty and increasing income to local communities (Croes & Vanegas, 2008; Zhao & Ritchie, 2007). By aiming to engage rural local communities in tourist-related activities, the project was conceived as a means by which countryside populations that are currently suffering from unemployment and poverty could find opportunities for increasing their income through non-agricultural activities. If successful, this would reduce emigration to urban areas, a trend that causes severe social problems including lack of community support, poor housing, marginalization, lack of access to clean water, absence of adequate transport and poor, if any, health services. It was also hoped that this project would lead to an appreciation by local communities of the heritage resources in their vicinity and the need to conserve their own disappearing intangible heritage. As such, the project would contribute positively to combating illicit digging and vandalism – an endemic problem in Egypt (Teijgeler, 2013), instil a sense of pride in local cultural practice and thus reverse perceptions of the backwardness of traditions, enhance communities’ sense of belonging, and undermine efforts that aim to obliterate the memory and values of ancient Egypt. As direct beneficiaries from tourism, local inhabitants would also strive to expose and foil potential future attempts to attack tourists, disrupting the connected tensions of terrorism and tourism (Meskell, 2000). A core objective of the Dahshour Project was the valorisation of a new concept of heritage in Egypt, one that moves beyond current limited parameters of archaeological monuments and formal historical accounts, to one that integrates tangible and intangible heritage and emphasizes the connection between the past and the present (Hassan et al., 2008). These diverse cultural resources, also available to Cairenes due to their proximity to the city (90  minutes by car), would raise awareness among Egyptians of a broader heritage landscape. This chapter provides an overview of this attempt to shift heritage paradigms in Egypt. It is based on interviews and questionnaires with all the project stakeholders, as well as archival research and field observations. The aim is to delineate and highlight the factors that may contribute to the success or failure of similar cultural heritage community projects.

4.2 Community-Oriented Archaeological Projects in Egypt Over the past five decades, community or collaborative archaeology has developed and taken root as a sub-discipline in global archaeology. In Egypt, however, take-up has been slow, with local community participation generally restricted to the employment of labourers and domestic staff. While other nations with socio-­ political contexts in which post-colonial, marginalized descendant populations have been increasingly involved in archaeological research (namely North America and Australia, e.g. Smith & Wobst, 2005; Atalay, 2006; Murray, 2011), modern Egypt’s

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adoption and reproduction of colonial ways of managing archaeological resources have arguably stymied its (now fully-fledged) administrative bodies’ ability to navigate routes into their own societies (see Näser, 2019). As Näser (ibid., p.  381) remarks, ‘Two hundred years of disciplinary practice steeped in orientalist and colonial perspectives were pervasive and widely successful in naturalizing both the Western presence and the alienation of large parts of the local populations.’ Consequently, projects with a community bent only started in the late 1990s, with the earliest outwith the Nile valley on the Red Sea coast at Quseir (Moser et al., 2002; Tully, 2007, 2009) and Berenike (Abdel-Qadr et al., 2012; Bos-Seldenthuis, 2007; Wendrich, 2008), and in Serabit al-Khadim on Sinai (Hanna et  al., 2012). Later, community engaged projects gained momentum and reached the ‘classic domain’ of Egyptian archaeology, the Nile valley, but still only 5% of current archaeological projects in the country have a community component (Näser & Tully, 2019). As well as the Community Archaeology Project Quseir, a groundbreaking project whose partnerships with inhabitants of the modern town of Quseir culminated in the production of the first ever explicit methodology for the practice of Community Archaeology with local and descendent populations (Tully, 2007, 2009), the handful of other archaeological projects concerned with the importance of including local communities as beneficiaries and principal stakeholders comprise the Azhar Park Project (Rashti, 2004) and the Al Darb Al Asfar Restoration Project in Historic Cairo (Shehayeb & Abdel Hafiz, 2006), and the archaeological project at Tell Timai, a Graeco-Roman settlement (the ancient city of Thmuis) in the Northeast Egyptian Delta (Lorenzon & Zermani, 2016). In central Cairo, Azhar Park was a project undertaken by the Agha Khan Trust for Culture as part of its Historic Cities Programme. It involved the restoration of part of the historic wall of Cairo and the creation of an extensive Islamic garden where once a huge debris and rubble mountain, amassed over five centuries, had menaced the city with its dust. It was also the first community heritage programme in Egypt on such a scale (Rashti, 2004). Over in Cairo’s Al-Gamaliyah district, the Al Darb Al Asfar project exemplified a pioneer experiment for limited restoration but wider conservation (Shehayeb & Abdel Hafiz, 2006). Three main houses in the Al Darb Al Asfar Alley were rehabilitated and restored, and then allocated adaptive functions to fit within the wider development of the area (Bianca & Siravo, 2005). The community of the Alley was encouraged to design ways to keep their neighbourhood clean and pleasant. Adopting a participatory approach, regular meetings were held with over a hundred families to discuss various aspects of renovation. This has resulted in the neighbourhood forming a society for preserving the character of the Alley and maintaining the quality of life they aspire to (Elnokaly & Elseragy, 2013). Outside the capital, the Tell Timai project focused on the interaction between community, archaeological heritage and public perceptions of archaeology using archaeological data, oral histories and public outreach. Currently, Al-Ibrashy and her team at the Egyptian NGO, Built Environment Collective, combine the architectural restoration of an impressive array of listed monuments from the ninth to the nineteenth century in and around Cairo’s Al-Khalifa

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Street with a multifaceted programme of community involvement and partnership (see Megawra, n.d.; Al-Ibrashy et  al., 2016). Their project, Al-Athar Lina (This Monument is Ours), aims to ‘establish modalities of citizen participation in heritage conservation based on an understanding of the monument as a resource not a burden’ (Athar Lina, n.d.) and is underpinned by a belief in conservation as a vehicle for development.

4.3 Why Dahshour? The archaeological site in Dahshour is located west of the floodplain at Manshiet Dahshour (Fig. 4.1). It is the southernmost component of the UNESCO Memphis and its Necropolis World Heritage Site (see UNESCO World Heritage Centre, n.d.) which extends northwards to the Giza pyramid field. The Dahshour archaeological site was first opened to the public in 1996 after years of military use, however the

Fig. 4.1  Location map of the Dahshour Project area, showing the five villages on the Nile floodplain, and the North, Bent, and Senusert 111 pyramids. (Image by Fekri A. Hassan, based on a Google Earth map, 2020 Orion-ME)

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lake (see more below), used for bird hunting, remains under military control. The 3.5 km long pyramid field in Dahshour contains three large pyramids, several small pyramids and extensive cemeteries. One of the most outstanding and impressive monuments in the area is the Red Pyramid of the fourth Dynasty constructed by King Snefru (r. approx. 2613 to 2589 BC). It is the world’s oldest true pyramid and includes a 15 m-high burial chamber. In size, it is second only to the Cheops Pyramid in Giza. Snefru also constructed the Bent Pyramid (Fig. 4.2), which pre-dates the Red Pyramid and represents an early stage of pyramid design, an evolutionary phase between the Step Pyramid at Saqqara and the pyramids at Giza. The archaeological site overlooks Birket Dahshour (Fig. 4.3), a natural depression filled seasonally with Nile floods that is visited in autumn by myriad migratory birds, hosts papyrus marshes, and serves as the only such surviving ecosystem in Middle Egypt with unique plant and animal biodiversity. The appeal of this seasonal lake is enhanced by its location. On the fringe of attractive palm groves at the edge of the Nile flood plain, and overlooked by the pyramids of Dahshour, it offers the potential to attract both experienced ornithologists as well as tourists with a general interest in natural heritage. Manshiet Dahshour was selected for the Mobilization of Dahshour World Heritage Site for Community Development project because of this unique combination of archaeological, natural and rural heritage resources. Together, these resources provide excellent opportunities for the economic development of the local community, particularly as the site has neither suffered from the sprawl of illegal settlements nor been negatively impacted by tourists. Another interesting feature of Manshiet Dahshour with potential to serve as an asset for economic development is

Fig. 4.2  Dahshour Archaeological Site, showing the Bent Pyramid (left), and the North Pyramid (right, behind the Senusert 111 Black Pyramid), with Birket Dahshour in the foreground, looking southwest. (Photograph © Fekri A. Hassan)

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Fig. 4.3  The Dahshour pyramid field, west of Dahshour Lake (Birket Dahshour, Birket Al-Malik). (Photograph © Fekri A. Hassan)

a resident community of distinguished fine artists, a group able to actively contribute to the improvement of traditional arts and crafts, and with skills that could be used for income-generating purposes and tourism advocacy. In addition to Manshiet Dahshour, the rural landscape of Dahshour1 consists of a cluster of villages (Birket Dahshour, Zawyet Dahshour, Monshaat Kaseb, and Mazghuna) in the Giza Governorate, all within easy reach by car via the Maryoutia Canal Road. The villages are surrounded by lush agricultural fields with spectacular groves of palm trees (Fig.  4.4), the fronds of which are used to produce furniture, basketry and mats. Other craft products produced locally include kilims (pileless, flat-woven rugs) and pottery.

4.4 Mobilization of Dahshour World Heritage Site for Community Development Project Harnessing these exceptional resources for community development, the Dahshour project supported four of the United Nations Millennial Development Goals:2  The district of Dahshour covers an area of approximately 70 km2, with circa 40,000 inhabitants.  Derived from the United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in 2000, the Millennium Development Goals are eight objectives that all 191 UN member states agreed to try to achieve by 1

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Fig. 4.4  Palm groves in Dahshour. (Photograph © Fekri A. Hassan)

• • • •

Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Promote gender equality and empower women. Ensure environmental sustainability. Develop a global partnership for development.

The main component of the project, referred to as the Joint Programme (JP), focused on improving the livelihoods and working conditions of the local population3 (Fig. 4.5) through targeted, employment-generating activities, with especial focus on women’s and youth employment, as well as the development of locally-driven micro and small or medium-sized enterprises (M/SMEs). The development of community-­owned and operated M/SMEs was intended to introduce micro-finance access to the Dahshour community, providing the population at large with technical expertise in small business sector development to complement access to micro-­ finance mechanisms. It was explicit that the JP would support the government in its efforts to protect and sustain the pristine nature of the Dahshour pyramid complex 2015. They committed world leaders to combatting poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. 3  The demographic profile of Dahshour shows a preponderance (more than a third) of young people, aged 2–20. One fourth of the adult men are illiterate, almost half have government jobs, with the remainder working in the private sector, including farming (see Center for Development Services, 2009).

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Fig. 4.5  A celebration in Manshiet Dahshour, showing a broad spectrum of ages and costumes, and capturing a moment in community life. A new generation of Egyptians in need of work opportunities can be seen, as well as children, who are witnesses of a cultural transformation and long-­ term beneficiaries of heritage mobilization for socio-economic development. (Photograph © Fekri A. Hassan)

through the technical training of archaeological inspectors, thus augmenting their capacity to ensure the site’s continued preservation and sustainable use by visiting tourists. The project sought to make certain that its primary objective (namely community development) was fully amalgamated into the Memphite Necropolis Management Plan, as delineated by Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) in coordination with UNESCO and its World Heritage Centre. Additionally, the JP targeted the safeguarding of the Dahshour seasonal lake, a unique natural asset within the surrounding community, through coordinated efforts to ensure natural state preservation through community-owned conservation. The project also aimed to provide a model of how different UN agencies – the UNDP, UNESCO, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) – would work with multiple local governmental authorities – the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA), the SCA, the Ministry of State for Environment (MoE), the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA), the Ministry of Tourism (MoT), the Tourism Development Authority (TDA), the Social Fund for Development (SFD) and the Industrial Modernization Center (IMC) – as well as with NGOs and

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the private sector to provide the integration and synergy needed to break the cycle of poverty and at the same time conserve heritage resources. Governance of the project was overseen by two committees, a Steering Committee, which was the highest governance body with high-level representatives, and a Project Management Committee (PMC), which served as an executive body with key personnel from the UN agencies as well as representatives from their governmental counterparts. In coordination with the UN agencies, each of the government partners was expected to utilise and incorporate their respective experiences into an effective joint programme, comprising several components and for which each actor had specific tasks. The UNWTO with the MoT were to integrate poverty alleviation aspects in the tourism component; the ILO with the SFD were to focus on the Local Economic Development Forum (LED, an approach that was to ensure full community participation); and the UNIDO with the IMC were to promote a complimentary business environment and build human capacity to encourage entrepreneurial initiatives in the Dahshour community. The expected results were outlined thus: • A unique World Heritage Site management plan developed and cultural and natural resources preserved. • Responsible eco-tourism and rural tourism developed, increasing national income. • SMEs created in the Dahshour community, increasing income and job opportunities. • Cultural awareness and appreciation increased within the community and nationally. The project stated outcomes included: • Reduce regional human development disparities, including a reduction of the gender gap, and environmental sustainability improved. • Provide employment, especially of youth and women, with gainful work in heritage, arts, crafts, tourism and creative industries contributing to increased poverty alleviation and empowerment. • Enhance institutional capacity to manage cultural heritage and natural resources. The activities of the project comprised, inter alia, the development of an eco-lodge/ visitor centre, which was to disseminate information on the area and its resources as well as the guidelines for compliance with the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. It would be an orientation centre for visitors to learn about the site and the lake and how to plan their trip, with tourists and greater Cairenes offered opportunities for day and overnight visits, while their children could enjoy tailored activities taking in the archaeological, natural and rural settings of the eco-lodge. Experiencing local rural settings and agricultural life is significant here, as it is often ignored in tourist visits to Egypt and is virtually non-existent for Cairenes unless they own a farm or weekend cottage outside Cairo. The centre would provide job opportunities for local guides and for craft specialists to make and sell their cultural products, and attract artists to engage in the valorisation of the site and enrich the cultural and economic life of the local community. Workshops and training courses, with an

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emphasis on women and youths, for crafts, cultural products, and conservation tasks would further enrich the centre’s offer. Outwith the eco-lodge/visitor centre, project activities involved engaging local antiquities inspectors in training courses to improve their appreciation and involvement in the conservation of the region, undertaking a feasibility study of the project based on community surveys to assess the cost/benefits of the project and its sustainability, declaring the Dahshour Lake a protected area, and establishing a multi-­ stakeholder NGO for the conservation and sustainable development of the Dahshour area. The latter’s role would be to develop and follow up planning activities, raise funds, and ensure compliance with conservation and sustainable development plan guidelines.4

4.5 Evaluating the Dahshour Project The methodology5 adopted here in evaluating the design and implementation of the Dahshour project consisted of several data collection tools and practices in analysis. An archival investigation of the final proposal, correspondence, international report, mid-term and final evaluation reports was undertaken alongside interviews with key representatives from the UN agencies and their Egyptian counterparts.6 Questionnaires were also administered to a number of research populations, including tour guides and tour operators (to reveal their degree of awareness of the cultural and natural heritage resources of Dahshour and the impact of the project on their work), local SCA inspectors in Dahshour (to assess the ways they have been impacted by the project), and community members and trainees from all five villages of Dahshour across different segments of society (to reveal the role of the project in making the local community aware of the natural and cultural heritage resources of the Dahshour area and the impact of the project on their jobs). Data was also captured from the latter cohort via interview. The evaluation results are outlined below.

 Document on file with the first author and in the UNDP project files.  All data from interviews and questionnaires are on file at the Cultural Heritage Management Programme Office, Université Française d’Égypte, Cairo, Egypt. 6  Although the researchers succeeded in interviewing key project personnel, it was a challenge to reach many of the principal individuals (namely the UNDP and ILO), and even when possible, not all of them were available or had enough time to do an interview in person. The matter was complicated because the representatives of the international UN organizations involved were out of the country. Accordingly, some of the interviews were conducted in person, while others were conducted through Skype or telephone calls to overcome the barriers of distance. There were nine interviewees in total: the project General Coordinator (final phase), the UNWTO representative, the UNIDO representative, the MoA representative, the UNESCO representative (second phase), the Egyptian Tourism Authority (ETA) representative, the MoT representative, the head of the LED Forum and the Director of the Archaeological Inspectorate in Dahshour. 4 5

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4.5.1 Perception of the Project by the Stakeholders Representatives of the UN Agencies and Their Egyptian Governmental Counterparts  Complex interdisciplinary, interagency projects oriented for the benefit of local communities require integrated management and effective governance with appropriate involvement of local community representatives and an expert management team. Consequently, our evaluation paid special attention to this issue. Nine representatives of the international UN agencies and their governmental counterparts provided valuable views on the principal elements of project management. The authors of this chapter have opted to reproduce statements made by the interviewees here to convey directly the opinions and views expressed. The first set of views coalesced around the design and clarity of the objectives: The programme structure was not always entirely clear. It was not clear if the project was governmental, non-governmental or international, and there was an issue of ownership. To have the project itself as a separate entity from the agencies, i.e. instead of having focal points from each agency, so that funding goes directly from the donors to the project entity. The project lacked leadership. There should have been a general manager who could act as a chairman, a CEO and a leader. One of the problems was the decision to change the focus of the project from Dahshour to the entire Memphis and its Necropolis World Heritage Site, and to select the SCA/MSA as the leading governmental agency. It would have been better to select an entity genuinely concerned with the local community. The project design was not participatory enough. Given that it is a community development project, it would have been better if the community was involved in the design phase. It was necessary to find a connection between concrete [material] heritage and the intangible heritage. Moreover, it was important to link the new approach to the traditional type of tourism. Communities are used to working only with NGOs and not with state agencies. The Giza Governorate was not represented in the PMC. Its presence was essential since it is the local authority and the focal point for coordinating all governmental activities in its area. The Ministry of Culture should have been included in the project.

The second set of views concerned coordination and communication: Although a joint project, it was more like a combination of small separate projects. The project needed proper collaboration and a managerial platform to foster cooperation with the aim of achieving coherence and ensuring smooth deliveries. A clear definition of responsibilities was needed. The problem stemmed from the fact that there were too many agencies, authorities and individuals involved. This led to long periods of discussion slowing down the implementation process. Governmental authorities have a strong stake in the project. However, communication between international agencies and their governmental counterparts was not easy. This made it difficult to make decisions. The governmental institution did not play any role in decision-making. Cooperation with the MSA was not easy, and from the beginning there were successive ministerial changes that led to the loss of the focal point. Absence of focal points at certain times was a problem.

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The duration of the projects and temporal sequence of activities were also highlighted by the respondents and comprise the third set of views: There was not enough time to realise all the activities called for in the implementation of the project. The order of activities undertaken by different partners slowed down the implementation of activities. Good collaboration with the UNWTO and UNDP took place by the end of the project. By contrast, at the beginning of the implementation of activities, the pace was somewhat slow and communication between the UN agencies and their counterparts was not very strong. It could have been much more effective if good coordination was done from the outset, not just in the final six months.

Funding comprised the fourth set of views: Some agencies had small budgets in comparison to others, so there was a need to spend the available funds in a meaningful way. By the end of the project, USD 769,615 from the total budget was not spent, as stated in the MDG-F Final Evaluation Report (Otero, 2013). The model used to dispense funds [the ‘pass-through’ model] added a layer of complexity but little value.7 The model of the project [‘pass-through’ funding] cannot provide local control over resources.

The fifth set of views expressed concerned flexibility: The project design did not provide any kind of flexibility and was not able to respond to project objectives. We should have had better flexibility in exchanging funds between agencies.

Themes of performance and monitoring run through this sixth set of views: The follow-up was not good and the governmental counterparts were somewhat lost. They just needed… guidance, but they did well. We completely re-built the work plan and re-­ designed the final months of the project in order to get concrete results. On paper, the management strategy was not ideal. However, during the last months, those in charge did a very decent job.

 This point was made clear in the MDG-F final evaluation report: ‘This “pass-through” execution modality used by the MDG-F joint programmes where funds are channeled to each participating UN agency has translated into a stronger commitment to UN Agency Headquarters rather than to joint accountability. The lack of one clear reporting line to a JP governing body and/or manager rather than to the UN headquarters, combined with certain institutional inertia, has impaired full joint implementation and has raised a challenge for joint delivery. In conclusion despite remarkable examples of collaboration among different implementing agencies a real sense of “jointness” was not fully embedded in the implementation of the programme.’ (Otero, 2013, p. 30) 7

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The plan for constructing a visitor centre never materialized, and a design for the community centre never happened.8 The only design made was for a building of the Antiquities Inspectorate that we (the SCA) did. The location of the administrative building was decided upon and the government was supposed to follow up, but in the end, this never happened. We need an extension for future work in order to be able to complete the tasks that were not done.

The final set of views concerned exigency, as the project was contemporaneous with the January 25 Revolution of 2011: The January 25 Revolution in 2011 resulted in stopping the work for nearly a year. The project suffered from a reduction in tourist numbers and potential after the revolution. The deteriorating economic situation of the country was an obstacle. The January 25 Revolution and the aggressive attitude of the local community after the revolution due to the unstable state of the country and absence of security were problematic. The revolution involved successive ministerial changes leading to a loss of focal points.

The Head of the LED Forum at Dahshour  In interview, the head of the LED Forum stated that there was a problem in transferring funds, that the MSA was not cooperative, and that the ILO was the most helpful followed by the MoT and then the EEAA. He commented that the skills and capacity building, community rehabilitation and training courses were great. He added that the studies on the project were very good but no actions resulted from these. He noted that the handcrafts related to palm products provided many job opportunities, but no markets were secured for these products. The Director of the Archaeological Site at Dahshour  The director of the Antiquities Inspectorate at Dahshour at the time was very sceptical of the project. He stated that the project did not deliver actual achievements on the ground, and that the ‘propaganda’ did not match the realties. He also stated that the MoA did not receive any benefits from the project.9 He blamed the project for not providing enough awareness to the local community, who, after the January 25 Revolution, began to build tombs on archaeological grounds, indicating poor coordination between UNESCO and the Local Antiquities Inspectorate. The director declared that no further research or training courses were needed; what he did want was for the project to provide the Inspectorate with equipment or to rebuild their office. Evidently, the objectives of the project were not clear to him and his superiors did not apprise him that the project was not designed to rebuild his office.

 In fact, the ‘Feasibility Study for the Establishment of a Heritage Community Center’ prepared by the first author was completed and submitted to the UNESCO Cairo Office in July 2012. The UNESCO representative sent a draft of the study to the Project Coordinator and UN agencies on July 7, 2012. 9  Apparently, he was not informed of the substantial sum (USD 772,005) allocated to UNESCO for training, capacity building and other facilities to the MoA/SCA, or that the UNESCO representative indicated that the MoA was not cooperative. 8

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4.5.2 Impact of the Project on the Stakeholders The Archaeology Inspectors of the Memphis and its Necropolis World Heritage Site  Information provided by three inspectors from Dahshour, Saqqara and Giza revealed that one of them did not know that Dahshour is included in the World Heritage List, another thought that there were six pyramids in Dahshour, while the third did not know how many pyramids there were in the area. They knew about the project from friends and individuals who had worked on it. Tour Guides and Operators  Given that one of the main goals was to increase awareness and promote tourism in Dahshour, the project apparently did not have much impact in this domain. The results of the questionnaire to a sample of 16 guides revealed that 72% of them did not know about the project. Moreover, 44% did not know which Egyptian sites are on the World Heritage List, and 39% did not know that Dahshour is included in the Memphis and its Necropolis World Heritage Site. None of them were engaged in any of the project activities. The local community  The results of a questionnaire administered to 18 members of the local community in Dahshour (16 males and 2 females) indicated that they were all aware of the project and that 78% were engaged in the project. From their point of view, the most significant outcome of the project was that it has raised awareness concerning the heritage resources of Dahshour (36%), followed by raising awareness of the touristic merits of Dahshour (24%). That the project contributed to providing youth job opportunities and that it improved income was recognized by only 9% and 6% respectively. It is also important to note that drawing attention to the role of women was regarded by 15% as the most significant contribution of the project.

4.5.3 Project Issues and Limitations Information on Dahshour by the Tourism Development Authority  Information on Dahshour by the TDA as a destination for community tourism based on the project provides an account of the villages and what to see (TDA, n.d.). Other than the scenic view of the cultivated fields, the map indicates the following attractions: one small carpentry shop, one pottery shop, an old farm house, one pigeon tower, one Torathiyat Handicrafts NGO member supporting a group of women who produce table mats and carpets using local materials, and one palm tree handcraft workshop. Routes within the villages are marked as (1) a walking tour in the village with stopovers at special points of interest, local food outlets, bakeries and handicraft shops, (2) a mountain bike tour of the desert and palm tree fields, and (3) a Nile cruise to Cairo from Mazghuna. As for lodging (not shown on the map), mention was made of a hotel about 20 km away from the villages and a small ecolodge close to the

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Birket el-Malik seasonal lake. Although reference is also made to numerous small ‘restaurants’ and village cafés, the tourist is warned that ‘since tourism development is in its very early stages, the hygiene and cleanliness standards might not meet the expectations of all international travellers.’ Clearly, and despite the huge sum expended on the studies, there is no evidence on the ground of any tourist development facilities, not a single tourist rest area with decent food and refreshments, a country store, an internet café, or assistance to the local ecolodge to qualify for one or two stars. The walking tour in the villages, which the authors attempted, was met with a hostile reception because it was seen as an intrusion and photography was frowned upon. The village roads were not suitable for walking and there was no place to hire mountain bikes or road signs for anyone to indicate the ‘attractions’ and directions. These observations mismatch the statement in the project Fact Sheet which states that the programme ‘developed a Spatial Tourism Plan that was reviewed by stakeholders, embraced by the government and incorporated into the National Tourism Development Plan’ (UNDP, n.d.). Although the Giza governorate committed an additional EGP 50 million for the implementation of the Spatial Tourism Plan recommendations, the first visible outcome was its use for paving a road (ibid.) that has become a highway for lorries transporting loads from local sand and stone quarries close to Dahshour. No effort was made to regulate the traffic or the quarrying activities. We should also keep in mind that the MDG-F Final Narrative Report (MDG-F, 2013) mentions that the Handicraft Production Unit, established within the LED Forum,10 would capitalize on the accumulated experiences and capacities of Dahshour artisans who have been trained by the programme and the links established with the traders/designers and trade fairs to produce and market a Dahshour range of handicrafts. However, statements by the head of the LED Forum (see above) do not support this view. According to the report, a Tourism Coordination Unit was to be established within the LED Forum to act as an intermediary between Dahshour touristic service providers and tourists/tour operators. Moreover, the unit would leverage many of the assets and products created by the programme, including the logo, brochures, landscaping elements and developed tourism routes, to help market and promote Dahshour as a touristic destination. The envisaged increased flow of tourists to the area, which would positively impact the economy of Dahshour and create business opportunities leading to job creation, regrettably did not materialize. The ability of the LED Forum to act was queried in an ILO report thus: ‘The Local Economic Development (LED) Forum promoted by ILO was frequently mentioned as a legitimate space to coordinate at the local level. However, the LED Forum is still at an embryo stage and is not yet widely recognised as the legitimate interlocutor of the programme in Dahshour (although it has that potential). Local stakeholders still only identify the programme with the UN agency that they are directly working with.’ (ILO, 2011, p. 3)  Searches on the internet in English and Arabic did not locate a website for this Forum or any activities undertaken by it. Mention of the LED Forum is only embedded in the project reports and publicity. 10

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Environmental Issues  One of the main ingredients of the heritage package was to develop ecotourism with a focus on the Dahshour lake and wetlands at Birket el-­ Malik, used at one time by King Farouk 1 (r.1936–1952) for bird hunting. The ruins of his lodge lie at one end of the lake. The programme commissioned studies on environmental resources, of which two resulted, the ‘Ecological Assessment of the Seasonal Lake of Dahshour (Birket Dahshour) and Associated Ecosystems’ and ‘Opportunities for Creating a Protected Area at Dahshour Seasonal Lake’. The programme also produced three very important environmental studies, the ‘Environmental Assessment of Dahshour Area’, the ‘Baseline Study of Lake Dahshour and Surrounding Water Bodies’ and the ‘Solid Waste Management Study and Action Plan’. They were presented to the local government to serve as a guide in tackling environmental challenges in the area. Nevertheless, it was only realized at the end of the project by the Project Coordinator that the lake was under military control, and none of the foreseen activities and recommendations for making the lake a natural heritage destination was achieved. The situation has been aggravated by the dumping of debris at one end of the lake and a decision by the Ministry of Irrigation to stop waterflow into the wetlands. Although this was out of the direct mandate of the project, coordination between the MoT/TDA and the Ministries of Defence and Irrigation might have alleviated this situation. Sherif Baha el Din, one of Egypt’s leading conservationists and founder of the NGO Nature Conservation Egypt as well as an authority on the Dahshour area who worked with the project on the ecology of the lake, stated that ‘So far, this project has not achieved many of its ecological goals, especially when it comes to helping Dahshur become a protected area.’ (cit. Khaled, 2012) Speaking of his study of the lake, he stated, ‘I don’t want that study to be put on the shelves.’ (ibid.) As a matter of fact, while efforts should contribute to making the lake a protected area, and while arrangements are carried out through negotiations with the military for restricted and authorized use of the lake, there is already sufficient ground both at the southern edge of the lake and on the desert slopes belonging to the MSA that can be used for simple observation points and a low footprint visitor point to admire the magnificent landscape of pyramids, water and palm groves, and to watch birds through on-site telescopes. Issues Highlighted in the MDG-F Report  The MDG-F Final Evaluation Report concluded that the programme is fully aligned with national partners’ mandates as well as with the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) and the MDG (Otero, 2013, p.  13). The report recognizes that ‘The project uniquely combines in an integrated manner cultural heritage aspects, natural heritage dimensions, and community development components’, and goes on to note that ‘The fact that the programme is in an enclave situated inside the Memphis Necropolis, which is arguably the most important archeological site in the world, gives this initiative a special relevance as a cultural development programme.’ (ibid, p.  1) However, although the project succeeded in creating a ‘common motivational horizon shared

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by all stakeholders’ (ibid, p. 3), the design phase of the programme had important pitfalls, most relevantly the lack of involvement of key stakeholders as shown in their interviews. The Final Evaluation Report also noted that project reports attest to wider training being conducted in several sectors related to tourism and business development. However, there is little evidence as to what impact this has had on people gaining skills, jobs creation, and/or on changing the predominant business model. UNWTO, according to the report, has been the partner that conducted wider training in a number of tourism-related sectors. They had an ambitious target of 3000 people trained, surpassing the project’s objectives. However, there is no evidence as to what impact this has had. Only anecdotal evidence could be collected through direct observation of people gaining skills but no evidence as to how this has translated into jobs and/ or has altered the predominant business model designed to benefit big tour operators. What could be collected were indications that training was very well received by the community, and that it has certainly created curiosity and increased expectations (ibid, p. 23). Encouraging, too, was the creation of different handicraft associations noted by the report, particularly through the articulation of the LED Forum. That forum, however, was far from sustainable, and, more importantly, it ‘lack[ed] the social base to be considered representative of the area’ (ibid, p. 4). As far as management funds were concerned, the ‘pass-through’ funding method did not provide a sufficient basis for the joint management of programme components. The report also noted that UNESCO presented an alarmingly low rate of expending its budget. In the project strand on promoting entrepreneurship, the component that has proven to have a deeper impact on building an entrepreneurship culture in the area has been the microcredit line. The report notes that, ‘Through their microcredit facility, the BEST [Business Enterprise Support Tools] Foundation has disbursed 294 micro-credits of up to 3000 EGP  in the vicinities of Dahshour, mainly in Manshiet Dahshour. This revolving fund that started being around 1.5 million EGP has grown to be nearly 2.5 million EGP in the space of two years, which is a powerful indication of the sustainability of the initiative.’ (ibid: 25) It has been reported that this initiative is creating jobs in Dahshour, which could be true, although the project has not documented them systematically and the report team could not find more than anecdotal evidence of this happening. This is also backed by the impact assessment recently conducted by the ILO. Furthermore, sensitization was poorly represented and recognized in the report. It stated that ‘It would have been interesting to see how the people who attended the ILO training or the Business Development training took advantage of the microcredit facilities, i.e. taking loans and setting up their own businesses.’ (ibid.) The promotion of the tourist industry as a priority for the microcredit scheme was also dismissed. ‘Back to History’ Concept Compromised  Two main problems were recognized after the completion of the project in light of the evaluation carried out by the authors, as well as independently by the MDG-F mid-term and final evaluation

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report author, Eva Otero (2011, 2013). These problems stemmed from two main developments in the planning phase of the project design by UNDP; the first was in casting the project as a UN inter-agency venture instead of a leading project managing entity responsible for implementation, and second the dilution of the concept of the project, done at the behest of the then SCA Director General who saw the project only as a means to develop the ‘infrastructure in Dahshour and [to prepare] a masterplan and architecture study in Memphis and Saqqara since all three areas (Saqqara, Memphis and Dahshour) are interconnected.’ (Amany Nakhla pers. comm to James Rawley, UN Resident Representative UNDP Egypt, copied to F. Hassan, 1st June 2007). This approach compromised the community-oriented mission of the project, highlighting the archaeological component as an independent element perpetuating the standard practices of the SCA that do not include a concern for community development. This ‘separatist’ policy of the SCA was manifest in their nomination of an architect to serve as an ‘interlocutor’ between them and the UNDP. The architect, a freelancer with no formal position at the SCA was primarily interested in the promotion of his own architectural creations. Later, this interlocutor was awarded a contract to prepare a masterplan, which was not ready by the last year of the project (UNESCO Cairo Cultural Officer pers. comm. 9th October 2013). Despite that, the MDG-F Final Narrative Report (MDG-F, 2013, p.  4) states that ‘the joint programme also developed a Master Plan which incorporates the Archaeological, Environmental and Tourism Plan for Dahshour, but represents the Site Management and Spatial Plan for the entire World Heritage Site Memphis and its Necropolis as delineated by Egypt’s Ministry of State for Antiquities in coordination with UNESCO and with the approval of [the] World Heritage Committee.’ The World Heritage Committee Decision, 40 COM 7B.22 (UNESCO World Heritage Committee, 2016, p. 92), is recorded thus: The World Heritage Committee, 1. Having examined Document WHC/16/40.COM/7B, 2. Recalling Decisions 28 COM 15B.50, 29 COM 7B.45 and 31 COM 7B.61, adopted at its 28th (Suzhou, 2004), 29th (Durban, 2005) and 31st (Christchurch, 2007) sessions respectively, 3. Notes the delays in the implementation of conservation projects at the property, and the State Party’s intention to submit shortly a Management Plan for the property; and urges the State Party to submit a detailed, integrated Management Plan taking into account the July 2015 ICOMOS Advisory mission recommendations. [emphasis added]

The decision to design the project as a UN interagency activity under the leadership of the UNDP, and working in partnership with several Egyptian counterparts, initially included the National Center for the Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT) (James Rawley pers. comm. 7th November 2007). Accordingly, CULTNAT was to host the project and serve as a lead implementing partner given its long-term experience in running international heritage projects. In addition, CULTNAT had already prepared a Masterplan of Memphis and its

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Necropolis at the request of the Director General of the SCA.11 Shortly thereafter, however, following a meeting with the Director General of the SCA, the Director of CULTNAT withdrew from the project, ostensibly to avoid eventual conflict.12

4.6 Discussion Assessment of the Mobilization of Dahshour and World heritage Site for Community Development project through archival research, interviews with the UN, governmental and local community stakeholders, and questionnaires with tour operators and local communities revealed that the concept of the project was regarded as innovative and adhered to the Millennium Development Goals. However, several pitfalls were identified, the first of which was the administrative design of the project. Characterized by an interagency approach that drew on five UN agencies and five Egyptian governmental authorities, it was held together by a Steering Committee and a PCM, and thus lacked unity and a manager with administrative authority. The UN agencies and their Egyptian counterparts also had their own agendas and missions and were not familiar with community heritage projects. A lack of genuine cooperation with the Egyptian authority in charge of antiquities proved detrimental to the project, as was a lack of communication and information flow from the top officers of the SCA/MoA and the Antiquities Inspectorate at Dahshour. Secondly, despite substantial funds requested by the MoA for the training of local inspectors, this study revealed that by the end of the project the inspectors were not provided with appropriate training, were poorly motivated, badly informed even about World Heritage Sites and the director of the Inspectorate was overtly hostile to the project. These conclusions are at variance with the statement issued on the project Fact Sheet which states that, ‘the Programme also increased capacity through training to key relevant governmental institutions; i.e. Archeological Officials and selected persons from [the] local community who have been trained by international consultants on [the] Management and Conservation of Archeological and World Heritage Sites.’ (UNDP, n.d.) In fact, no special training was given to the inspectors as indicated by their testimony and by the hostile attitude of the Director of the Inspectorate in Dahshour. However, a few of the inspectors who attended the UNESCO course given for university graduates from the local villages were prepared to become ‘heritage guardians’. Another course was sponsored by WTO and TDA for training local tour guides (Hassan, 2014).

 In November 2007, Dr. Fathi Saleh, director of CULTNAT, sent an email to the first author reporting that Dr. Zahi had ‘asked desperately for a copy of our Memphis report’ (Fathi Saleh pers. comm. 10th November 2007). 12  An email from the director of CULTNAT to Mounir Thabet of UNDP in May 2008 indicated that, in light of a meeting with the Director General of the SCA, the situation was ‘un-operational’ (Mounir Thabet pers. comm. 20th May 2008). 11

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Thirdly, the local community in Dahshour was poorly engaged in the project. This is exemplified by the lack of a physical presence of a project manager in Dahshour; instead a project coordinator had an office in Cairo. In this regard, the mid-term MDG-F project evaluation recognized insufficient communication between the local community in Dahshour and the national implementing partners, coordination problems, and the need for a local office in Dahshour to secure a local physical presence. Engagement of the local community with the project was also jeopardized by expanding the area of the project from Manshiet Dahshour to all five villages in the Dahshour area, whilst the original concept focused on Manshiet Dahshour, where the three archaeological, ecological and rural heritage resources are found. The manoeuvre paved the way for the selection of an ‘organization’ in Dahshour Town instead of Manshiet Dahshour. This organization, identified in the reports as the LED Forum, is run by an interest group who seemed to have alienated inhabitants of the other villages. The result was that the author’s survey revealed that only 6% of the respondents recognized that the project contributed to increasing income and 9% that it provided job opportunities. This supports the conclusion reached in the MDG-F final report that despite claims of training in a number of sectors related to tourism and business development, there was little evidence as to what impact this has had on people actually gaining skills, on jobs creation, and/or on changing the predominant business model. Given that tourism was one of the main foci of the project for providing jobs and work opportunities and to provide a model of rural and eco-tourism, none of the tour guides or operators questioned were engaged in any of the activities of the project. More than two thirds (72%) did not know about the project. The project also failed to valorize the heritage resources of Manshiet Dahshour. As many as 72% could not correctly identify the number of pyramids at Dahshour and more alarming, 38% did not know that Dahshour is on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. Fourthly, interviews with representatives of the UN agencies and their governmental counterparts revealed that the ‘pass-through’ funding did not provide a sufficient mechanism for joint management, a point supported by the final MDG-F report. Fifthly, and last, some respondents attributed blame (over the problems faced by the project) to the January 25 Revolution in 2011, even though this political upheaval happened 2 years after the project’s commencement. The scheme should, by that time, have achieved a substantial number of its goals. The main problem seems to have been the incoherent administration of the project. Clearly, the Revolution led to a disruption, but this was compounded by the project’s administrative weakness.

4.7 Conclusion In sum, the project suffered from a lack of appropriate administrative design, inefficient coordination and communication among partners, exclusion of the local community from decision-making, inappropriate representation of the community

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by a single ‘informal’ entity designated as an ‘NGO’, lack of leadership, an inadequate funding mechanism, and a problematic micro-credit scheme. Nevertheless, the conceptual design of the project highlighting the mobilization of heritage resources for local community development has been praised by all representatives of the stakeholders involved and by the MDG-F.  This was clearly stated in the MDG-F final evaluation report in March 2013: ‘The programme is fully aligned with National partners’ mandates as well as with [the] UNDAF and the MDGs’ (Otero, 2013, pp. 13, 35). The report recognizes that ‘the project uniquely combines in an integrated manner cultural heritage aspects, natural heritage dimensions, and community development components.’ (ibid, p. 1) The fact that the programme is in an enclave situated inside the Memphis Necropolis, which is arguably the most important archaeological site in the world, gives this initiative a special relevance as a cultural development programme. With a frank acknowledgement of the serious pitfalls both in the design and implementation phases of the project, a relevant case study is provided for any future endeavour that aims to engage local communities in social and economic development programmes utilizing heritage resources.

References Abdel-Qadr, M., Wendrich, W., Kosc, Z., & Barnard, H. (2012). Giving a voice to the Ababda. In H.  Barnard & K.  Duistermaat (Eds.), The history of the peoples of the Eastern Desert (pp. 399–414), monograph 73). Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. Al-Ibrashy, M., Suraj Al-Din, H., & Yousef, H. (2016, February 16). Egypt is beautiful initiative (Arabic) [YouTube]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_97-­O5KQatQ. Accessed February 8th, 2020. Atalay, S. (2006). Indigenous archaeology as decolonizing practice. The American Indian Quarterly, 30(3/4), 280–310. Athar Lina. (n.d.). Athar Lina, Mandate. http://atharlina.com/about/. Accessed February 8th, 2020. Bianca, S., & Siravo, F. (Eds.). (2005). Cairo: Urban regeneration in the Darb al-Ahmar District. A framework for investment. Artemide Edizioni for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Bos-Seldenthuis, J.  E. M.  F. (2007). Life and tradition of the Ababda nomads in the Egyptian Desert, the junction between intangible and tangible heritage management. International Journal of Intangible Heritage, 2, 31–43. Center for Development Services. (2009). Establishing the socio-economic profile of Dahshur and its satellite communities. Center for Development Studies. Croes, R., & Vanegas, M., Sr. (2008). Co-integration and causality between tourism and poverty reduction. Journal of Travel Research, 47(1), 94–103. Elnokaly, A., & Elseragy, A. (2013). Sustainable heritage development: Learning from urban conservation of heritage projects in non-Western contexts. European Journal of Sustainable Development, 2, 31–54. Hanna, M., Keshk, F., & Aboubakr, S. (2012). The documentation of the cultural heritage of the Bedouin of South Sinai: A pilot study in Serabit al-Khadim. In H. Barnard & K. Duistermaat (Eds.), The history of the peoples of the Eastern Desert (pp.  358–368). University of California Press. Hassan, F. A. (2007). Dahshur development project – Concept for a proposal. [Unpublished item, with F. A. Hassan].

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Hassan, F. A. (2014). Training of local community youth in Dahshur, Egypt, as local tour guides and heritage guardians. Almatourism – Journal of Tourism, Culture and Territorial Development, [S. l.], 5(2), 39–49. Hassan, F. A., de Trafford, A., & Youssef, M. (2008). Cultural heritage and development in the Arab world. Bibliotheca Alexandrina. http://www.bibalex.org/arf/en/gra1106_df_20081102_ book.pdf. Accessed December 20th, 2017. Honey, M. (1999). Ecotourism and sustainable development: Who owns paradise? Island Press. International Labour Organisation. (2011). Evaluation Summary. Dahshur world heritage site mobilization for cultural heritage for community development Mid Term Joint Evaluation. http://ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/%2D%2D-­ed_mas/%2D%2D-­eval/documents/publication/wcms_187196.pdf. Accessed February 9th, 2020. Khaled, R. (2012). Dahshur Lake under threat: Residents complain of State’s disinterest. Egypt independent, 5th November. https://www.egyptindependent.com/dahshur-­lake-­under-­threat-­ residents-­complain-­state-­s-­disinterest/. Accessed February 8th, 2020. Lorenzon, M., & Zermani, I. (2016). Common ground: Community archaeology in Egypt, interaction between population and cultural heritage. Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage, 3(3), 183–199. Megawra. (n.d.). Built environment collective. http://megawra.com. Accessed November 8th, 2020. Meskell, L. (2000). The practice and politics of archaeology in Egypt. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 925, 146–169. Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund. (2013). Joint programme final narrative report: Mobilization of the Dahshour World Heritage site for community development.http:// www.mdgfund.org/sites/default/files/Egypt%20-­% 20Culture%20-­% 20Final%20 Narrative%20Report.pdf. Accessed February 8th, 2020. Moser, S., Glazier, D., Philips, J., El Nemer, L. N., Mousa, M. S., Richardson, S., Conner, A., & Seymour, M. (2002). Transforming archaeology through practice: Strategies for collaborative practice in the community archaeology project at Quseir, Egypt. World Archaeology, 34(2), 220–248. Murray, T. (2011). Archaeologists and indigenous people: A maturing relationship? Annual Review of Anthropology, 40, 363–378. Näser, C. (2019). Exploring attitudes towards the archaeological past: Two case studies from majority Muslim communities in the Nile valley. Journal of Social Archaeology, 19(3), 379–402. Näser, C., & Tully, G. (2019). Dialogues in the making: Collaborative archaeology in Sudan. Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage, 6(3), 155–171. Otero, E. (2011). Joint Programme mid-term evaluation: Mobilization of the Dahshour world heritage site for community development. http://www.mdgfund.org/sites/default/files/Egypt%20-­ %20Culture%20-­%20Mid-­term%20Evaluation%20Report.pdf. Accessed February 8th, 2020. Otero, E. (2013). Joint Programme final evaluation: Mobilization of the Dahshour world heritage site for community development. http://www.mdgfund.org/sites/default/files/Egypt%20-­%20 Culture%20-­%20Final%20Evaluation%20Report.pdf. Accessed February 8th, 2020. Page, S., & Getz, D. (1997). The business of rural tourism: International perspectives. Cengage Learning EMEA. Rashti, C. (2004). The development of Azhar Park. In S.  Bianca & P.  Jodidio (Eds.), Cairo: Revitalising a historic Metropolis (pp. 149–163). Umberto Allemandi for Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Shaalan, I.  M. (2005). Sustainable tourism development in the Red Sea of Egypt: Threats and opportunities. Journal of Cleaner Production, 13, 83–87. Shehayeb, D.  K., & Abdel Hafiz, M. (2006). Tradition, change, and participatory design: Re-designing of Tablita market in historic Cairo. Open House International, 31(4), 67–76. Smith, C., & Wobst, H.  M. (Eds.). (2005). Indigenous archaeologies. Decolonizing theory and practice (One world archaeology 47). Routledge. Teijgeler, R. (2013). Politics and heritage in Egypt: One and a half years after the lotus revolution. Archaeologies, 9(1), 230–251.

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Tourism Development Authority. (n.d.). TDA projects, about Dahshur. http://www.tda.gov.eg/ Dahshour/IntroEn.aspx. Accessed February 8th, 2020. Tully, G. (2007). Community archaeology: General methods and standards of practice. Public Archaeology, 6(3), 155–187. Tully, G. (2009). Ten years on: The community archaeology project Quseir, Egypt. Treballs d’arqueologia, 15, 63–78. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. (n.d.). Memphis and its Necropolis – The Pyramid fields from Giza to Dahshur. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/86/documents/. Accessed February 8th, 2020. UNESCO World Heritage Committee. (2016). Report of the decisions adopted during the 40th session of the World Heritage Committee. (WHC Publication No. WHC/16/40.COM/19). https:// whc.unesco.org/archive/2016/whc16-­40com-­19-­en.pdf. Accessed February 9th, 2020. United Nations Development Programme. (n.d.). Multi-partner trust fund office project factsheet, the Dahshur World Heritage Site mobilization for cultural heritage for community development. http://mptf.undp.org/factsheet/project/00067175. Accessed February 8th, 2020. Wendrich, W. (2008). From objects to agents: The Ababda nomads and the interpretation of the past. In H. Barnard & W. Wendrich (Eds.), The archaeology of mobility: Old World and New World nomadism (pp. 509–542). Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. Zhao, W., & Ritchie, J. B. (2007). Tourism and poverty alleviation: An integrative research framework. Current Issues in Tourism, 10(2–3), 119–143. Fekri A. Hassan is Director (and founder) of the Cultural Heritage Management Programme, French University in Egypt, and Emeritus Petrie Professor of Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He served as Vice-President of the World Archaeology Congress and President of the International Water History Association and is incumbent President of Heritage Egypt as well as Honorary President of the Egyptian Cultural Heritage Organization. He is a senior consultant for the Center for the Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT), Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt; Editor-in-Chief of the UNESCO seven-volume series, History of Water and Civilization; and former long-term editor of African Archaeological Review. He is currently concerned with cultural heritage management issues with an emphasis on cultural heritage and development. He is the founder of Cultural Heritage Egypt, an NGO dedicated to mobilising cultural heritage for a better future.  

Enas M. Ehab is assistant to the Minister’s Advisor for International Relations at the Ministry of Tourism in Cairo, Egypt. She is an experienced member of the Technical Office at the Ministry, with a decade of working in government relations. Her skills comprise tourism management, the hospitality industry, event management, cultural heritage and community engagement. She holds an MA in Cultural Heritage Management, jointly from the French University, Cairo, and the Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris, an MBA from Paris ESLSCA Business School, and has completed a study programme comprising Event Management, Valorization of Cultural Heritage and History of Art from the Università degli Studi di Enna ‘Kore’, Sicily.  

Part II

A Cross-Section of Practices

Chapter 5

Public Archaeology and Engagement in the Origins of Doha and Qatar Project Colleen Morgan, Robert Carter, Fatma Abdel Aziz, and Mariam Al Thani

5.1 Introduction The Origins of Doha and Qatar project (ODQ) investigates urban archaeology and heritage in Qatar, exploring a rapidly changing landscape inhabited by a diverse population. Beginning in 2012, the project has combined archaeological excavation with historical and ethnographic research to scrutinize the foundation and historic growth of Doha, its transformation to a modern city, and the lives and experiences of its people. From its inception, the project has incorporated multiple outreach strategies to share research generated from the project and to involve community members in the ongoing interpretation of heritage. The ODQ’s outreach involves a mixture of online and in-person engagement, changing over time in response to feedback from community members and technological innovations. This flexible approach to outreach has proved exceptionally popular, but there is still much to be done in terms of accessibility and consultation with a more diverse population of stakeholders. In this chapter, the authors discuss the ODQ in the context of archaeological research and heritage in Qatar, review this outreach strategy, address critiques of the project to date, and outline plans for future seasons, as informed by a broader understanding of the multiple perspectives gained during this research.

C. Morgan (*) Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, UK e-mail: [email protected] R. Carter · M. Al Thani Doha, Qatar F. A. Aziz Barker Langham, Dubai, UAE

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The ODQ is funded by the Qatar National Research Fund through the Qatar Foundation, granted to one of this chapter’s co-authors, Robert Carter at the University College London  – Qatar (UCL Qatar) in 2012. This project is one of several active archaeological and heritage projects in the region, and follows a history of investigation and cooperation between Qatari authorities and foreign researchers. In the early 1970s the government of Qatar invited Beatrice de Cardi, one of the pioneers of archaeology in the Gulf, to organize an archaeological expedition (de Cardi, 2008). As a result, de Cardi and her team spent 10 weeks conducting field research and gathering materials for the new national museum in Qatar (de Cardi, 2008; Exell & Rico, 2013). Since that time there have been several archaeological projects conducted by foreign nationals and overseen by Qatari authorities, including the large-scale excavation of Al Zubarah, a large walled coastal town in northern Qatar that flourished as a pearling and trading center in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. From 2009 to 2013, the Qatar Islamic Archaeology and Heritage Project (QIAH), a joint Qatar Museums Authority (now Qatar Museums) project with the University of Copenhagen, conducted excavations at Al Zubarah, during which the site was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Exell and Rico (2013, p. 679) characterize these projects as contributing to the dominant national heritage discourse of Qatar. They call for the ‘formulation of a theoretical framework that is able to recognize, accommodate, encompass and reflect the variety of heritage dialogues and practices that exist in Qatar’ that incorporates ‘oral histories, the accommodation of contradictory testimonies, a recognition of local forms of authority and witness, written works in Arabic and visual documentation’ (Exell & Rico, 2013, p. 681). Informed by Exell and Rico’s (2013) critical account of the creation and management of Qatari heritage, the ODQ has been designed to combine archaeological excavation with historical and ethnographic research as well as to incorporate a diverse public outreach component. Since 2012, the ODQ has conducted excavations, recorded buildings, and conducted survey projects that vary widely in location and subject matter. The archaeological excavations first focused on central Doha, with investigation within the footprint of the Radwani House1 in the Msheireb in part to transform it into a museum. During the next season the ODQ and the Qatar Museums (QM hereafter) conducted a joint project titled the Old Doha Excavation, which examined an open space near the Qubib mosque in central Doha, threatened by development of the city transit system. The ODQ also performed extensive buildings recording in old Ghanim and Najada historic districts that were subsequently destroyed by development. Archaeological remains revealed by construction in these historic districts were also investigated and recorded, often immediately before the remains were destroyed. These urban investigations were complemented by work in the outskirts of Doha on agricultural sites in Rayyan and traditional wells in Nu’aja (see Fig. 5.1). From 2016–18 the project worked on a comparative  The Radwani House, first built in the 1920s, represents a traditional Qatari family dwelling, which, although extensively restored in 2007, features many traditional architectural elements (Eddisford & Morgan, 2013). 1

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Fig. 5.1  Map of excavations and historic recording performed by the Origins of Doha and Qatar project. (Map © the ODQ project)

site, Fuwairit, an important northeastern coastal settlement some 90 km from Doha that rose to regional prominence as the home of the Al-Thani family during the early nineteenth century (Fig. 5.2). The site is over a kilometer long with relatively intact remains that provided a useful analog for the more piecemeal archaeological evidence in Doha. At the same time, oral histories have been gathered by ODQ team members and students at UCL Qatar, along with archival photographs, interviews, and other materials. The existing interviews are from a collection of archival oral histories taken by the former Gulf Folklore Center, now part of the collection of the Ministry of Culture. These complement the new histories from nationals and long-­ term residents of Doha captured by a team of young Qatari researchers, and focus on the lived experience of the inhabitants of Doha, particularly during the pre-oil and early oil era. The project has completed all fieldwork and data gathering and has now moved into the post-excavation publication stage.

5.2 Outreach Strategies While the ODQ was originally conceived as primarily a research project, public outreach increasingly became a critical component of its work. Since Merriman’s (2004) formative edited volume, public outreach in archaeology or public archaeology has become ever more commonplace, though often both broadly defined and widely debated (Moshenska, 2017; Richardson & Almansa-Sánchez, 2015). Many models of public archaeology have been suggested, for example Merriman’s (2004, p. 5) deficit model, wherein an expert archaeologist informs an uneducated audience about archaeology, and the corresponding multiple perspective model that argues for inclusivity and responsiveness to the many audiences of archaeology (Merriman,

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Fig. 5.2  Map showing the location of Fuwairit. (Map © the ODQ project)

2004, p.  7). Other models are suggested by Holtorf (2007) and Okamura and Matsuda (2012), as summarized by Richardson and Almansa-Sánchez (2015), with varying degrees of emphasis on education, critical theory, and power relations. Moshenska (2017, p. 1) helpfully broadens the definition of public archaeology as ‘practice and scholarship where archaeology meets the world.’ As a relatively long-lived project, the ODQ was able to explore public archaeology across many of the ‘types’ of action as outlined by Moshenska (2017, p. 6): the ODQ worked with multiple stakeholders, trained members of the government, gave public lectures in schools and other venues, designed educational materials, opened

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access to research as it was carried out through digital media, appeared in documentaries, museum exhibitions, and magazines, and opened the research and publication remit to local stakeholders who have indelibly shaped them. Similarly, the ODQ has managed to incorporate many of the strategies employed by Moser et al. (2002, p.  229) as community archaeology and collaborative practice, including communication and collaboration, employment and training, public presentation, interviews and oral history, educational resources, and the availability of a photographic and video archive. Other ways of framing participatory research in archaeology, such as Atalay’s (2010) ‘Community-Based Participatory Research’ (CBPR) were more difficult to explore within the context of Qatar. CBPR projects are developed by members of the community, where local people participate in the research as partners in a power-sharing relationship (Atalay, 2010, p. 420). The power relations in Qatar present challenges to fully engaging with a CBPR approach, a critique of which is more fully explored below. Finally, while none of the individual methods used by the ODQ were particularly innovative, the timescale, holistic nature and context of the outreach combined provide a unique contribution to a volume concerning community heritage in the Arab region. Although not initially within the project design, public outreach quickly became a critical component of the overall ODQ strategy. This outreach has had both online and in-person components. Online outreach ran throughout the year whereas in-­ person outreach was limited by the fieldwork season. The ODQ team has continually been concerned with, and conscious of, engaging with its local stakeholders. As a group the ODQ devised a community engagement strategy, beginning by identifying key stakeholders and crafting specific outreach initiatives to better engage with these communities. These stakeholders included both foreign nationals and Qataris, as Qatar has long held a large international population, evident from both historical records and the ODQ’s archaeological investigations. Though Qatar has become prominent more recently through large initiatives such as hosting the 2022 Football World Cup, the UNESCO inscribed site of Al Zubarah, its past and heritage remain relatively unknown internationally. By using both online and in-person outreach, the ODQ has been able to target a large range of different constituencies regarding Al Zubarah, while remaining relevant to local heritage stakeholders. The history of archaeological research in Qatar and the Gulf differs from many regions in that archaeologists tend to be invited to work by the government who primarily funds the project. This is a complicating factor in the ODQ’s public outreach as the project can incorporate multiple participatory actions. Most discussions of community archaeology or CBPR in the Middle East and Arabia involve archaeologists or heritage experts from the United States or the United Kingdom who are interested in the archaeology of the area and have external funding and then endeavor to incorporate local people into the research project (Atalay, 2010; Damick, 2011; Moser et al., 2002; Steele, 2005; Steen et al., 2010). The structure of archaeological and heritage research in Qatar is such that the research is instigated by local authorities and then performed by foreign academics who sometimes employ expatriate workers to help excavate sites. On the one hand, there is participation from Qatari officials or museum employees who are trained in excavation or building recording,

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and on the other, there are expatriate workers who arguably have as much a right to connect to Qatar’s past as the Qatari nationals. These expatriate workers are undoubtedly alienated from the outcomes and context of their labor, and their position in larger Qatari social structures has been the focus of much international criticism (Gardner, 2011, pp. 11–12). Unusually among archaeological projects in the Gulf, the Origins of Doha and Qatar project is not funded directly by the local heritage authority (in this case QM), but by a grant from a peer-reviewed competitive process (the National Priorities Research Program) run by the Qatar National Research Fund (part of the Qatar Foundation). This has increased the range of institutional stakeholders, bringing both advantages and complications. The project works closely with QM in defining research goals, and indeed the choice of site for excavation. Each year the project director, Robert Carter, collaborates with QM in developing a scope of work, and must receive permission for both excavation and the dissemination of results through QM. In particular, the project works with the Head of Archaeology at QM to ensure that work is done according to QM’s priorities. This mode of operation is a reversal of many projects outside the Gulf, where the research is funded externally and the director is not answerable to local stakeholders (Steele, 2005). Within these power relations the ODQ team members, while experts, act as consultants and facilitators rather than authorities. In this capacity, it would be easy to merely maintain and perpetuate the dominant government-sponsored narratives about Qatari heritage to ensure the longevity of the project (Exell & Rico, 2013), yet the ODQ seeks to involve a wider population and broaden the discourse about the past. This is hindered somewhat by the remit of the funding and the standard heritage practices of the region, which do not encourage direct participation of volunteers in fieldwork. This was stipulated in the fieldwork contract. Consequently the project is primarily a research-based endeavor that employs highly-skilled specialists to investigate specific questions, particularly with regards to the archaeological fieldwork component, yet encourages public participation in the wider heritage discourse. Within this there are ways to interact with communities, as has been demonstrated.

5.3 Online Outreach At the outset, the ODQ set up a Wordpress blog as a main hub for disseminating ongoing research, and incorporated social media such as Facebook and Flickr (a photo-sharing site) to boost the visibility of the project (Morgan et al., 2016). The use of a blog with supplemental social media is now standard practice for archaeological projects (Caraher, 2008; Morgan & Winters, 2015), but in 2012 the accessibility of research produced by the ODQ was novel in the Gulf. The main site features pages dedicated to the History of Doha, Project Staff, Excavation, Building Recording, Oral Histories, and Research, and each are updated periodically to feature new findings from the project. The History of Doha pages have been of particular interest, with several comments and corrections from stakeholders appended to

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the research. These pages have been mined heavily for several Wikipedia entries on Doha and Qatar and have been cited in scholarly research (see Boussaa, 2014; Fuccaro, 2014). The photographs hosted on Flickr have attracted comments from residents of Doha who shared their own images in response. For example, engaging with an ODQ photograph showing architectural details of mangrove roof beams, the ‘Desert Blooms’ Flickr account posted three photographs, captioned in part thus: Hi. Fascinating to see all your photo’s [sic] of the old traditional construction techniques in Doha. I have a few pics [sic] myself you may find of interest. They were all taken behind the Abu Bakir Al Siddiq mosque near the Ras Abu Aboud flyover. (Desert Blooms, 2012)

The project has also had a great deal of interest on Facebook where it has attracted an audience primarily from within Qatar, rather than the United Kingdom or the United States where many of the project members are based. Beyond a basic presence on various social media networks, the ODQ has experimented with alternative means to represent archaeological research online. The Doha Online Historical Atlas (DOHA) is an online historical geographic information system (GIS) that hosts interactive geo-located media and text (Morgan et al., 2016) (see Fig. 5.3). The DOHA interface is a map with several overlays showing the early buildings and neighborhoods and the subsequent growth of Doha. There are also photographs, videos, and aerial oblique imagery embedded in the map, along with locations of contemporary and historical wells and mosques. The ODQ has placed comprehensive archaeological excavation and buildings recording reports in the pertinent locations as well. DOHA is open to contributions from stakeholders, although this has had limited uptake so far. Presenting complex heritage-related information on a simplified map allows viewers to keep track of archaeological work performed by the ODQ, locate important buildings, and see the changes in the historic environment over the years. The team is currently

Fig. 5.3  DOHA: Doha Online Historical Atlas Interface. (Image © the ODQ project)

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considering developing the tool as an educational resource targeted at high school students researching Qatar history. More recently, the ODQ has launched a series of short videos on YouTube (see ODQ, 2015–2016), explaining the archaeological investigation of Fuwairit and the nearby previously unknown fortified site of Zarqa. These videos feature team members discussing the active excavations, including the investigation of an earth oven in great detail. They are primarily expository (Morgan, 2014), featuring didactic, ‘talking-head’ style explanations of archaeological process but provide a hereto unavailable insight into the ongoing research of the project. These videos also feature Arabic subtitles, an initiative that has been a priority for the duration of the project, but was only made possible more recently. The ODQ website also features Arabic translations of its blog posts. The project intends to extend these translations to Facebook and other social media as well.2 The ODQ has recently launched a Twitter account (Origins of Qatar), which posts bilingually, however it has yet to garner significant attention from the local population.

5.4 In-Person Outreach The ODQ has also employed in-person public outreach, an effort initially undertaken through public lectures, newspaper coverage, interaction with local television media, and appearances at local cultural festivals. For example, the project’s work in Doha featured in an Arabic language documentary by Qatar TV on the archaeology and cultural heritage of Qatar, as well as a second documentary by Qatar TV, which featured the project’s work in Fuwairit. The ODQ has also been involved in training QM employees (both Qataris and other nationalities) in historic buildings recording and in archaeological excavation. Further local involvement has hereto been limited due to restrictions regarding participation as outlined by ODQ funding, the location of archaeological sites within construction zones, and the short fieldwork season. As noted earlier, while the ODQ has not been particularly innovative in the methods of public archaeology, it is unique in the application of these techniques in the Gulf. More recently, one of the project members (and co-author of this chapter), Mariam Al Thani, has become involved with English-language educational outreach targeting International schools using ODQ materials. As part of this outreach, the ODQ surveyed educational materials available in these schools. The Education Ministry provides Qatari History and Citizenship textbooks for students in grade levels from 1 to 9. These textbooks vary in content according to grade level, but the number of pages dedicated to Qatari history is nominal. For example, in Year 2, students are introduced to ‘Ancient Dwellings’, ‘Ancient Crafts’ and ‘Customs and Traditions in the State Qatar [sic]’ over 11 pages. In Year 3 there is an emphasis on

 For an understanding of the necessity for such translations, see Abdel Aziz (2016).

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‘Archaeological Monuments in Qatar’, but the specific information regarding these monuments is limited to seven pages. By Year 7, the students are given 12 pages of Qatar-specific archaeological content. Throughout, much of the content focuses on the lineage of the ruling family. The ODQ is able to offer material links and stories of everyday people to enhance this history. For example, oral histories gathered by the project mention details such as how antelopes were sold for 5 rupees in central Doha’s ‘standing’ market, Souq Waqif, and hung from a wooden pole over a fire for grilling, and how traditional family compound housing changed after the introduction of the oil industry when families moved into individual houses. Initially the outreach was aimed at giving students a basic understanding of the early twentieth century architecture of Doha, and how to determine which parts of houses were built first, and the subsequent additions. This was to instill the notion of how Doha has changed over time. To this end, the ODQ team prepared a lecture and a coloring activity that used a digitized elevation of the wall of a traditional house recorded in the Old Al Ghanim district of Doha. The students were then asked to use different colors for each section of the wall (see Fig. 5.4). While some students seemed to readily pick up on the ideas introduced by the project, other students struggled to understand any connection to this past Doha with where they lived today. The ODQ’s research findings have provided material evidence to support the information collected from oral histories regarding the lived daily experiences of Qataris in the past. The material evidence collected illustrates the different aspects of life – the form of travel used, the food consumed, the building materials employed, the games played, and the products imported. This material evidence has substantiated the existing information/recorded social histories, which the school’s curriculum on Qatar history depended upon. Subsequently, five International schools in Qatar were contacted: Compass International School, Sherborne School, Qatar Academy, Gulf English School and American School of Doha, each with both Qatari and international students. The project has targeted its programs at children in the 7th grade, or 11–12 years old. This corresponded to the entry for History in the Qatari curriculum, wherein ‘students develop skills to order events based on time and understand the basic vocabulary associated with the passage of time’ (Supreme Educational Council, 2004, p. 1). As the ODQ project progressed, the lesson plans and activities designed for the school children were changed to create a more dynamic and engaging program. The opening lecture was enhanced to include further explanation of archaeology and its significance and relevance to them as residents and natives of Doha. The lecture conveyed how archaeology informs us about people’s pasts and their lived experiences; that archaeological findings inform us how people lived, where they lived, what structures they lived in, how they travelled and what they ate. In order to engage the students with the concept further, the team developed activities that allowed them the opportunity to personally connect with the facts. The students were offered a chance to compare their current understanding and view of Doha with the Doha of the early twentieth century, in terms of the size and location of the city, the lived experiences of its inhabitants and the types of homes they occupied.

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Fig. 5.4  Outline of a wall, as colored in by a student. (Image © the ODQ project)

For instance, one activity called for students to compare aerial maps of 1940s and 1950s Doha (Old Doha) with a present-day map of the city. Even though most current residential areas lay outside the original footprint of Old Doha, the students were still able to identify the city center and its attending landmarks. Moreover, so few of those who live in central Doha can attest to the growth Qatar has undergone in the last 60 years. Students were introduced to the principal moments of growth in Qatar’s history by utilizing these two aerial maps of Old Doha, as well as an aerial map of Qatar from the present day. This allowed the students to point out the specific manifestations of growth on each map. The students were then shown old photographs and plans of buildings, accompanied by a discussion of traditional building materials and techniques and the different uses of the spaces within the building. The lesson culminated with students forming groups to build a replica of a

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traditional Qatari domestic residence dated to the 1930s and 1940s using cardboard boxes. Finally, the students were asked to convey one thing about Doha’s past, and to describe the practice of archaeology. The project relied on relatively simple forms of evaluation of these sessions, with the students being asked after the session to recall one thing they had learned and later review the teachers’ comments. From this feedback, the sessions the ODQ team conducted were deemed successful. The children were enthusiastic and engaged, and were able to retain lessons regarding where and how Qataris lived in the past. The children’s excitement was infectious. With each session, the ODQ team were bombarded with questions about Qatar’s past and its archaeology, some of which warranted further investigation. For example, they asked about sewage systems, financial institutions, specific artefacts and how to date them. Their questions prompted the team to adjust lesson plans to account for their interests, and to engage with them on a more significant level. Additionally, the children were frequently inspired by the practice of archaeology itself, and asked questions related to the profession and the personal experiences of the archaeologists. The children’s excitement and eagerness to learn more is broadly indicative of local interest in the heritage of Qatar. They were fascinated by the growth of Doha, from a pair of small villages in 1823 to a large metropolitan city around a thousand times the size, and extremely interested in learning about the ways of life in Old Doha – how and where people lived, how they travelled, what they ate and other details the team have obtained from the historical and archaeological record. In order to engage with older audiences (i.e. post-school students), the ODQ developed a series of bilingual (Arabic/English) public lectures. This was an opportunity to raise awareness about the project’s existence, as well as its findings. The team observed a similar level of enthusiasm among these older audiences for engaging with Qatari history (e.g. students at Qatar University and Qatar Foundation’s Academic Bridge Program, which prepares local students for university), belying the frequent (and unfounded) assumption that local people in the Gulf states have only a limited interest in their past. Moreover, it offered the project team an opportunity to engage with both long-time residents (those who have lived in Qatar for two decades or more) and nationals, who were not only able, but also willing to get involved and contribute some of their knowledge to the project. There is work in progress to extend ODQ educational outreach from the initial target demographic of ages 8–10 to middle schools (ages 13–14) and students transitioning to university (aged 18), primarily using DOHA (Morgan et al., 2016). A further initiative is currently being developed to supplement the current ‘Qatar History’ curriculum in International schools, which would provide teachers with lesson plans and resources derived from the ODQ project. These initiatives include creating educational storybooks about archaeology and further lesson plans.

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5.5 Critique and Feedback The ODQ project has incorporated a relatively long-term public archaeology dimension that employs a variety of online and in-person outreach. The ODQ has benefitted since its inception from its relatively long tenure as an archaeological project to develop outreach practices and build on public archaeology. Previous publications regarding this project (e.g. Morgan et  al., 2016) have emphasized an iterative approach that seeks to experiment with new types of media and outreach while at the same time enhancing and refining existing materials. While ODQ outreach strategies continue to be identified and improved, it is important to open the project to critique. The team has found the comments and perspectives of one of the co-authors of this chapter, Fatma Abdel Aziz, UCL-Qatar Masters student and longtime resident of Qatar, particularly enlightening. As part of her Masters dissertation, Abdel Aziz (2016) performed a series of interviews and analyses of the outreach efforts of the Origins of Doha and Qatar project. She identifies several problems inherent in engaging in public archaeology in general, and issues more endemic to working in Qatar. In her conclusions, Abdel Aziz called for the ODQ to recruit full-time Arabic-speaking team members, enhance engagement at local schools, and develop methods based on Atalay’s (2010) CBPR to augment public outreach. The ODQ has implemented many of the suggested improvements, but more elaboration regarding these improvements is needed to show the evolution of the project and to highlight even further challenges ahead. The need for more Arabic-speaking and national (Qatari) team members was identified as a priority from the beginning of the project; the team lacked an adept translator who could appropriately use a Qatari register of Modern Standard Arabic, and the software and media platforms used by the team made the implementation of Arabic translations very unwieldy (Morgan et al., 2016). While Qataris are educated in English (Kane, 2014) and English-only materials may not be a problem among educated classes, engagement with Qataris on English-language websites is minimal and only a minority of expatriate workers are literate in English (Morgan et al., 2016). Since its inception, the ODQ has overcome many of these difficulties. We have engaged a former UCL student, Nabeel Yahya, who translates the website from English to Arabic, and provides subtitles for the ODQ YouTube videos. Yahya works for QM and has excavated with the team and thus able to correctly translate the specialist terms in use in archaeological and heritage contexts. As outlined above, the ODQ has pushed a major program of outreach in schools, mainly led by Mariam Al Thani, a Qatari national who has taken a passionate interest in improving educational materials with archaeological research. From 2012 to 2015 the team worked primarily in Doha, where excavations were circumscribed by construction and other unsafe conditions and therefore unsuitable for visits from non-specialists. This limited the project’s ability to conduct school outreach outside the classroom. In 2015, however, the team expanded excavations to Fuwairit. Excavations at Fuwairit are near a popular beach and mangrove and the site is much more conducive for site visits from school groups. During the 2016 season, Al Thani visited the Compass International School to introduce the students to archaeology

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and the ODQ project. Later, the students visited Fuwairit and were taken on a site tour, viewed active excavations and explored the remains of several buildings including a mosque, a fort, and a large compound. The team has subsequently developed a simple, self-guided tour with GPS points and images to indicate different structures. This is in conjunction with the improvement of downloadable lesson plans about the history and archaeology of Qatar, hosted on the ODQ website for teachers to use. These documents form part of the gradual ‘sunsetting’ of the project, to be further discussed below. A further critique of the project’s outreach program concerns the project’s limited ability to reach out to Qatar’s public schools, in which a large number of Qatari nationals are educated. While language issues can be overcome by Qatari and other Arabic-speaking team members, obtaining formal permission to conduct activities in this milieu is challenging, as any heritage-related additions to the national educational curriculum should entail approval through two large state entities, first QM and then the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (formerly the Supreme Education Council). While the goodwill of these organizations is unquestionable, and while it is possible to ensure that any historically or socially controversial topics are avoided, the complex and time-consuming processes required meant that it is significantly easier to target the International schools (where many of the children of Qatar’s elite families are educated). Current work on improving historical and archaeological education through integrating ODQ data into public schools is ongoing and involves coordinating between the previously mentioned QM, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, in addition to the Qatar Foundation, funders of the ODQ Project. The Arabic language and educational aspects of the overall ODQ outreach strategy are relatively well developed, but addressing Abdel Aziz’s call for incorporating more aspects of CBPR into the project is considerably more complex. As defined, CBPR projects are ‘community-driven’ with buy-in from the outset, and with interest and engagement at the outset (Atalay, 2010, p.  420). Arguably, the ODQ is defined by what could be termed ‘the community’ in that this work is under the purview of Qatari funding and research institutions, yet what could be considered the local community is highly contested. While identifying specific constituencies within communities can be instructive when devising outreach strategies and analyzing their outcomes, public discussion of social divisions can be problematic in Qatar. Within the community of Qatari nationals there are emic and normative (albeit sometimes overlapping) distinctions of identity, focused on lineage, tribal versus non-tribal, nomad (bedu) versus settled (hadar), alliance groupings (usually historical), faith, ethnicity, ancestral geographical origins, free versus slave origin, and length of time spent in Qatar that dictate both social relationships and financial status. The most sensitive differences appear to revolve around slave origins, ethnicity (specifically Arab versus non-Arab origin), and faith (Sunni or Shia). While some Qatari individuals and state organizations actively promote the open discussion of some of these issues (most notably Qatar Foundation and Msheireb Museums, which has a section devoted to the slave trade), and while the Qatari government celebrates the diversity of its national population through the support of

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festival grounds for its major tribes and population groups on National Day (Al-Shawi & Gardner, 2013; Al-Attiyah, 2013, p.  37), others are personally and institutionally uncomfortable with the public expression of social division and problematic history. Moreover, as noted above, non-national residents are excluded from any kind of national discourse, except perhaps for those members of the ‘diasporic elite’ (Gardner, 2011) who provide consultancy services, for example the members of the Origins of Doha and Qatar project. These social divisions are generally unproblematic as far as the archaeological record is concerned, though the project director has encountered sensitivity surrounding the discovery and display of faith-specific religious paraphernalia, as well as artefacts that may relate to folk belief or ‘magic’. Oral histories are potentially more sensitive still, particularly those referring to the ownership of slaves; these must be presented with care. Concern has additionally been observed surrounding the display of finds relating to socially undesirable personal behavior, particularly smoking equipment (shisha, or water pipes) and bottles that might have been used to contain alcohol. Even the display of historic photographs of Doha and traditional life can be considered undesirable by some members of the national population, in case they give an impression of backwardness and poverty, while a highly conservative sector of the Qatari community is known to object to the presentation of photographs that show humans and animals. Qatari society is remarkably complex, with a highly diverse range of opinions, educational levels and attitudes to heritage, and the key social strategy used locally to mitigate these variances is to refrain from publicly voicing potentially controversial opinions. Nagy (2006, p. 131) refers to a diplomat’s observation that Qataris were the most self-censoring population she had encountered in her career. In addition to the complexity of Qatari society, the population of nationals is now greatly outnumbered by a huge non-national workforce. This itself is a matter of significant concern. Clearly the complexity of Qatari society presents challenges to public archaeology performed in Qatar. Any conclusions drawn from the investigations performed by the ODQ can potentially highlight social divisions, or unintentionally favor or impinge upon identities drawn from the historical context. Outreach based in schools, public lectures and national festivals does not reach large sectors of the Qatari nationals who have a stake in the past and future of Qatar, let alone non-national residents. All of these factors make a CBPR approach implausible for the ODQ, yet perhaps future projects will be able to employ such an approach in Qatar.

5.6 Conclusions Since 2012, the Origins of Doha and Qatar project has incorporated a variety of strategies for both online and in-person outreach in conjunction with its ongoing program of archaeological and heritage research. This outreach has taken on a variety of different approaches, and has been subject to both support and critique from

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community members, including the co-authors of this chapter. The current funding for the project concluded in 2019, and it is for the team to prepare for an eventual ‘sunsetting’, or gradual phasing out of the research. In the case of the ODQ, there are several monographs planned as required according to the funding and the QM’s permits. In addition to this there is the hosting of lessons plans for students, site tours, and other content on the ODQ webpage. Minimal maintenance will be performed to keep content accessible online, including the videos, images, and social media sites. As the team prepares for the end of the project, our experience in public outreach in the Gulf has led us to some considerations for future projects. Under the current structure of archaeological and heritage research in Qatar, the approaches to community archaeology presented in the academic literature are not always suitable for the country, or the wider Gulf region. Nonetheless, as consultants working with Qatari funding, it is essential to attempt to engage the local population, otherwise the research is of value only to western or western-educated academics. To this end, as well as from the approaches outlined above, the team intends to develop strategies of personal engagement with the archaeological remains, for example through identification of, and dialogue with, living individuals, close relatives or descendants who are directly and personally associated with the sites, buildings, artefacts or inscriptions under investigation. This kind of community engagement is rarely conducted successfully by archaeological projects in the region, with at least one notable exception involving consultation with a community member during work at a recent site in Al-Ain, UAE, which included excavation of his former house (Sheehan et al., 2015). The original intent in the ODQ project was to promote academic research and enhance protection and conservation, yet the team’s experience with community engagement was mutually positive. Researchers can additionally learn from local practice. In Qatar, Mohammed Ali Abdullah, a leading local heritage specialist frequently tasked with redeveloping archaeological sites, historic districts and heritage buildings, including Souq Waqif, the historical pearling center of Al Wakra, the nineteenth century watchtowers of Umm Salal Mohammed and other sites (Cooke, 2014, pp.  86–90; Boussaa, 2014; Al-Raouf, 2012), routinely confers with elderly residents about the sites where he works, simultaneously gathering information and strengthening interest and pride in local heritage. The excavations at Fuwairit offer us an opportunity here, for example through dialogue with the families that lived at the current village until the 1960s or 1970s, whose recent ancestors occupied the adjacent archaeological site that the ODQ team are excavating. A key aim here, as in all the ODQ work, will be not simply to extract knowledge, but also to open opportunities for local people to engage with their past if and how they choose. Furthermore, in a departure from standard heritage practice in the region, we propose that community engagement and ethnographic work should be extended to non-national occupants of the sites and heritage districts, not only including long-­ term residents and white-collar expatriates, but also the laborers, fishermen, shepherds and other low-wage expatriates who work on and live in and around Qatar’s heritage sites. This is potentially a problematic area, given national sensitivity

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towards international bad publicity about the status and conditions of expatriate laborers in the country, but we consider it possible to involve diverse national and non-national constituencies in a heritage discourse that emphasizes positive and inclusive engagement. Finally, it is necessary to consider formal national priorities when undertaking any kind of research. Qatari nationals and institutions hold agency for the giving of grants and the granting of permissions for research and outreach work, and there are strategic priorities set by the Qatari state. For example, the Qatar National Research Strategy 2012 (under which terms the project was conceived) exhorts researchers to ‘support Qatar’s distinctive culture’ and ‘develop a knowledge base in the development of culture in Qatar and the Gulf’ (QNRF, 2012, pp.  1, 8), while the Qatar National Development Strategy 2011–2016 requires that education should provide ‘a solid grounding... in national identity and in traditions and cultural heritage’, as well as a commitment towards ‘preserving and leveraging Qatar’s heritage and culture’ (GSDP, 2011, pp. 13, 20). The Qatar National Vision of 2030 promotes a similar agenda, requiring educational programs to provide ‘a solid grounding in Qatari moral and ethical values, traditions and cultural heritage’ (GSDP, 2008, p.  16). Although lacking in specifics, these strategy documents provide a formal justification for community heritage work within the Qatari context. While engagement with such state-sponsored heritage strategies creates a risk of reproducing a monolithic and exclusionary official discourse, the lack of specificity in Qatar’s strategies partially obviates this risk, while studies elsewhere in the region indicate that the kind of ethnographic approaches mentioned above inhibit the emergence of a single totalizing heritage discourse (Exell & Rico, 2013, p. 11). The ODQ team therefore pursues an intersectional community outreach strategy that speaks to Qatar’s long history as a nexus of international activity. An intersectional community archaeology would incorporate ethnographic work and engagement with both long-time residents of the region and relative newcomers, intermingling narratives that can better frame the interethnic reality of Doha. So far, archaeological investigation is one of the few interfaces wherein the disparate social classes of Qatar can work alongside each other; an intersectional community archaeology would provide a place for collaboration between Qatari nationals and expatriate workers, a middle-ground where heritage could foster a greater understanding and respect. The Origins of Doha and Qatar project has laid this groundwork, setting the foundations for subsequent initiatives to construct an inclusive future for heritage in Qatar.

References Abdel Aziz, F. (2016). Public archeology in Doha, Qatar: an investigation of the ‘Origins of Doha Project,’ and its potential to target a multicultural community (unpublished master’s dissertation). University College London, Qatar. Al-Attiyah, H. H. K. (2013). Reviving the local dialect in Qatar: An issue of linguistic concern or identity politics? Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.

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Al-Raouf, A. A. (2012). A tale of two Souqs: The paradox of gulf urban diversity. Open House International, 37(2), 72–81. Al-Shawi, A. H., & Gardner, A. (2013). Tribalism, identity and citizenship in contemporary Qatar. Anthropology of the Middle East, 8(2), 46–59. Atalay, S. (2010). ʻWe don’t talk about Çatalhöyük, we live it’: Sustainable archaeological practice through community-based participatory research. World Archaeology, 42(3), 418–429. Boussaa, D. (2014). Rehabilitation as a catalyst of sustaining a living heritage: The case of souk waqif in Doha, Qatar. Art and Design Review, 2, 62–71. Caraher, W. R. (2008). Blogging archaeology and the archaeology of blogging, Archaeology, Online Features. http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/blogs/. Accessed April 13, 2020. Cooke, M. (2014). Tribal modern: Branding new nations in the Arab Gulf. University of California Press. Damick, A. (2011). Landscapes of the past: Place, space, and the construction of meaning in the Azraq community archaeology project. Bulletin for the Council for British Research in the Levant, 6(1), 28–34. de Cardi, B. (2008). Exploring the lower Gulf, 1947–2007. Antiquity, 82(315), 165–177. Desert Blooms. (2012). Architectural detail in old Doha [Flickr]. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ originsofdoha/8349326244/in/album-­72157632437662511/. Accessed April 13, 2020. Eddisford, D., & Morgan, C. (2013). The Radwani House: Architecture, archaeology and social history. Heritage report prepared for Msheireb Museums. https://www.academia.edu/33365222/ The_Radwani_House_Architecture_Archaeology_and_Social_History. Accessed April 14, 2020. Exell, K., & Rico, T. (2013). ʻThere is no heritage in Qatarʼ: Orientalism, colonialism and other problematic histories. World Archaeology, 45(4), 670–685. Fuccaro, N. (2014). Rethinking the history of port cities in the Gulf. In L. G. Potter (Ed.), The Persian Gulf in modern times: People, ports and history (pp. 23–46). Palgrave Macmillan. Gardner, A. (2011). Gulf migration and the family. Journal of Arabian Studies, 1(1), 3–25. GSDP. (2008). Qatar national vision 2030 (p.  16). Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning. GSDP. (2011). Qatar national development strategy 2011–2016: Towards Qatar national vision 2030 (pp. 13, 20). Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning. Holtorf, C. (2007). Archaeology is a brand! The meaning of archaeology in contemporary popular culture. Archaeopress. Kane, T. (2014). Whose lingua franca? The politics of language in transnational medical education. The Journal of General Education, 63(2), 94–112. Merriman, N. (2004). Public archaeology. Routledge. Morgan, C. (2014). Archaeology and the moving image. Public Archaeology, 13(4), 323–344. Morgan, C., & Winters, J. (2015). Introduction: Critical blogging in archaeology. Internet Archaeology, 39. https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue39/editorial.html Morgan, C., Carter, R., & Michalski, M. (2016). The origins of Doha project: Online digital heritage remediation and public outreach in a vanishing pearling town in the Arabian Gulf. In W. Börner & S. Uhlirz (Eds.), (pp. 1–8). Presented at the International Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Technologies, Museen der Stadt Wien – Stadtarchäologie. Moser, S., Glazier, D., Phillips, J. E., el Nemr, L. N., Mousa, M. S., Aiesh, R. N., Richardson, S., Conner, A., & Seymour, M. (2002). Transforming archaeology through practice: Strategies for collaborative archaeology and the Community Archaeology Project at Quseir. Egypt. World archaeology, 34(2), 220–248. Moshenska, G. (Ed.). (2017). Key concepts in public archaeology. UCL Press. Nagy, S. (2006). Making room for migrants, making sense of difference: Spatial and ideological expressions of social diversity in urban Qatar. Urban Studies, 43, 119–137. ODQ. (2015–2016). Origins of Doha [YouTube, series of 13 videos]. https://www.youtube.com/ playlist?list=PLZuHyNSmkMrh2GZF3Z2xXNsRUVcy2vcV4. Accessed April 14, 2020. Okamura, K., & Matsuda, A. (2012). New perspectives in global public archaeology. Springer.

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QNRF. (2012). Qatar national research strategy 2012. https://www.qnrf.org/Portals/0/ QNRS_2012.pdf. Accessed April 14, 2020. Richardson, L.-J., & Almansa-Sánchez, J. (2015). Do you even know what public archaeology is? Trends, theory, practice, ethics. World Archaeology, 47(2), 194–211. Sheehan, P., Power, T., Al Kaabi, O., Khalifa, M., Al Dhaheri, M., al-Mansoori, B., al-Zaabi, L., al-­ Dhaheri, M., & al-Mansoori, R. (2015). Rediscovering a ‘lost’ village of al-ʿAyn: Archaeology and communal memory in the oasis. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 45, 337–346. Steele, C. (2005). Who has not eaten cherries with the devil? Archaeology under challenge. In S.  Pollock & R.  Bernbeck (Eds.), Archaeologies of the Middle East: Critical Perspectives (pp. 45–65). Blackwell. Steen, D., Jacobs, J., Porter, B., Routledge, B., Boytner, R., Dodd, L. S., & Parker, B. J. (2010). Exploring heritage discourses in Central Jordan. In R.  Boytner, L.  S. Dodd, & B.  J. Parker (Eds.), Controlling the past, owning the future: The political uses of archaeology in the Middle East (pp. 159–177). University of Arizona Press. Supreme Educational Council. (2004). Grade 7, History Criteria. Doha, Qatar. Colleen Morgan is Director of the Digital Archaeology MSc and Digital Heritage MSc at the University of York. She conducts research on digital media and archaeology, with a special focus on embodiment, avatars, genetics and bioarchaeology. She is interested in building archaeological narratives with emerging technology, including photography, video, mobile and locative devices. Through archaeological making, she explores past lifeways and our current understanding of heritage, especially regarding issues of authority, authenticity and identity.  

Robert Carter researches the history, archaeology, urbanism and maritime societies of the Arabian Gulf. Thanks to a generous grant from the Qatar National Research Fund, since 2012 he has focused on Doha and Qatar in the pre-oil and early oil period, with the multidisciplinary Origins of Doha and Qatar Project. This combines archaeological excavations in Doha and Fuwairit with urban and architectural studies, historical research and the collection of oral histories to record people’s direct experiences of the past. The project has a strong outreach element and aims to engage nationals, expatriate residents and visitors with Qatar’s heritage and history. With over 25 years of work in the region, Professor Carter has also published extensively on many other periods and aspects of archaeology in the Gulf and Mesopotamia, and has a particular interest in the origins of seafaring, globalisation and the history of pearl fishing.  

Fatma Abdel Aziz is a senior consultant at Barker Langham. She is a trained archaeologist with a background in design and marketing and currently works on a number of cultural projects in the Middle East. She received her MA in Archaeology of the Arab and Islamic World at University College London (UCL)  – Qatar, her dissertation for which examines the Origins of Doha and Qatar Project’s community outreach and public engagement. She was part of the excavation team at the joint Qatar Museums/UCL Qatar Old Doha Rescue Excavation in the heart of Doha. Her experience stems from creating an interdisciplinary space that supports the demands of a cultural project.  

Mariam Al Thani is currently working as a freelance researcher, specifically focused on the history of Qatar. She has produced educational material in collaboration with University College London (UCL) – Qatar for school children on Qatar’s history. She received an MA in Museum and Gallery Practice from UCL – Qatar, where she collaborated with the Origins of Doha and Qatar researchers to create a community engagement plan.  

Chapter 6

The Siq Stability Project: a Pilot Approach to Community Engagement and Public Awareness in Petra Giorgia Cesaro and Giuseppe Delmonaco

6.1 Culture and Heritage as Essential Components of Sustainable Development The link between cultural heritage and sustainable development has been part of UNESCO discourse since the 1980s (Han, 2018), reflecting the emergence of the concept of community involvement in heritage management within the broader discipline of public archaeology in the late 1970s (Okamura & Matsuda, 2011). Although the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage emphasizes that State Parties to the convention should endeavour to ‘give heritage a role in the life of the communities’ (UNESCO, 1972, Article 5), the concept was not institutionalized until much later when the crucial role that communities can play in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention was recognized at the 31st session of the World Heritage Committee in 2007 (UNESCO, 2007) by integrating the so-called ‘fifth C’ for ‘Communities’ to the strategic objectives of the Budapest Declaration on World Heritage (UNESCO, 2002). The international community officially acknowledged the role of local communities and indigenous people in the management of heritage sites in 2012 through the Rio de Janeiro-hosted United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (also known as Rio  +  20, or Earth Summit 2012) in its outcome document, The Future We Want, which notes that ‘many people… depend directly on ecosystems for their livelihoods, their economic, social and physical well-being, and their cultural heritage’ (General Assembly, 2012, Art. II, B 30). Later that year, this approach

G. Cesaro (*) UNESCO Amman Office, Amman, Jordan e-mail: [email protected] G. Delmonaco Department of Geological Survey of Italy, Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), Rome, Italy © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_6

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was further reaffirmed when ‘Local Community and Sustainable Development’ became the main theme of the 40th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention and was included in the Kyoto Vision, a document formulated to orient the implementation of the World Heritage Convention going forward. According to the Kyoto Vision, people-centred conservation of World Heritage is crucial as a contributor to sustainable development and as a guarantor of a harmonious relationship between communities and the environment, ensuring long-term protection of the outstanding universal value of World Heritage sites (UNESCO, 2012). Since then, pilot projects linking local communities, sustainable development and heritage conservation have started to be implemented in different countries (Han, 2018), but it has become apparent that turning the theory into practice can be a complex matter, often requiring trial and error approaches. Unlike the UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO, 2003), that strongly emphasizes the role that communities play in the safeguarding of their oral and intangible heritage, the participation of indigenous communities in tangible heritage preservation has represented a real paradigm shift in the approach to heritage conservation and management which will inevitably require sufficient time to become common practice.

6.2 Community Involvement in Risk Prevention Initiatives To move forward and ‘ensure long-term protection of the Outstanding Universal Value of World Heritage Sites’ (UNESCO, 2012), communities should be engaged in all types of initiatives, to further reaffirm their crucial role in the preservation of their heritage in support of their identity and enhance social cohesion. Initiatives that address both heritage conservation and risk prevention are part of this domain, as the involvement of local communities can be particularly beneficial in achieving the successful application of risk prevention and mitigation measures. In landslide risk management, non-structural measures, such as community preparedness, public awareness and communication strategies, can be successfully applied to mitigate landslide risk, especially in developing countries (Anderson, 2013). Such strategies, along with the implementation of active measures for reducing landslide hazard, demonstrate the importance of involving the affected population and other stakeholders in the decision-making process for risk reduction (Nadim, 2014). According to the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015, the main UN-wide policy on Disaster Reduction, increasing awareness of the importance of disaster reduction policies is a key objective to ensure the substantial reduction of disaster losses and enhance the resilience of communities to respond to disasters (UNISDR, 2005). Building on the Five Priorities for Action defined by the Hyogo Framework, in 2007 the UNESCO World Heritage Committee approved the Strategy for Risk Reduction at World Heritage Properties at its 31st session. This strategy, has per objective to strengthen the protection of World Heritage sites and contribute to sustainable development by integrating concern for heritage into national disaster reduction policies and within management plans for World Heritage properties in

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their territories (UNESCO, 2006). The strategy was prepared by the World Heritage Centre, in co-operation with the States Parties, Advisory Bodies, and other international agencies and non-governmental organizations concerned with emergency interventions. This same strategy is also reported in Managing Disaster Risks at World Heritage Properties (UNESCO, 2010), a resource manual produced by the World Heritage Centre in cooperation with ICCROM, ICOMOS and IUCN.

6.2.1 The Case of the Petra World Heritage Site In line with the above strategy, over the last decade the UNESCO Office in Amman has been engaged in the implementation of activities geared towards the inclusion of communities in risk preventive measures at the World Heritage Site of Petra, Jordan, as part of a UNESCO project that commenced in 2012. The main objective was to ensure that preventive measures were in place in the main touristic areas so that an evaluation could be made of how the site would best be protected and preserved against natural risks and ensure that it is safe for the thousands of tourists who visit each year. The archaeological site of Petra (Fig. 6.1) lies in a large valley surrounded by mountain ranges. Its geology is dominated by Palaeozoic sandstone rocks that form most of the hand-carved Nabataean rock monuments of Petra. The Siq is a 1.2 km long, naturally formed gorge in the sandstone formations that represents the main entrance to the archaeological site. Because of the religious niches and water management features, the Siq, in its entirety, is considered a monument of religious and historic significance, considerably contributing to the Outstanding Universal Value of Petra. The width of the Siq ranges from 3 m to 15.7 m. It is formed by very steep slopes with variable height from the ground level, from a few meters at the entrance to several tens of meters in some areas of the path.

Fig. 6.1  Location of Petra (left) and satellite image of the Siq and the Petra Archaeological Park core area (right)

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Petra is also a very fragile site facing a wide diversity of risks, ranging from those posed by environmental factors, such as natural and geological hazards, to those attributed to tourism and the lack of adequate site management and emergency measures for tourist and monument safety. In recent years, natural phenomena such as earthquakes, floods and landslides were registered as increasingly impacting the site – most specifically the Siq (Fig. 6.2a and b), posing a major threat to the cultural heritage and the visitors. During the rainy season, water flows into the Siq from the surrounding wadis,1 and in 1963, 24 tourists died as a result of a sudden flash-flood. Water management and the hydraulic system created by the Nabataeans safeguarded the monuments and the people from life threatening flash-floods, however those systems have deteriorated and no longer protect the site or its visitors. A survey of the Nabataean hydraulic network and the areas with direct impact on the Siq was conducted from 1996 to 2002 by the Petra National Trust (PNT, 2003). As a result

Fig. 6.2 (a and b) Aerial view of the Siq (left) and close-up upper view of the Siq final sector (right). (Photograph © UNESCO)

 A wadi is a valley, ravine, or channel in regions of southwestern Asia and northern Africa that is usually dry except in the rainy season. 1

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of this project, the velocity of water flow during flash floods was reduced by restoring the existing floor of the Siq to its original pavement and grade. Despite this intervention, the risk posed by landslides is still present in the Siq due to its specific geomorphology. In the last decade, several landslide events, mostly rock falls and rock slides, with different magnitudes (volumes from 10m3) have occurred in the Siq (in 2009 and 2015) and in the core area of the site (in 2009, 2010 and 2016). These recent events have prompted the UNESCO Amman Office, in cooperation with the local authorities, to initiate a process for the analysis, monitoring and urgent long-term mitigation of landslide risk. Awareness and communication on natural hazards together with capacity development and local community engagement activities have been among the non-structural mitigation strategies implemented.

6.3 UNESCO Risk Assessment and Mitigation Strategies in Petra Preserving Petra’s Outstanding Universal Value, for which the site was inscribed in the World Heritage List (UNESCO, 2016), is one of the corporate UNESCO priorities for culture actions in Jordan, in line with the UNESCO Strategy for Risk Reduction at World Heritage properties (UNESCO, 2006). Since 2009, the UNESCO Office in Amman has supported the Petra Archaeological Park and the Department of Antiquities in assessing, managing and mitigating natural hazards in the Petra World Heritage site. Within the framework of the project ‘Risk Mapping at the Petra Archaeological Park’ (2011–2012), a strategic partnership was established with the government and several partner organizations, including national and international universities, to map and document the natural and human-made risks in the core area of the site. A proposal for risk management at the Petra Archaeological Park to identify and prioritize continuous threats with cumulative and slow effects (not disaster risks) was developed and presented to the government in 2012 (Paolini et  al., 2012). From 2009 to 2015, UNESCO engagements focused on addressing the impact of landslide phenomena in the Siq for the first time, with technical expertise in engineering geology provided to the national authorities to support the consolidation of a fractured block (Delmonaco, 2009). As part of the projects ‘Rapid Risk Assessment’ (2011) and ‘Siq Stability’, Phase I (2012–2015), the analysis of the stability of the Siq slopes, was carried out through ‘comprehensive site documentation, the installation of an integrated monitoring system for the detection and control of deformation processes, and the definition of mitigation measures against rock instability’ (Delmonaco et  al., 2017; see also 2013a, b, 2014, 2015). The purpose of the following stage of the project, Phase II (2015–2016), was to,

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Phase III (2017–2018) had per objective (a) the implementation of mitigation measures in those priority areas identified as more hazardous in line with the feasibility study conducted during Phase II of the project (Delmonaco et al., 2017, 2017), (b) the elaboration of an emergency plan for the Siq to be integrated in the broader Disaster Risk Plan of the site, and (c) the capacity development of the national authorities in addressing disaster risks. In line with the first main expected result of the Siq Stability project Phase II and partly the first objective of Phase III, a number of priority landslide risk mitigation interventions have been carried out, which can be divided in two main groups based on the typology and location of the works conducted, namely whether happening in the upper or lower Siq areas/slopes. As a first step, the upper Siq plateau, an area mostly unexplored before the start of the project, was fully documented to identify areas potentially prone to debris fall. The study was based on the analysis of available spatial data (i.e. aerial photos and satellite maps) and the implementation of a technical field survey conducted by local staff in cooperation with UNESCO experts. The northern and southern slopes of the upper Siq were therefore subdivided into 22 and 14 sections respectively. The working priorities on debris removal were determined according to a risk analysis based on the following parameters: (a) the distance between the debris accumulation area and the Siq tourist path, (b) the amount of potentially unstable material, and (c) the surface area of the section. The result of the assessment generated 11 sections characterized by high hazard, 11 by medium hazard and 14 by low hazard. Based on the data recorded and the suggestions identified for each section, a number of measures including debris cleaning, terracing, removal, and relocation, coupled with water channelling and diversion were undertaken over a two-month period (Fig. 6.3). A preliminary validation on the short-term effectiveness of the works was provided by checking the removal, transportation and accumulation of fine soil/debris during two heavy rainfall events that occurred in the spring and early winter following the operations. The second stage of the risk mitigation works was dedicated to the dislodgement of potentially unstable blocks from the Siq slopes (Fig. 6.4a and b). Most of these blocks had been already identified as outcropping from the steep slopes and cliffs of the Siq during Phase I of the Siq Stability project. General guidelines for the execution of the works were based on the following parameters: (a) the adoption of feasible techniques implemented by local expertise, (b) the use of common hand tools, (c) a carefully planned schedule of works to reduce to a minimum the impact on visitors, and (d) the protection of the archaeological features of the Siq through geotextile and sandbags to prevent any potential impact of the operations on the Nabataean heritage. The above guidelines implied that the slope landslide mitigation works had to be focused only on relatively small unstable blocks (with volumes

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Fig. 6.3  Local community members executing project work in the Upper Siq. (Photograph © UNESCO/G. Delmonaco)

≤5m3) reported in the Siq inventory map (Fig. 6.5). In addition, among the entire number of small unstable blocks reported in the landslide map, a further selection was made because of the need of skilled technicians (i.e. climbers with specific experience on slope consolidation works) as support for the local team to dislodge and/or work on blocks with a weight exceeding 1.5–2.0 tons. The works were supervised by UNESCO experts and executed by experienced Jordanian climbers with the involvement of selected members of the local community.

6.4 Petra’s Indigenous Communities The local community living in the vicinity of the World Heritage Site of Petra is composed of nomadic Bedu2 tribes, groups previously settled within the ancient Nabataean remains, occupying its monuments and caves until relocated to

 The word Bedu, from which the English term ‘Bedouin’ derives, refers to all those who live in the arid and semi-arid areas of the Arab Middle East, whose main economic activity is pastoralism, and who are often nomadic. In Petra, Bedu tribes are represented by the Bdul, the Amarin and the Sa’idiyyin (UNESCO, 2004, 2005). 2

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Fig. 6.4 (a and b) Block dislodgement operations in the Siq of Petra. (Photograph © UNESCO)

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Fig. 6.5 Landscape inventory map, produced as part of the Siq Stability project, Phase I. (Photograph © UNESCO/ISPRA)

newly-built settlements3 nearby after the declaration of the site as World Heritage in 1985. Other Bedu have recently made their home in new urban settlements, previously villages of agriculturalists scattered in the Al-Sharah mountains that surround the Petra Archaeological Park. For the ‘extensive knowledge of their environment and complex moral and social code, all of which is expressed and transmitted orally; their rich mythology manifested in various forms of oral expression, comprising poetry, folktales and songs […] closely linked to particular places’ (UNESCO, 2008), the Bedu of the Al-Sharah mountains, together with those living in the desert environment of Wadi Rum, were included in the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008. The topography of the semi-arid highlands that characterizes the Al-Sharah mountains, formed by high and steep sandstone mountains and narrow canyons with diverse gradients of climate zones, shaped the character of the populations living in the area. Such an environment nurtured the development of highly specialized skills, a traditional pastoral culture, specific knowledge related to the flora and fauna of the area, traditional medicine, camel husbandry, tent-making craftsmanship, tracking, and climbing skills (UNESCO, 2004, 2005). These communities represent

 Only the villages of Umm Sayhoun and Beidha strictly qualify as Bedu settlements. The others, for example Wadi Musa, Taybeh, Rajef and Dlagha, are urban settlements mostly inhabited by agricultural communities. 3

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a multifaceted reality suspended between ancient nomadic traditions and lifestyle and modern settled living, which over the past fifty years has been progressively attractive to them because of the provision of education, housing, healthcare and sanitation associated with it. Their engagement in the preservation of the heritage site is often limited to seasonal participation in archaeological excavations led by foreign missions. Conversely, the development of desert and cultural tourism has lately become a major source of revenue, which risks further degrading their intangible heritage and increasing already existing inequalities in tourism benefits distribution among the communities. Once representing the main economic activities for the Bedu, agriculture and pastoralism nowadays constitute a relatively limited source of livelihood for the communities. Against a background where the connection between the Bedu and their environment, including the Nabataean cultural heritage, has been progressively lost and the skills developed over generations progressively eroded, the involvement in heritage conservation-related initiatives represents a meaningful tool to reconnect the communities with the surrounding environment and their moral and social traditions, nurturing a wealth of cultural expressions and specialized skills linked to the archaeological site and its landscape.

6.5 Local Community Engagement in Petra as Part of the Siq Stability Project In recent years, a deeper involvement of the local communities as part of heritage conservation activities in Petra has emerged, yet this remains fairly limited to stand-­ alone and often not coordinated initiatives, whereas the participation of local community workmen in seasonal archaeological missions has continued over time. A higher level of involvement of indigenous communities on site activities is crucial to ensure adequate preservation and management of cultural and natural heritage sites, as strongly advocated as part of the Kyoto Vision (UNESCO, 2012) and the UN community at large (General Assembly, 2012, Art. II, B 30). Moreover, the local community and the tourists are generally unaware of how the geological and hydraulic processes that shaped Petra’s spectacular landscapes can be hazardous to people. Informed visitors can instead assume a certain degree of risk and responsibility for their own safety when visiting natural, cultural or recreational environments. In view of this, public safety programmes of the Petra Archaeological Park should involve the communication of site-specific hazards to visitors, education and information programmes that encourage self-reliance and cooperation with other departments, non-governmental organizations, tourism operators, concessionaires and service providers (NPS, 2006). In this context, the activities undertaken as part of the Siq Stability project represent one of the first attempts to make local communities more engaged in the specialized field of heritage conservation and to make them aware of the hazards to which the site and the people are exposed.

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As part of Phases II and III of the Siq Stability project, local community engagement was addressed in a twofold manner. On the one hand, communities were directly involved in the implementation of the landslide risk mitigation interventions, while on the other, they have been made aware of the initiatives undertaken as part of a broader awareness strategy and outreach activities developed within the project.

6.5.1 Implementation of the Landslide Risk Mitigation Works The involvement of the communities as part of the landslide risk mitigation works in the Siq of Petra has covered both the aforementioned debris removal operations and the block dislodgement activities. In both cases, their engagement has been grounded in one of the distinctive capabilities of the Bedu of the Al-Sharah mountains – their unique climbing skills. These skills, inspired by the rugged topography of the area and developed over the centuries, represent one of the features that best displays their ability to adapt to an arid mountainous environment and pass traditions from one generation to the other. As part of the debris removal operations on the upper Siq slopes implemented over the period March–April 2016, about 50 people from Petra’s local communities (primarily from Wadi Musa, Umm-Sayhoun and Beidha) were selected in coordination with a local company to ensure equal participation from most community groups. The community members were later divided into sub-groups to be involved in morning and evening shifts over a two-month period. The works involved the use of simple techniques, hand tools and natural materials (local stone and debris) under the guidance of UNESCO consultants and technical staff from the Department of Antiquities and the Petra Archaeological Park. They were designed both to ensure that sufficient landslide risk mitigation measures were implemented and to allow their execution by local workmen, normally not requiring a highly specialized skillset. As the activities were taking place at the edge of a 30 m gradient canyon, the climbing skills of the local communities represented 70 a crucial asset. Specifically, the following tasks were carried out by the local communities: • Construction of debris terraces (Fig.  6.6), check dams in channels and water diversion channels to slow down superficial runoff, avoid soil erosion, convey superficial water to natural channels, and promote deposition of loose debris and soil into terraces obtained through morphological re-modeling of the soil slopes. • Removal and cleaning of loose debris deposited near the slope edges or along channels to avoid the fall of stone materials from the upper Siq slopes during heavy rainfall. • Block remodelling, stabilization and relocation performed to increase the general stability of areas prone to block sliding/free fall events either during heavy rainfall or long-term instability.

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Fig. 6.6 Debris terracing along a water channel in the Upper Siq. (Photograph © UNESCO/G. Delmonaco)

• Construction of back-slope deposition areas with stone materials gathered through debris collection or materials left from the works. All materials were taken in situ; any addition of mortar or other natural or chemical product were purposely avoided. As part of the implementation of the block removal operations, a selected number of local community members were identified to contribute to the implementation of the initiative during a full-time, one-month period between May and July 2016 under the guidance of expert Jordanian climbers and representatives from the Petra Archaeological Park and the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. Despite their innate climbing skills and knowledge of the Petra environment, the Bedu communities normally needed more structured training in climbing, including essential safety regulations while operating on the slope and rappelling.4 For this reason, during Phase I of the Siq Stability project, a 10-day field training session in basic climbing skills was undertaken in January and February 2013, in view of a more structured involvement of the communities on the implementation of future landslide risk interventions in the Siq.

 In mountaineering, ‘rappelling’ involves descending a rock face or other near-vertical surface by using a doubled rope coiled around the body and fixed at a higher point. 4

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Among the initial climbing programme trainees, the more qualified and motivated were retained to participate in the execution of the block removal operations in 2016. Two of these trainees were Park Rangers, Petra Archaeological Park employees responsible for the safety of tourists at the site. Two more participants were retained from the team that performed the debris removal interventions, both showing a propensity and willingness to expand their climbing knowledge and capabilities. Finally, two junior technical experts from the Petra Archaeological Park and the Department of Antiquities of Jordan were involved, with the objective to acquire practical skills that would make them able to take up a work coordination function in the future. The diversity of local community participation was maintained as participants belonged to the three communities located in the closest vicinity of the site, namely Umm-Sayhoun, Beidha and Wadi Musa (Fig. 6.7). By building on the activities previously undertaken and in view of the implementation of the works, a further 10-day climbing training session was carried out in April 2016 aimed at strengthening team climbing skills, teaching basic safety principles and familiarizing the participants with the rugged topography and specific setting of the Siq. The training, performed by the same Jordanian climbing company contracted in 2013 and later responsible for the implementation of the block removal operations, was organized as follows: (1) 3-day indoor activities in Amman focused on introducing basic climbing principles and theory, rappelling using various devices, knot making and station setting, (2) 3-day field activities between the northern location of Fuheis and the area of Beidha, outside Petra Archaeological Park boundaries, to practice natural stations setting on either limestone or sandstone

Fig. 6.7  Group photograph of trainees at the end of a climbing session. (Photograph © UNESCO)

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rock formations, and (3) 3-day field activities in the Siq to become familiarized with the unique setting of the site and acquire basic block removal operations principles. Based on the skills acquired during the training sessions, the selected team of local climbers could be later actively engaged in the following interventions under the coordination of the professional Jordanian climbers, UNESCO consultants and Petra Archaeological Park and Department of Antiquities staff: • Setting up station points on the top of the Siq that corresponded with potentially unstable blocks along the Siq slopes. • Rappelling from the top of the Siq and manual sounding of potential unstable rocks with the help of hammering where necessary, under the guidance of Jordanian climbers and UNESCO consultants (Fig. 6.8).

Fig. 6.8  Local trainee supports the execution of the landslide risk mitigation interventions in the Siq, sector 3. (Photograph © UNESCO)

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Fig. 6.9  Local community members covering the Nabataean channels along the Siq with geotextile material. (Photograph © UNESCO/N. Daoud)

• Removal of loose materials from the Siq slopes in coordination with the team located on the bottom of the Siq. In addition, the community members that had been previously engaged in the debris removal activities in the upper Siq also supported the implementation of the block removal operations by cleaning the resultant debris at the bottom of the Siq and by protecting the Nabataean features through geotextile and sandbags (Fig. 6.9).

6.5.2 Risk Awareness Methodology and Applied Initiatives Data gathered showed that awareness of natural risks preparedness and mitigation, mostly at the community level, can be the foundation for risk prevention in Petra. Stakeholders and local communities can play a key role in the management of a geo-archaeological site, particularly in relation to disaster risk reduction. The approach adopted in the Siq Stability project aimed at supporting the Petra Archaeological Park in raising awareness of heritage management and conservation, focusing on natural risks preparedness and mitigation. Different cohorts of stakeholders were identified (decision makers, governmental institutions, NGOs and UN agencies, professionals/researchers, site business beneficiaries, tour guides, children, local community) and a set of targeted activities was selected for each (Table  6.1). Finally, a structured strategy was prepared which had the following objectives: (a) achieving best practice on preservation and management of the site, supported and endorsed by the national authorities, (b) making local communities,

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Table 6.1  Overview of target groups and related activities Type of Activity ► Target Groups ▼ Decision makers Other government institutions NGOs & UN agencies Professionals & researchers Site beneficiaries Tour guides Local community Children Tourists

Field visits, technical meetings & workshops

Informal meetings & site visits

Informative material (ENG & ARB)

Workshops Presentations & high level Interactive conferences sessions & lectures X

X

X X

X

X X X

X X X

X

Table © the authors

site beneficiaries, and other stakeholders engaged in the site with different capacities, aware of the activities undertaken in the Siq for the prevention of natural hazards, (c) ensuring that best practice is adopted by tourists when visiting the Siq in regards to the impact of natural hazards that might occur on site, and (d) making the international community and the national authorities aware of the work that UNESCO is conducting in the Siq. In parallel to the priority landslide mitigation interventions carried out in the upper Siq plateau and on the Siq slopes as part of Phases II and III of the Siq Stability project, several communication and public awareness activities on geological and geo-hydrological hazards were implemented, according to the strategy developed. While some of the stakeholder groups could be addressed through convening meetings or field visits (decision makers, NGOs, UN agencies), others required specific outreach methodologies because of their primary involvement during the implementation of the landslide risk mitigation works on site, as in the case of tourists, tour guides, site business beneficiaries and local communities. At the end of the works, awareness workshops were specifically designed to address young people from nearby communities to enhance their natural risks knowledge and mobilize their support for the preservation of the site. The type of activities implemented varied in relation to the target group addressed and the timing of implementation (i.e. before or during the field works). As for the

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latter, a comprehensive coordination and management system was established in cooperation with the Petra Archaeological Park in advance of each field mission to ensure their efficient and effective running. Before the implementation of field activities, community awareness workshops involving site business beneficiaries and tour guides from the local community were carried out in coordination with the project experts and the local authorities. The primary aim of the workshops was to raise awareness of the geomorphological and hydraulic hazards characterizing the Siq, promote more responsible behaviour conducive to risk prevention, and thus ensure cooperation during the upcoming field activities. This measure would apply to business beneficiaries such as horse-drawn carriage drivers, who transport tourists unrelentingly from the beginning to the end of the Siq, often at high speed and with little interest in the surrounding environment. Having informed these drivers on the specificity of the site and its potential natural hazards, their sense of responsibility would be enhanced and a transfer of information to tourists generated. As part of the actions taken before the implementation of works, communication materials such as project brochures and information flyers were disseminated to hotel managers within Wadi Musa and a warning of the upcoming activities was posted on the Petra Archaeological Park website. During the landslide risk mitigation works, awareness raising activities were performed onsite and focused on public awareness with tourists and site business beneficiaries. Ad hoc awareness materials on the project were prepared for distribution at the Petra Visitor Centre (Fig. 6.10). The same materials were distributed to tourists in the Siq, at the beginning and at the end of the work site. Access to the work area (normally about 30 m in length) was temporarily blocked for tourists by using white and red striped tape and placing project banners (Fig.  6.11). Dedicated UNESCO and Petra Archaeological Park staff stood at the beginning and at the end of the work site to share project flyers and provide general information on the activities being implemented (Fig. 6.12). The project team could also rely on the substantial support provided by the Jordan Civil Defence, the Petra Archaeological Park rangers and the Tourism Police, who engaged in public awareness activities with the tourists and the local community alongside their more regular duties. The whole project team, from the experts to the workmen (all belonging to the local community) were involved in communicating with the public on the risk stability phenomena present in the Siq. As noted earlier, following the implementation of the works, a cycle of awareness workshops targeting local young people was organized. This was undertaken in coordination with the PNT, a Jordanian NGO whose raison d’être is the promotion and coordination of Jordanian and international efforts to preserve Petra’s unique combination of antiquities, natural environment and human traditions. A total of 150 students of different age groups (10–13, 13–15 and 15–18) from the communities of Beidha, Umm Sayhoun, Wadi Musa, Taybeh, Rajef and Dlagha participated in the nine-workshop series. Through the three types of Youth Engagement Programmes implemented, the students could learn more about the significance of the site, the geological aspects that characterize it and the value of protecting Petra’s heritage. One specific programme was designed to provide an understanding of the risks the project is striving to mitigate in the Siq and the activities implemented by

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Fig. 6.10  Flyer of the risk mitigation works, 2016. (Photograph © the authors)

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Fig. 6.11  Banner of the risk mitigation works, 2016. (Photograph © the authors)

Fig. 6.12  Communication session on landslide mitigation works to a group of visitors. (Photograph © the authors)

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UNESCO to prevent landslides over the last decade. Hands-on activities were often arranged to facilitate an understanding of the concepts explained. The materials developed are in the process of being edited and copyrighted, to be distributed later within Petra area schools.

6.6 Some Preliminary Reflections on the Approach Adopted The involvement of the community as part of the risk mitigation interventions within Phase II of the Siq Stability project represented a major undertaking (in terms of time, effort, and stakeholder involvement and coordination) to support the future sustainability of the activities and achieve full ownership of the interventions and project objectives by the national authorities, and eventually guarantee the enhanced protection of the World Heritage Site. It should be acknowledged, however, that this approach did not always prove to be simple in its implementation because of the level of complexity of the operations carried out in the field, multiple stakeholders involved in the activities, and pre-­ existing local community tensions and divisions. In the case of the debris removal operations, it became clear that the interventions required a higher degree of effort than most of the community had initially expected, and this represented an obstacle to the smooth performance of the tasks on several occasions. As for the block dislodgement operations, the implementation of the activities within a complex environment at the core of the Petra World Heritage Site, congested by hundreds of tourists and visitors, generated tensions among social community groups and the work team. On the other hand, the activities proved to be mutually beneficial for the local communities involved and the heritage site. Firstly, the activities allowed most community members to acquire specific knowledge of an area of the site from which they had become progressively detached (the upper Siq slopes). Secondly, the activities represented a source of revenue and improved livelihoods for the community at a time when tourism incomes in Petra were limited. Thirdly, the activities could contribute to the improved future management of hydrogeological hazards on the upper Siq area by putting the skills acquired by numerous groups of people at the disposal of the local authorities, skills that could replicate the operations in the future and guarantee regular monitoring of the existing interventions. With regards to the awareness component, the activities undertaken proved successful in spreading an understanding of the project at different levels, primarily within tourist, site business beneficiary and local community groups. In light of this, additional activities engaging the local youth were organized as part of Phase III of the project, and the final achievements of the work were compiled and integrated in the management plan for the whole site developed by UNESCO and the local authorities and officially launched in November 2019 (UNESCO, 2019).

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6.7 Conclusions This study demonstrates the essential role that communities can play in the sustainable conservation and management of heritage sites once fully involved in targeted activities and when training and capacity building approaches are being implemented. As in the case of Petra’s Bedu, indigenous communities are often bearers of cultural traditions, skills and experiences deeply connected to the environment in which they live, and this enhances their capacity to adapt to change, counter natural disaster and contribute to heritage preservation. The work conducted in Petra also demonstrates the relevant role that public awareness and communication on natural hazards can play, as a non-structural measure in the management and mitigation of landslide risk leading to its integration into broader management policy frameworks. Despite the time limitations, the complexity of the project experience and the challenges faced in involving local communities with various social layers and expectations within a complex initiative at one of the most visited sites in the world, the approach can be regarded as a successful example of community engagement. The initiative can also be regarded as successful in terms of cooperation between the national authorities and UNESCO for the improved management of a complex World Heritage Site. As such, the results achieved shall be integrated in management planning policies for the protection of the site. To achieve the full sustainability of the interventions, the next phase of the project will consider providing longer-term income generating opportunities for local communities through engaging them in the implementation of future priority interventions in the Siq. Acknowledgments  This study has been conducted within the framework of the UNESCO, Italian-­funded project, ‘Siq Stability: Mitigation of Immediate Hazards in the Siq of Petra’ (Phase II), and ‘Siq Stability: Managing Disaster Risks in the Siq of Petra’ (Phase III). A special acknowledgement is thus addressed to the Government of Italy and the Italian Agency for Development and Cooperation for having entrusted the UNESCO Amman Office with the implementation of such a strategic project at the Petra World Heritage Site. The authors also wish to acknowledge the substantial support provided by the Government of Jordan represented by the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority and the Department of Antiquities for their continuous cooperation in the implementation of this pioneering project. Finally, special thanks go to all those who have taken part and substantially contributed to the activities described in this study, from professional climbers, junior technical experts, local stakeholders and the local community, as it is only through team coordination and shared objectives that pioneering and complex initiatives such as the one described can lead to successful results and support a meaningful shift in the management and conservation of heritage sites.

References Anderson, M. G. (2013). Landslide risk reduction in developing countries: Perceptions, successes and future risks for capacity building. In P. Canuti, C. Margottini, & K. Sassa (Eds.), Landslide science and practice (Social and economic impact and policies) (Vol. 7, pp. 247–256). Springer. Cesaro, G., & Delmonaco, G. (2017). Protecting the cultural and geological heritage of Nabataean Petra: Managing water runoff and mitigating rockfall in the Siq of Petra. In L.  Nigro, M. Nucciotti, & E. Gallo (Eds.), Precious water: Paths of Jordanian civilizations as seen in the Italian archaeological excavations, ROSAPAT 12 (pp. 85–100). University of Rome.

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Cesaro, G., Delmonaco, G., Khrisat, B., & Salis, S. (2017). Geological conservation through risk mitigation and public awareness at the Siq of Petra, Jordan. In K. Sassa, M. Matjaž, & Y. Yueping (Eds.), Advancing culture of living with landslides. Vol. 1: ISDR-ICL Sendai partnerships 2015–2025 (pp. 511–517). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­59469-­9 Cesaro, G., Delmonaco, G., & Khrisat, B. (2019). Managing public awareness and community engagement on landslide risk at the Petra Archaeological Park: The case of the Petra Siq stability project. In Studies of the history and archaeology of Jordan (Vol. XIII, pp. 287–294). Department of Antiquities of Jordan. Delmonaco, G. (2009). Assessment of the rock stability in the Siq and emergency technical assistance for the consolidation of the unstable block at the entrance of the Siq (world heritage site of Petra) (p. 31). Technical Report, UNESCO Amman Office. Delmonaco, G., Margottini, C., & Spizzichino, D. (2013a). Rock-fall Hazard assessment in the Siq of Petra, Jordan. In P. Canuti, C. Margottini, & K. Sassa (Eds.), Landslide science and practice, Vol. 6, risk assessment, management and mitigation (pp. 441–449). Springer. Delmonaco, G., Margottini, C., & Spizzichino, D. (2013b). Slope dynamics, monitoring and geological conservation of the Siq of Petra (Jordan). In E. Bilotta, A. Flora, S. Lirer, & C. Viggiani (Eds.), Geotechnical engineering for the preservation of monuments and historic sites (pp. 325–334). Taylor & Francis. Delmonaco, G., Margottini, C., Spizzichino, D., & Khrisat, B. (2014). Rock slope potential failures in the Siq of Petra (Jordan). In K. Sassa, P. Canuti, & Y. Yueping (Eds.), Landslide science for a safer Geoenvironment (Targeted landslides) (Vol. 3, pp. 341–347). Springer. Delmonaco, G., Leoni, G., Margottini, C., & Spizzichino, D. (2015). Implementation of advanced monitoring system network in the Siq of Petra (Jordan). In G. Lollino, D. Giordan, C. Marunteanu, B. Christaras, I. Yoshinori, & C. Margottini (Eds.), Engineering geology for society and territory (Vol. 8, pp. 299–303). Springer. Delmonaco, G., Brini, M., & Cesaro, G. (2017). Advanced monitoring systems for landslide risk reduction in the ‘Siq’ of Petra (Jordan). In J.  Hayes, C.  Ouimet, M.  S. Quintero, S.  Fai, & L. Smith (Eds.), The international archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences (pp. 163–169). Delmonaco, G., Dragà, G., & Orlandi, E. (2017). Feasibility study on landslide mitigation works in the ‘Siq’ of Petra. Siq stability phase II, technical report (p. 56). UNESCO Amman Office. General Assembly resolution 66/288, The future we want, A/RES/66/288. (2012 July, 27). Available from: undocs.org/A/RES/66/288 Han, J. (2018). Introduction. In Sustainable development and world heritage for local communities (pp. 6–11). UNESCO. Nadim, F. (2014). Introduction: Risk reduction strategy. In K.  Sassa, P.  Canuti, & Y.  Yueping (Eds.), Landslide science for a safer Geoenvironment, methods of landslide studies (Vol. 2, pp. 743–744). Springer. NPS. (2006). National Park Service management policies 2006. United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Okamura, K., & Matsuda, A. (Eds.). (2011). New perspectives in global public archaeology. Springer. Paolini, A., Vafadari, A., Cesaro, G., Santana Quintero, M., Van Balen, K., Vileikis, O., & Fakhoury, L. (2012). Risk management at heritage sites: A case study of the Petra world heritage site. UNESCO. Petra National Trust. (2003). The Petra Siq: Nabataean hydrology uncovered. Petra National Trust. UNESCO. (1972). Convention concerning the protection of the world cultural and natural heritage, world heritage centre archive. https://whc.unesco.org/archive/convention-­en.pdf. Accessed 24 Aug 2018. UNESCO. (2002). Budapest declaration, WHC-02/CONF.202/5, world heritage Centre archive. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2002/whc-­02-­conf202-­5e.pdf. Accessed 21 Aug 2018. UNESCO. (2003). Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage. https://ich. unesco.org/en/convention. Accessed 25 Aug 2018. UNESCO. (2004/2005). National Candidature File for the third proclamation of a masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage of humanity for the lifestyle and oral expressions of the bedu of Al-Sharah and Wadi Rum. Unpublished report.

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UNESCO. (2006). Issues related to the state of conservation of world heritage properties: Strategy for reducing risks from disasters at world heritage properties, adopted by the committee at in 30th session. Vilnius (WHC-06/30, COM/7.2, p.1). http://whc.unesco.org/en/disaster-­risk-­ reduction/#strategy. Accessed 19 Aug 2018. UNESCO. (2007). The ‘fifth C’ for communities, WHC-07/31.COM/13B, world heritage Centre archive. https://whc.unesco.org/archive/2007/whc07-­31com-­13be.pdf. UNESCO. (2008). The cultural space of the Bedu in Petra and Wadi Rum. https://ich.unesco.org/ en/RL/cultural-space-of-the-bedu-in-petra-and-wadi-rum-00122. Accessed 25 Aug 2018. UNESCO. (2010). Managing disaster risks for world heritage. http://whc.unesco.org/en/managing-disaster-risks. Accessed 19 Aug 2018. UNESCO. (2012). The Kyoto Vision, World Heritage Centre Archive. http://whc.unesco.org/document/123339. Accessed 21 Aug 2018. UNESCO. (2016). World Heritage Centre, Petra World Heritage Site. http://whc.unesco.org/en/ list/326. Accessed 19 Aug 2018. UNESCO. (2019). Petra World Heritage – Site Integrated Management Plan. https://en.unesco. org/fieldoffice/amman/petra-­management-­plan. Accessed 24 Apr 2020. UNISDR. (2005). The Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction. http:// www.unisdr.org/2005/wcdr/intergover/official-­doc/L-­docs/Hyogo-­framework-­for-­actionenglish.pdf. Accessed 15 Aug 2018. Giorgia Cesaro is a heritage conservation and management specialist with experience in heritage documentation and interpretation, heritage policy and legislation, and culture as a tool for socioeconomic development. Since 2010 she has worked at the UNESCO Office in Amman, responsible for projects related to the conservation and management of World Heritage sites, including the development of management planning strategies, disaster risk reduction approaches and sustainable tourism policies. She is also involved in supporting the government of Jordan in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention for Jordanian World Heritage and Tentative List sites, as well as the other UNESCO Conventions in the field of culture. She obtained her Advanced MSc in Conservation of Monuments and Sites from the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, and holds a MA in Classics with a specialisation in archaeology from the Università Degli Studi di Padova.  

Giuseppe Delmonaco is an engineering geologist and researcher at ISPRA (Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research), Department of the Geological Survey of Italy. Since the late 1990s, his research has focused on the role of engineering geology for the conservation and protection of cultural heritage sites exposed to natural hazards, particularly UNESCO World Heritage. He is currently involved in international research and implementation projects dealing with the geological conservation of cultural heritage in danger, capacity building and training activities on natural hazards, consolidation works of slopes vs. landslides, monitoring of unstable slopes and disaster risk management. He is author and co-­author of over a hundred scientific publications, mostly related to the geological conservation of cultural heritage. In Jordan, over the last decade he has been a consultant for UNESCO, ACOR, DOA and PDTRA, working on sites and monuments in Petra, Um ar-Rassas, Karak, Jerash and Bayt Ras.  

Chapter 7

Heritage and Community Involvement: The Case of Sharjah Fort (Al Hisn) Museum Manal Ataya and Hazelle Page

7.1 Introduction Preserving cultural heritage is a key objective for the Emirate of Sharjah. The Emirate, which was awarded Arab Cultural Capital1 in 1998 and Capital of Islamic Culture2 in 2014, is considered an important cultural centre of the United Arab Emirates. It asserts a long tradition of over three decades in establishing cultural institutions, restoring heritage buildings, excavating archaeological sites, collecting intangible heritage, and creating initiatives that help revive its heritage and traditions amidst the rapid modernity that has been embraced in the Arabian Gulf region. It is a value held dear to H.H. Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, that Sharjah’s identity, defined by its cultural and socio-political heritage, is preserved to serve as a record and vital link between the emirate’s fascinating past and its bright future. To this end, H.H. has led efforts to restore the old city and other parts of the emirate, which has resulted in many houses, forts, mosques and other traditional buildings being saved over the years. The largest of these projects is the work carried out as part of an extensive masterplan for the restoration and redevelopment of the area known and designated as the ‘Heart of Sharjah’, within which Al Hisn (the Fort) (Fig. 7.1a, b) can be found.  Launched in 1995, the Arab Capital of Culture is a UNESCO initiative, implemented in association with ALESCO (the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization). It was designed to celebrate and endorse Arab cultures, fostering international cooperation and promoting the cultural aspects of development (Stevenson, 2014). 2  ISESCO (Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) also has a Cultural Capital initiative, which covers three geographical constituencies – the Arab, Asian and African regions. 1

M. Ataya (*) · H. Page Sharjah Museums Authority, Sharjah, UAE e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_7

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Fig. 7.1 (a, b) Views of Sharjah Fort (Al Hisn) Museum. (Photograph © Sharjah Museums Authority)

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The Heart of Sharjah project is led by Shurooq (the Sharjah Investment and Development Authority) through a steering committee comprising local stakeholders – Sharjah Institute of Heritage (SIH), Sharjah Museums Authority (SMA), Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) and Sharjah Archaeology Authority (SAA) – that provides input for the requirements needed to regenerate the area and ensure a suitable mix of the old and new for a sustainable cultural sector. Literature associated with the scheme describes a five-phase, transformative project running to 2025 that will ‘revitalize historic heritage areas by renovating its traditional buildings and infrastructure’, thereby creating a space for the local community to visit and provide ‘a vibrant tourist destination for visitors keen to immerse themselves in tradition and culture’ (Sharjah Update, 2017). Buildings in the Heart of Sharjah that have been restored as part of this masterplan include several museums under the remit of the SMA. In addition to Sharjah Fort (Al Hisn) Museum, these are the Bait Al Naboodah (House of Al Naboodah), a pearl merchant’s home dating to 1845, and the Bait Al Taweel, another tawash (pearl merchant) home that now houses the Sharjah Heritage Museum. Al-Eslah School Museum, site of the first formal educational institute to be opened in Sharjah (1935), is in the process of refurbishment and renovation and due to re-open in the Autumn of 2022. Examples of other notable restoration projects already completed include the Emirates Handicraft Centre, a large traditional courtyard house, a traditional games house, Bait Al Ansari, Majlis Naboodah (meeting place for Naboodah) and Majlis Al Midfaa as well as three traditional souqs (market places) – Al Arsah, Al Shanasiyah and Souq Saqr. Among those mentioned above, one of the most significant in terms of size, investment of resources and unparalleled personal involvement of H.H. was the re-­ construction of the Sharjah Fort (Al Hisn) and the development of the museum. The Al Hisn Museum project is unique for several reasons and therefore it was of the utmost importance to ensure that the structure be seen and its stories heard by the people of Sharjah (UAE nationals and long-term UAE residents) as a living monument of the UAE’s glorious past before the country was founded by unification in 1971. Especially for Sharjah and Emirati families from the Sharjah Emirate, the fort is a symbol of the rule and governance of the Qawasim, the current ruling family that emerged as a regional power in the late eighteenth century, influencing and controlling trade in much of the northern Trucial States and the corresponding ports on the northern side of the Gulf during the nineteenth century, and the first rulers in the area to sign peace treaties with the British.3 In the Heart of Sharjah, Al Hisn is the emirate’s most important historic building. A two-storey fort built in 1823 with sea-stone, coral and jus (lime mortar), it has four towers, two of which are square with three floors and the only round tower, Al Kebs, pre-dating the fort as it was part of the original town wall. Early records locate the fort ‘a little inland, mounting six pieces of cannon, together with some detached towers’ (Schofield, 1990, p. 544). From its construction until the 1960s, Al Hisn functioned as the seat of governance and was the private home to the Al Qasimi  The name ‘Trucial States’, from which the United Emirates was formed in 1971, comes from various peace treaties or truces signed between the British and local Sheikhs, in particular the 1853 Treaty of Perpetual Maritime Peace. 3

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family. It witnessed pivotal political, military and social events, was partially demolished in 1969, but now this fortified structure that exemplifies traditional design principles has been painstakingly reconstructed by a team of expert conservation architects. The initial reconstruction was personally supervised by H.H. Sheikh Dr. Sultan Al Qasimi from his memories, records and research. As directed by H.H., Al Hisn first became a museum after its reconstruction and restoration in 1996. Ten years later, Sharjah Museums Department (now the SMA) was formed by the Ruler’s decree, and research for the re-interpretation of the museum began. By this time, the building and services also required repair, replacement and further restoration, providing an opportunity for a complete overhaul of the museum and a re-­ display. The basis of the re-interpretation of the museum content was provided by various historical publications authored by H.H., namely his autobiography, My Early Life (Al-Qasimi, 2009) and Under the Flag of Occupation (Al-Qasimi, 2014). These two books not only impart priceless data that inform the understanding of the site and structure but also provide personal anecdotes and vivid memories that soften this otherwise imposing structure, essentially breathing life into it. SMA’s research team then sought to find members of the community prepared to add their own stories (whether retold from other sources, such as elderly family members, and/or personally witnessed experiences), material that would not only reinforce the vast amount of data from H.H.’s publications, but also diversify the voices and formulate a sense of ownership within the community for whom Al Hisn is now fundamentally intended. SMA, the primary project developer, worked closely with various entities and stakeholders, such as the Ruler’s Office, the Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi Centre for Gulf Studies, Sharjah Heritage Institute, and many others to complete the four-year project. The SMA team comprised various departments tasked to ensure the completion of this strategic scheme, including project management, research, conservation, design, documentation and facilities, to name but a few. All major milestones in the content and gallery design phases were reached in consultation with, and approved by the Director General of the SMA and finally by H.H. himself. After the staffing and opening of the fort, the primary department that came to the fore was that of the education team. This team was essential in developing initiatives and learning programmes that ensured the continuous involvement of the community through visits, whether by school parties or family groups. Engagement is achieved with family oriented learning programmes throughout the calendar year. The research and study of Al Hisn is encouraged through initiatives that invite the public to share their experiences of living in Sharjah in earlier times and of their memories of Al Hisn. This chapter will shed light on the main initiatives developed in Al Hisn to foster community interactions, namely designing bespoke educational programmes for all age groups and abilities, celebrating special occasions with a history or heritage component (i.e. the UAE National Day and Sharjah Heritage Days festival), and finally, devising an initiative to collect oral history via interactive touchscreens. Through this medium, the goal is to monitor the level of people’s willingness to share information with the wider public. If successful, when the pilot launches in

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2022 this will pave the way for managing several challenges met while conducting oral history research in its traditional form,4 and will involve a larger data pool from the community in the project.

7.2 Heritage Practice in the UAE: The Importance of Orality The rapid growth and development of heritage landscapes in the Arabian Peninsula since the mid-2000s  – ‘the most explosive museum building boom per capita in history’ (Schwarzer et al., 2013, p. 206) – have led to the perception of a newness of the museum institution in the region, ‘with international collections primarily aimed at attracting tourists, housed within a western-styled cultural package’ (Erskine-­ Loftus et al., 2016, p. 2). This, however, belies the fact that museum and heritage activity has had a long history in the region (noted above), often antedating the formation of the independent states (Al-Ragam, 2014), and that, in Sharjah ‘a more locally focused approach has been in existence for some time’ (Exell & Rico, 2014, p. 8). In a region where communities were historically oral-dominant (see Teskey & Alkhamis, 2016) and heritage construction and circulation is traditionally intangible (Rico, 2016), early state-level practice in the UAE focused on institutionalizing the collection and stewardship of intangible heritage, particularly oral histories. Of the various initiatives, one of the most long-standing is the work of the National Archives, Abu Dhabi, created by the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan in 1968. In 2008, Federal Law No. 7 (National Archives, n.d.-a) was issued to establish the National Centre for Documentation and Research (NCDR), which in 2014 became the National Archives (National Archives, n.d.-b). The National Archives collects and translates valuable historical material relating to the United Arab Emirates in particular, and the Arabian Gulf states in general. The Oral History and Genealogical Studies section within the Research and Knowledge Services Department seeks to trace the history and heritage of the UAE through interviewing and documenting the oral histories of elderly and veteran individuals, filling the gaps neglected by foreign documents by recording their memories of historical events, lifestyles and traditions. These narratives are the nation’s memory and history. The aim of this section is to acquaint today’s youth with historical events and lifestyles of each region of the UAE before and after the establishment of the Union and to preserve this material for future generations. The information gathered is presented through conferences and published where possible within considerations of confidentiality and local sensibilities in the National Archives’ academic journal, Liwa (ibid.).

 These challenges – around content variation (recording vs. transcript), language barriers, confidentiality, information verification, copyright and archiving – are outlined later in the chapter. 4

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In Sharjah, the Sharjah Documentation and Archives Authority was established in 2016 by Emiri decree,5 with the main objective to collect and preserve documents related to the emirate, and thus enable access to those documents and develop a robust documentation and archive system. They are in the continual process of collecting copies – and originals where possible – from all relevant archives in Sharjah, including that of the SMA. Furthermore, they collect from other entities that have, similarly to SMA, been collecting actively for over a decade especially in the field of heritage. The Sharjah Institute for Heritage, formerly part of Sharjah Department of Culture and Information, was established in 2014, and over the past two decades has collected intangible heritage, including oral history interviews and recordings of traditional songs and folk stories. They also have a comprehensive library and annually publish over a dozen books on heritage, primarily in Arabic and many the result of work conducted by their oral history department. It is noteworthy that the Institute also hosts events that are not only integral to recording the heritage of the UAE and wider Gulf region, but also celebrate and gather together scholars, academics, students and practitioners of all disciplines to Sharjah to share knowledge, expertise and forge connections. Such dynamic events that illustrate Sharjah’s strong commitment to heritage include World Heritage Weeks, Sharjah Traditional Crafts Forum, Al-Rawi Day,6 Sharjah International Narrators Forum, and the longstanding Sharjah Heritage Days, that first began in 2003 and now boasts over 80,000 visitors over its ten-day programme. In the SMA, a research department was established in 2008 and its output underpins current and future museum projects. Indeed, the researchers’ work is the main source of content for many SMA museums, especially those of a heritage nature and typology. The research teams have been tasked with the reinterpretation of many of these institutions that opened prior to 2008, and have now completely revised the content, messaging and use of collections. At the same time, the museums also underwent building refurbishment, rather like Al Hisn, where additional facilities were added, the building repaired, and the mechanical and electrical services completely replaced and upgraded. Other relevant examples of the fundamental task of reinterpretation  – especially in the provision of information about the layout of buildings and using ‘new voices’ gathered through oral history work to inform the content of the displays – has included the recent renewal and re-opening of the following museums: Sharjah Maritime Museum, Sharjah Heritage Museum, Bait al Naboodah Museum and the Al Mahatta Aviation Museum. The former, for instance,

 The Sharjah Documentation and Archives Authority, earlier the Sharjah Centre for Documentation and Research, was established by resolution no. (4) of 2010 and issued by H.H. Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, member of the Supreme Council, Ruler of Sharjah. 6  Al Rawi (Narrator/Heritage Bearer) Day is an annual event established in 2001 by the Heritage Department of the Culture Directorate in Sharjah. With the establishment of the Sharjah Heritage Institute, it has since grown to encompass a symposium and other related activities. The event aims to celebrate and encourage the art of story-telling and ensure elders from the community have a platform to activate their cultural and social role as storytellers and, in effect, oral historians. 5

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re-opened in a purpose-built structure in 2009 and is designed with a permanent display that incorporates visual screens with selected footage of oral history interviews with an older generation. Boat builders, fisherman and pearling boat captains are viewed as ‘talking heads’, their testimony underscoring the urgency and importance of conducting such interviews with elderly members of a society that lived during a time that is completely different to their lives and realities today. The Heritage Museum also worked with local people who were experts in various aspects of traditional heritage and knowledge. This local input resulted in the production of an interactive Al Drour7 calendar. Based on the weather, winds and the sighting of certain stars, one can ascertain, for example, when certain types of fish are likely to be available in the sea at different times of the year or when to plant specific crops.

7.3 Al Hisn: A Case Study The official re-opening of Sharjah Fort by H.H. in April 2015 marked the sixteenth cultural institution to open, re-interpreted under the direction of the SMA after five years’ research and 13 months of building renovation. Al Hisn itself presents the history of the city as well as the ruling family, and highlights the cultural development of Sharjah through the last two centuries. The bulk of the research data used to inform the content was gathered from institutions abroad, including the British Library, the UK National Archives, other UK archives, the Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais of Portugal and the National Archives of India. These plentiful sources, however, are of course partisan and essentially partial as they provide only one view of the national story. Finding local records is much more difficult as less was recorded in writing and, until more recently, were not kept in a national systematic manner. Although from a more recent and accessible period, challenges were also experienced in collecting reliable and comprehensive sources of Sharjah’s history during the period 1900–1970. Indigenous sources were lacking and this made it difficult to elaborate more fully on Sharjah’s history and its socio-politics since, again, most of the available sources were recorded by foreign powers. Compounding the issue, those using these local records as a primary source may have had limited access and understanding due to linguistic limitations, insufficient grasp of an older form of a language, specific jargon and syntax, and the difficulty of reading handwritten records, or did not follow best practice in gathering primary sources themselves (i.e. by contacting relevant local entities, archives and notable figures for new and updated data), but merely relying on sometimes incorrectly attributed copies.  The Al Drour is one of the Arabian Gulf’s oldest calendars, believed to have been used by the legendary Arab navigator Ahmad Ibn Majid some 500 years ago. It is a 365-day calendar, divided by the stars and the slight movement perceived in their heliacal rising and setting each day. It has four main sections representing the seasons, three of which have 100 days and one, 60 days. The remaining five ‘stolen’ days are known as Al Khams Al Masrouqa. 7

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If it were not for the numerous publications of H.H. and other academics, much of the history of Sharjah would be incorrect, unknown or worse, lost forever. It is crucial to recognize that these contributions are priceless, especially those of H.H. H.H.’s work not only challenged inaccurate or one-dimensional scholarship, but further expanded and proliferated an otherwise unknown wealth of knowledge from his own memory, reinforced by extensive personal research utilizing obscure or untouched and undiscovered material in libraries and archives. SMA drew heavily on H.H.’s scholarly output, including, Tale of a City (Vols. 1 & 2) (Al-Qasimi, 2015; Al-Qasimi, 2017), Under the Flag of Occupation (Al-Qasimi, 2014), Al Qawasim and the British Aggression (1797–1820) (Al-Qasimi, 2012), Power Struggles and Trade in the Gulf (1620–1820) (Al-Qasimi, 2016), My Early Life (Al-Qasimi, 2009) and The Gulf in Historic Maps (1493–1931) (Vol. 1) and (1478–1861) (Vol. 2) (Al-Qasimi, 1996, 1999). With these great resources as a solid foundation, museum staff were also encouraged to incorporate new oral history into their research, which undoubtedly had a positive impact on the museum on many levels, not least through local community engagement that has helped gain a more holistic understanding of Sharjah’s exciting past. While it is outside the remit of this chapter to review the increasingly large and varied literature on oral history and the body of theory that underpins it, it is important to regionally locate the practice’s significance here. In Muslim cultures, audition and oral history have particular importance, with the Quranic revelation and subsequent transmission being auditory before becoming crystallized in a written text. The historical occupation of the Arabian Peninsula by largely oral-dominant nomadic tribes and settled community cultivators also speaks to the regional significance of orality, with the Arabic language itself not only considered a tool of communication, but also an identity symbol (Bassiouney, 2009, p. 200). Narratives (e.g. poetry and epic tales) effectively assimilate and share a profusion of knowledge (Ong, 2002, p. 130), and oral performance transmits that knowledge and safeguards Arab culture. This emphasis on oral communication lends itself well to oral history, but as explored below and noted by Teskey and Alkhamis (2016, p. 111), it ‘brings its own challenges and opportunities for museums seeking to use such oral histories’. Reflecting on the suitability of oral history in telling community stories, Nyhan and Flinn (2016, p. 21) point out that ‘There are many starting points to consider and questions the historian must ask when seeking to piece together the history of a community. The historian must make choices about what is his or her relationship to these histories, how these histories are to be written, what sources are to be used and to what purpose.’

In the case of the Al Hisn Museum project, oral historians supplemented SMA research and gave it new and additional perspectives. They added life to the history, a part that could never have been achieved by using documented sources alone. One aspect which eased the SMA team’s efforts in collecting oral histories is the local cultural tendency to enjoy meeting and interacting with people and their pleasure of conversing, especially the elderly. As with much of the oral history conducted in the Gulf region, the following case study on Al Kebs and the Sharjah defence system features an interviewee from a

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‘generation that matured just before the introduction of a formal education system’ (Teskey & Alkhamis, 2016, p. 111), a now elderly cohort whose learning centred on orality.

7.3.1 Al Kebs and the Sharjah Defence System: Oral History Case Study The study was based on a local oral history interview carried out in 2008 between SMA research staff and an elderly local man, now since passed away. The interview concerned the historic guarding and defensive system of towers and town wall and the physical remains that exist today. The interview included a detailed listing by name, description and location of the towers, town wall and various neighbourhoods within old Sharjah city. The interview was transcribed and translated into English. Permission, as with all the oral history interviews and recordings carried out by SMA to be used either for content or as part of an audio-visual presentation, was gained prior to the interview. The research was later extended. During a meeting with SMA’s research team, H.H. Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi drew a sketch of the towers and defensive wall arrangements around the old town of Sharjah to help explain the previously extant defensive system, the spatial location and relationship of the towers within and without the city wall, and provided the names of these towers. H.H. has also accumulated a private map collection of the area, and through his research acquired copies of maps from British records dating from 1820 and 1822. These maps show the Sharjah wall, connecting towers and neighbourhoods within the town. This information along with other British historical maps, notably the 1933 Hydrographic Office Survey of Al Ajman, Sharjah and Dubayy (Dubai) (Fryer, 1933a), were later overlaid and compiled into one map that is now displayed in Al Kebs Tower Gallery. Listed below are the sources of information which helped revive the history of Sharjah’s old defence system and correlate the data with the oral histories, followed by an outline of the compilation process. 7.3.1.1 Interview Extract: An Elderly Male Respondent The wall of Sharjah connected to the defensive towers extended from the sea, heading to the inside of the Jubail, then extends about 2,000 Ba’ [one Ba’ is a full arm span, about six feet] eastward to bend towards the sea where palm and Julai’a are, towards Bani Salouma tower. It includes the old neighbourhoods: Bin Darwish, Bin Souq, Al Shuwaihiyeen, Merija, and Alsheyoukh, in which Almuhalwesa, … the fort of Sheikh Sultan bin Saqr the Great [can be found]. The wall divides Sharjah into two parts – internal and external. The external wall overlooks 16 watchtowers full of guards. The towers were to watch the [in]comers from the desert to Sharjah. The round towers are called locally ‘bari’, and the square towers are called ‘muraba’a’. The external towers are located outside the city, at some strategic places. They were built to protect the lands of Sharjah and the city. They were the first line of

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defence. There were also towers to protect the strategic places of the city such as land entrances and the waterways leading to Sharjah. Towers were also built to protect fresh water sources – like [the] Alfalaj tower – and to protect farms in the desert and mountain areas. Some external towers [were]: 1) Merqab: to watch the [in]comers from Heera to Sharjah. 2) Belkhobez: a tower in the Butainah area where the trees of hibiscus are plenty, [with their] round, edible leaves. 3) Budaneq: a tower overlooking Nad Bu Shaghara. It remained ‘till 1353 AH. This tower was built next to the palaces of the government and forts. Its geometrical shape made it popular among people. Poets used to write poetry for that tower because of its beauty. 4) Alfalaj: located in the Alramla area. It was called ‘falaj’ as it existed in a residential area full of farmers and has many Alflaj (plural of falaj) for irrigation. Towers were normally built to protect sources of fresh water. Internal towers are normally located in the middle of the city, on the shore and in the residential areas. They were evenly distributed in those areas and increased in the important places. The people of Sharjah helped in building those towers. The wall penetrates some of those towers. The towers were also near the city gates. They penetrated the wall to strengthen it and to protect the wall from all its sides. Some of the internal towers [were]: 1) Bin Salouma 2) Al Ghawi 3) Bin Darweesh 4) Milly: near the fish market. (Elderly male respondent, 2008)

7.3.1.2 Field Research: Surviving Towers In order to verify the oral histories and the British survey regarding Sharjah’s defence system, the team undertook field research to locate the towers that still exist today (see Table 7.1 and Fig. 7.2). 7.3.1.3 Visual Data: H.H.’s Sketch of the Sharjah Defence System With information on the defensive towers system gained from oral history and the field surveys, an interview was then undertaken with H.H. to discuss the data collected. H.H. is a historian and holds two PhDs, one with distinction in History gained in 1985 from Exeter University, UK, concerning the accusations of piracy and the actions of the East India Company to control the Gulf (1797–1820), and the other in Political Geography from Durham University, UK, conferred in 1999, concerning power struggles and trade in the Gulf (1620–1820). As a descendent of the Royal Family, a renowned Gulf historian with eidetic memory and keen private collector of valuable historic maps, documents and books, H.H. is the main credible source of Sharjah history. H.H. drew a sketch of the surveillance and defence system in 2015 (Fig. 7.3), showing the relationship and organisation of the guarding and defensive structures around Sharjah. It illustrates the wall with square towers (murrabah) at the ends and corners and round towers (bari or burj) in between and at the gates. His notes in Arabic name the towers. The team analysed this information, comparing it to the oral history interview collected in 2008, the 1820 and 1822 maps, and the 1933 survey, the latter being of particular significance as it incorporated extensive information about the location and names of the towers as they were very useful as navigation points along the coast. Towers outside the town wall are also shown, including

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Table 7.1  Surviving towers in and around Sharjah City Towers surviving within the town wall Murrabah Al Qasimi Towers part of the town wall Two reconstructed Murrabah Two reconstructed Burj, or Bari Murrabah Al Qasaba Al Kebs

Outside the town wall Burj Bu Danig Burj Al Mirgab Burj Al Falaj (Burj Khuzam) Burj Al Maa’na Al Khan fishing village, south of Sharjah Burj Al Talaa’a Burj Al Khan Murrabah Ali bin Rashid Murrabah Bin Jarsh

Part of Bait Al Tawil, now Sharjah Heritage Museum

Square towers Round towers by gates within the reconstructed wall

Now part of Al Hisn. When Al Hisn was built in 1823, it was connected to Al Kebs but with the fort on the outside of the town wall The tower overlooking Nad Bu Shaghara, the beautiful tower about which poetry was written ‘To watch comers [sic] from Heera.’ In the Al Ramla district, an area of farming and drinking water sources

Table © Sharjah Museums Authority

now lost towers such as the Burj Al Khor, which is noted as ruins on the 1933 map and is referred to in an RAF survey report of 1932. Many towers are named by H.H., and the arrangement and positions of these, match well with the oral history and 1933 survey. 7.3.1.4 Archival Data: Foreign Primary Sources The main foreign primary sources used in the research process were the British 1820 and 1822 marine surveys. The 1820 map was produced by Lieutenant Thomas Remon RN, Engineer, and it shows the town wall with towers and the fortified houses bombarded in 1819. These can be seen in Fig. 7.4a, b respectively. British Royal Air Force (RAF) aerial surveys and reports along with the 1933 marine survey were also used to confirm towers that were mentioned by the Sheikh but no longer extant. The extract below is from various surveys of the Arabian coast carried

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Fig. 7.2  Graphic display panel showing images of extant and lost (Burj Al Meyali) towers. Most surviving towers have been restored/consolidated to minimalize further deterioration. (Photograph © Sharjah Museums Authority)

out by the RAF on behalf of the British Government and Imperial Airways8 in search of a suitable place for an aircraft landing strip. Eventually an agreement was made with Sheikh Sultan bin Saqr II to host the airstrip and to build a fortified rest house in Sharjah. Both towers mentioned no longer exist, but can be seen in the 1933 survey chart and H.H.’s sketch map. From: To: Copies to:

Lieut. Commander Galpin, Bagdad The Assistant General Manager, London The Ground Services Manager; the Operations Manager, Cairo

 Imperial Airways was the early British commercial long-haul airline, operating between 1924–1939 and primarily serving the British Empire routes to South Africa, India and the Far East. It was a forerunner of British Airways. 8

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Fig. 7.3  H.H.’s 2015 sketch of the defence system of Sharjah. (Sketch © Sharjah Museums Authority)

Fig. 7.4 (a, b) Original 1820 map showing the town wall, towers and fortified houses bombarded in 1819 (left), and a copy, annotated with the tower names in Arabic and English (right). (Original map © United Kingdom Hydrographic Office) There is rising ground to the north and east of the aerodrome with sparse palm trees and a watch tower [this tower can be seen on the 1933 survey and H.H.’s schematic sketch]. This rising ground is in no more than 25 feet, and in the main considerably less. On the south west side is Sharjah creek, on the north bank of which runs the road to Dibai. There

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is a ruined tower near to the creek which is easy to pick up from the air [this tower is the Burj Al Khor mentioned in H.H.’s schematic sketch of Sharjah’s defensive system] (RAF, 1932).

Finally, a British Royal Navy survey of a stretch of coast from Ajman, to the north of Sharjah, to Dubai to the south in 1933, carried out by the crew of the surveying vessel HMS Ormonde, was incorporated into the research analysis process. The survey both mapped (Fig. 7.5) (Fryer, 1933a) and sketched (Fig. 7.6) (Fryer, 1933b) the area and provided a comprehensive record of towers around Sharjah that existed at the time. 7.3.1.5 Archival Data: Historical Photographs Aerial photographs were also used to confirm the locations of towers. Images often only catch a glimpse of a tower (see Fig. 7.7) but add to evidence of their location and existence. 7.3.1.6 Compiling the Information The oral history interviews were the basis of the team’s research for the Sharjah defence system. They were our eyewitnesses to this history that largely no longer exists. It was not until the oral history was combined with other primary sources that it was possible to compile a map that for the first time in Sharjah’s history showed the defence system and related towers. Using Photoshop, the different layers of the 1820, 1822 and 1933 survey maps were superimposed on top of each other, with the three key and still existing features of Al Jubail cemetery, Burj Al Kebs and Burj Al Falaj used as common and known points to align the different maps over the Halcrow/Sharjah Government 1960s map and the 2013/14 Google map of Sharjah. The 1820 and 1822 maps could be aligned using Al Jubail graveyard and Burj Al Kebs. Once the positioning and scaling were finalized, the positions of the towers and wall were accurately confirmed. The 1933 survey was the most comprehensive record and other sources matched this very well and confirmed the oral histories. The names and status of the towers, i.e. what exists now, ruins, and known sites of previously existing towers, were added to the map. A graphic panel to illustrate this story (Fig. 7.8) was the outcome for display purposes and the first time this information had been pulled together and presented to the public.

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Fig. 7.5  British Royal Naval marine survey of 1933. (Map © Reproduced with permission from the UK Hydrographic Office, www.ukho.gov.uk)

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Fig. 7.6  Coastal sketches, accompanying the British Royal Naval marine survey of 1933, document the remaining complete towers, those in ruins and other features of Sharjah that aided navigation. (Sketches © Reproduced with permission from the UK Hydrographic Office, www.ukho.gov.uk)

Fig. 7.7  Aerial survey of Sharjah from 1923/33, clearly showing Al Hisn right of centre. (Photograph © H.H. Private Collection, the Mackay Collection)

7.3.2 Oral History Challenges Oral history is a controversial, albeit essential research method, deeply rooted in history. Indeed, the literature is replete with intense debate as oral history has challenged orthodoxies about historical sources, objectives and methods and the purposeful politicisation of memory (Perks & Thompson, 2016). Many questions arise, for example, when attempting to conduct oral history interviews: How reliable is

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Fig. 7.8  Graphic display panel, entitled ‘Guarding and Defending Sharjah’, showing a compilation of all sources of information described in the case study. (Photograph © Sharjah Museums Authority)

memory? Can you achieve accuracy of facts? How do we grapple with subjectivity and perception? How can barriers of language nuance and translation be overcome? The questions are perpetual and may at times feel cumbersome and yet they are critical. We must continue to question these methods and be aware of our own limitations, but we must persist with the research, adapting and improving as we go along. It is certainly vital to reviving engagement with the public. We have learnt a great deal from our collective past that would not have been otherwise known or accessible from other sources. While engaging the community through oral history, the Sharjah team faced several challenges which are further elaborated here. 7.3.2.1 Content Variations: Recording vs. Transcription One of the challenges was the variations in the interpretation possible between listening to the actual recording of the interview and reading the transcript. On one level, it was found that listening to the recording had more impact and made more sense than the transcript as many of the nuances and pauses that aid understanding were lost in the transcription process. There were many local terminologies used by the interviewees that the team heard for the first time. Listening to them also helped the researchers discern how to pronounce these words and later, how to transliterate them.

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On another level, and from the point of view of someone reading a translated transcript, it is difficult to know where the correct punctuation should be, which can significantly affect the interpretation. The transcript can be interpreted in more than one way, and listening to the original recording helps clarify the meaning. It is important that the transcript is recorded in the written form, but this should be done more like a playscript, to include pauses and breaks to reflect the flow of the original spoken word to aid understanding. 7.3.2.2 Language Barrier Having carried out all the oral history interviews in Arabic, the information needed to be translated into English for the editors and the rest of the research team to read and digest the new information. SMA’s policy is to provide all display materials in both Arabic and English as a minimum. Not only did this lengthen the time of the process, but also proved potentially problematic as information can become lost in translation. To add to the challenge, the actual interviews were undertaken in the UAE, in the local Sharjah dialect, but the translator was from another Arab country. Despite the translator’s persistence in meeting with the interviewing team to understand as much as possible of the terms used by the interviewee and interviewer, transcription and the translation of the spoken word risks loss of original meaning due to language differences. Once the documents were translated, they were given to a foreign editor who would initially develop the museum text. Later, the museum text is translated back from English to Arabic and it would undergo several reviews, edits and checks to ensure the validity of information and an easily readable prose. 7.3.2.3 Confidentiality A third, and major challenge resided in the requests made by several female historians, elder citizens who did not wish to either have their interviews recorded or want to share the recording with anyone except the interviewer herself. This request reflects local female attitudes toward protecting their privacy, something very much respected in UAE culture. The team had to be very careful how any of the information supplied was to be used and clarify this before the interview took place. 7.3.2.4 Validation There is always the challenge of validating information from oral history interviews. As much as possible, other sources need to be explored, or other people interviewed to corroborate a story through comparison with known history or primary sources. Sometimes the information extracted from an oral history interview can never be completely verified. It is risky to base the research on one interview as

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it might be someone’s personal interpretation. There is always more than one side to a story and all have some truth. 7.3.2.5 Copyright and Intellectual Property The issue of intellectual property rights when using information from an interview also must be considered. SMA has developed a release agreement to protect intellectual property rights, and asks for permission to use information, copies of documents and the display of donated objects for museum business, for example, for display as promotional material or for use in social media. An agreement can deal with cultural sensitivities and include what information is used and how. It is hoped that such agreements will allow interviewees to speak more freely with the research team. A smooth legal release and consenting process that describes the extent and limits of the use of the information shared from an interview will speed up the process so that the risk of losing the interviewees’ interest, or in some instances, losing the interviewees themselves, as many are quite old, is minimised. Most interviewees preferred to give information without mention of their name, or any acknowledgement, as he/she would rather have their identity remain anonymous, especially in politically sensitive matters – a trend experienced in the research for Al Hisn. However, when the interviewees shared objects or photographs with the team, they usually required an acknowledgement. Clarifying copyright issues concerning photographs that were either donated to the museum, or a copy shared with the museum, has been complicated. Most of the early photographs of Sharjah and its people were taken by foreign missionaries, health practitioners and engineers, as well as military and government officials coming to the region, many of whom brought early cameras. In cases where a photograph is clearly the owner’s to give or share, the process is simple and in accordance with UAE intellectual property rights law. In such instances, SMA’s Collections Department has developed a form that is signed by the donor or lender that gives SMA permission to use or copy the image for use in display, research, educational purposes and promotion and through electronic media. This can be amended to suit each case. However, many early photographs shared with the Al Hisn team do not belong to the people sharing them. Although many of these photographs cannot be used, they give us a window into the past. The team has spent much time researching the sources of historic photographs available and where they are used in displays, high resolution copies have been purchased and the relevant permission obtained. 7.3.2.6 Archiving Possibly the final challenge of any research process is the archiving of the recordings as well as the transcripts, with original recordings kept on individual laptops making it difficult to easily access from a distance. The archiving of the research for this project has been completed with information and backup copies stored on hard

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drives in separate buildings, one set always to be deposited with the Collections Department.

7.4 Community Engagement Through Oral History Paul Thompson, author of the seminal textbook on oral history, The Voice of the Past: Oral History (Thompson, 1988), believes that oral history has transformed both the content of history and the process of writing, exploring new assumptions that can challenge a historian’s view. It has also given voice to people who might have been ignored in history, and has moved written history from educational institutions to community members. Oral history continues to provide Al Hisn with a voice for those who have been ‘hidden from history’, as Sheila Rowbotham (1973) once described it. By allowing the community to talk to us and teach us what our generation does not really know, the Al Hisn team is engaging the public with museum content and collection whilst expanding its own knowledge. Also applicable to Al Hisn are Graham Smith’s (2008) comments that, ‘Oral history is about “doing history” and offers an accessible and sociable method of finding out about the recent past.’ Lastly, it is also important to recognise that most of the available research sources and historians were men. Indeed, history worldwide was documented by men. Oral history interviews, particularly with women, give us the opportunity to explore a part of our community heritage and history not widely known to others. Common feedback from visitors is that Al Hisn is the primary place to tell them about the history and heritage of the UAE in general, and Sharjah in particular, despite having visited many museums in the region. This is very gratifying and confirmation that the museum team has achieved some of its goals based on its ability to communicate additional knowledge and stories. More importantly, oral history has helped to convey a sense of belonging based on a connection to the content and objects developed by thorough research that included the community. These positive responses have encouraged the team to continue to ensure community engagement through oral history collection.

7.5 Community Engagement Through Heritage Programmes A key pillar of all museums within SMA’s remit is developing bespoke educational programmes. These programmes are intended for enjoyment, but also to encourage creativity, critical thinking and social engagement. They are designed by the Education department and are suited to the themes and collections of each museum. Several types of programme are run to meet the needs of special demographic groups, consisting of visitors such as families, schools, university students and those with accessibility challenges. The goal of these programmes is outreach and

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to cultivate returnees from local communities who may not otherwise visit a museum. The programmes become an opportunity to share knowledge and reminisce within a group, the latter especially amongst senior citizens. More recently sign language has been made available to increase accessibility. Braille information is already offered for many programmes. Examples of the family programmes include workshops about the date palm tree and its role as a traditional building material and its importance as a food source. One gallery in Al Hisn informs the visitor about how the fort was built and the materials used. This includes a rope made of date palm fibre and the use of the central leaf rib as part of the roof construction. The date’s importance as a food stuff is explored using the medbasa, or date press room that was used to produce a molasses type date syrup. At the end of the session the families make a traditional Emirati date sweet. The topics are varied and include a session about traditional lanterns made by recycling a glass lemonade bottle – this holds oil that burns via a wick held in place in the top of the bottle by a date paste – and another in which participants design their own Quran stand, inspired by an historic one that belongs to the Sheikh’s family (Fig. 7.9). All workshops have an informative introductory element with an education specialist within the gallery followed by a practical hands-on activity where participants are encouraged to make items. Community programmes include demonstrating the method of making a telli, or traditional braid, that is used in the decoration of Emirati women’s dresses. The participants then have the opportunity to make their own. Traditional dress is seen in the private family bedroom display. Other events are built around the making of prayer beads and decoupage. Community programmes take place over several days as they have more time to explore a topic and develop the practical sessions.

Fig. 7.9  Family Education Programme: examining the Al Qasimi Quran stand. (Photograph © Sharjah Museums Authority)

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Accessibility programmes have also been designed around the medbasa and last around two hours. Sign language was introduced to this session and is now used more widely throughout all accessibility sessions. These sessions are designed for different cognitive levels, various special needs such as autism and psychiatric patients as well as those with physical disabilities. All the learning programmes are essential to ensure engagement consistently throughout the year and not only during special events such as the UAE National Day. The museum space acts as an informal learning environment and therefore promotes a unique place to enjoy while learning. Al Hisn, with its collection of objects and immense amount of content on its history, is an ideal setting for stimulating visitors’ sense of identity (particularly UAE nationals) and their connection to others and the community overall.

7.6 Community Engagement Through Heritage Days It is important to note that alongside these monthly educational programmes, SMA takes part in annual events that mark important dates such as the UAE National Day, Hag Al Lailah,9 World Heritage Day and finally the Sharjah Heritage Days festival (see more below). During all these events Al Hisn organizes activities for visitors to come to the museum and take part in hands-on workshops, watch folklore performances as well as being served traditional Emirati food and sweets. It is crucial that SMA museums take part in such activities as they are joyous occasions where UAE families look for places in which to enjoy and take pride in their heritage. Tapping into festival days and their praxis is also significant in terms of audience development, as Erskine-Loftus (2016, p.  3) notes, ‘Based on Gulf State citizen attendance numbers, these heritage festivals attract far larger numbers than national or heritage museums, which may be attributed to their greater participatory and performative nature.’ Sharjah Heritage Days are held annually every spring and organised by the SIH. The Heritage Days are a celebration of culture, history and tradition, and shed light on the customs, professions, crafts and traditions of the region’s forefathers. They attract many visitors from around the UAE and the region and the event is very popular with the local population. Visitors can tour historical landmarks in the Heart of Sharjah area, taste traditional food, buy handicrafts and see various traditional dances. During Sharjah Heritage Days, museums have special permission to offer free entry for the duration of the festival to encourage visitors to learn about the museum and enjoy the activities on offer. Museums also benefit from their curatorial staff taking the opportunity to meet and interview visitors. At the Sharjah Heritage Museum, for example, the curator extended opening hours into the night  Hag Al Lailah, or For this Night, is an annual Emirati traditional celebration in the middle of Sha’aban, the eighth month of the Islamic Hijri calendar, during which children collect sweets and treats from neighbours and family. 9

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in order to personally meet, greet and converse with more of the visitors attracted to the area during the festival. Beneficial contributions from visitors included adding or amending display information and donating objects to the museum.

7.7 Proposed Project: Sharjah Lives, Memories of Al Hisn As part of the redevelopment of the Al Hisn Museum, a proposal was made to develop a method of gaining further stories of Sharjah using an interactive unit capable of taking photographs and written contributions. It is hoped that the museum can use the visitor as a historian to help document the history of Sharjah and to engage visitors with Al Hisn as a museum. It is planned to test this method of gaining additional oral histories through a pilot project, the basis of which is the development of an audio-visual programme intended to be a continuation of the Al Hisn team’s efforts to conduct oral history by inviting community involvement in recording the history of Sharjah. The project objectives are: • To commemorate eminent Sharjah dignitaries, whether national or non-national, men or women. • To protect, conserve and enhance the values and importance of oral history. • To enhance the resilience of heritage places to incorporate modernity. • To contribute to the management and the long-term sustainability of heritage and the documentation of history. • To bring communities together and to enhance community identity through sharing stories, including multicultural stories. People will be encouraged during a visit (or invited specifically) to come in and write about themselves or others (with their permission) about their contributions to the development of the Emirate of Sharjah. UAE nationals and non-nationals, whether they are men or women, with no age restrictions are welcome to participate. The team expects people to share basic information about themselves, write or record a short biography about themselves or another individual (perhaps a parent), to include the story of their contribution to Sharjah and its society, and share a photograph. Four main challenges are expected, however, and these are: • Financial implications, as often the technology necessary to digitize and the software needed to build such interactive exhibits can be extremely expensive, notwithstanding inter alia the running costs of maintenance and software upgrades. • The consideration of intellectual property rights, copyright and local confidentiality laws. • The use of social media and the general behaviour toward privacy and UAE laws. • The capacity of Al Hisn – a small team – to edit and verify the information shared via the software before making it available to the public where permitted. These challenges will be further studied following the pilot project launch in 2020.

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7.8 Conclusion It is important to realize that the UAE is a unique country of  nearly 10 million people of many nationalities that are not Emirati citizens. Due to the nature of the country’s population makeup, which is overwhelmingly foreign (see Global Media Insights, 2020), rapid development of the urban fabric and overall changes to lifestyle have led to one positive but often overlooked effect, which is that taking notice of this reality has resulted in investing further resources into safeguarding its heritage in all forms. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, there have been several initiatives – both federal and Emirate specific – active in drafting and enacting heritage laws and policies, establishing higher education courses in cultural heritage, updating high school curricula to include heritage studies, building archives and documentation centres, saving and restoring heritage buildings and in Sharjah specifically, converting many of these heritage buildings into museums. This latter initiative is vital since the museum paradigm allows heritage to live on and grow. As long as we continue to engage our community and stay relevant, we will protect and weave UAE heritage into the present. Proactively engaging with our community, museum teams collect information in a myriad of ways, for example, a visitor comes in and shares a story with a guide which they record, a graduate student works on an oral history project and deposits a copy of their thesis with the museum, or a visitor whose family once lived in the area makes a gift to the museum collection. Many of these scenarios have occurred and no doubt will continue to do so in the future. However, we must be more active, which makes our pilot project an important way to appeal for further information from members of the public. We must continue to think about how we can best use technology, adopt new best practice, and engage with worldwide paradigms, as we realise that there are limitation issues concerning memories and methodologies to name but a few. However, this should not deter this project as we take care to consider and be mindful of these limitations. We must move pre-emptively forward and, simply put, do the best that we can now before it is too late. The Al Hisn Museum itself developed several initiatives to ensure the continuous involvement of the community and to carry on its study of ‘Sharjah Lives’ through ‘Memories of Al Hisn’, which invites elderly residents to share their experiences of living in an earlier Sharjah and of the fort. The proposed pilot initiative is an interactive gallery, using modern technology as an alternative to the traditional way of collecting oral history and attempting to transform it into a more modern method by inviting all visitors to share how they have contributed to Sharjah via the use of a touch screen and simple prompts. We expect this project to help us monitor the level of people’s willingness to share information with the public using this medium. If successful, it will pave the way to manage some of the challenges met conducting oral history research in its traditional form and will involve a larger segment of community in the project.

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Stevenson, D. (2014). Cities of culture: A global perspective. Abingdon. Teskey, R., & Alkhamis, N. (2016). Oral history and national stories: Theories and practice in the Gulf cooperation council. In P. Erskine-Loftus, V. P. Hightower, & M. I. Al-Mulla (Eds.), Representing the nation: Heritage, museums, National Narratives and identity in the Arab Gulf States (pp. 109–122). Routledge. Thompson, P. (1988). The voice of the past: Oral history (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Manal Ataya is a museology professional with over a decade of senior executive experience in museum development and cultural diplomacy. In her current role as Director General of Sharjah Museums Authority, United Arab Emirates, she has been responsible for the successful opening of six new museums and four major refurbishment projects across a portfolio of 16 institutions. She provides strategic forward planning, advises on international museum best practices, undertakes policy development and has direct supervision of several key departments. Her time is dedicated to advocacy initiatives for accessible arts education and programmes that promote cross-cultural dialogue. With her professional experience, underpinned by recent cultural leadership fellowships (Aspen Institute; Clore Leadership Programme) and earlier degrees in Museum Studies (Harvard University, USA) and Art/Communication Studies (Hamilton College, USA), she leads the organisation in the efforts to implement His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi’s directives for future museum and cultural heritage–related projects.  

Hazelle Page graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Archaeological Conservation in 1980 from University College, Cardiff, UK, and subsequently worked for archaeological units and museums on a range of archaeological material, social history and ethnographical collections in the north of England. Having gained an MBA from Newcastle University in 1993, she taught conservation and restoration at De Montfort and Lincoln Universities and worked with museums in the East Midlands to deliver NVQ programmes to museum and cultural sector staff. She then worked as Conservation Manager across Nottingham City Museums’ eight historic building sites, before being invited in 2006 to join Sharjah Museums Authority as Collections Manager with an advisory, mentoring and operations remit.  

Chapter 8

Protecting the Heritage of Salt: Multidisciplinary Participation and Community Engagement Leen Fakhoury and Naif A. Haddad

8.1 Introduction Studies have demonstrated the vital role of heritage in enriching citizens’ lives in cities by tackling social problems and enhancing the lives of marginal vulnerable groups (The Heritage Lottery Fund, 2015). In the Jordanian city of Salt, with its present historic urban centre predominantly dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,1 engaging with local communities in heritage discourse and practice is a strategic priority. The city of Salt, situated close to the Syrian pilgrimage route and the Hijaz railway (Ad-Daoud, 2009, p. 40), was a centre of trade with the Palestinian cities, but the selection of Amman as the capital of Transjordan in the early twentieth century and the subsequent decline of trade links affected its economy, more so after the 1948 and 1967 wars. Many key families moved to Amman and the population of Salt did not increase until the beginning of the 1960s (RSS, 1990, p. 4–1). The role and rapid growth of the city centre has been continuously dispersed to the periphery, and vacant and derelict traditional buildings and sites in

 Salt, whose name derives from the Greek saltos (thick forest), has been inhabited from the earliest millennia, but remains dating back to its ancient pre-history are not visibly apparent, and the only archaeological remains are of the fourteenth century citadel. Archaeological research in Salt is limited; Roman bath remains under the Church Missionary Society complex are not documented, and new findings from the early Islamic era under Ain Saha have not been exposed and remain unpublished. 1

L. Fakhoury (*) School of Architecture and Built Environment, German Jordanian University, Amman, Jordan e-mail: [email protected] N. A. Haddad Department of Conservation Science, Queen Rania Faculty of Tourism and Heritage, Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_8

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its inner quarters still stand undeveloped after many years. This neglect and concomitant decay has been the case despite several projects implemented in the city centre in the last decades and the recent submission of the Salt folder for inscription on the World Heritage List. Social surveys and studies conducted by the Royal Scientific Society (RSS) in 1990 and Heritage for Development (Her4Dev) in 2014 in the historic core indicated that lower household income families occupy what is left of the residential quarters, with a smaller average household size and a higher tendency to be renters rather than owner-occupiers. Most of the traditional buildings of the city are classified as residential, although the RSS (1990, p. 5–1) noted that, ‘72% of traditional buildings were in residential use or were so until they fell vacant’. It is likely that the economic decline in the inner area of the historic city centre, coupled with the remaining original inhabitants looking for houses with modern amenities and car parking, has led the lower income classes to occupy the inner areas, and incoming foreign labourers to inhabit the vacant traditional buildings with minimal modernized amenities. Engaging with these local communities is a necessity for the further planning of programmes and initiatives to reach diverse audiences, and build community conservation capacity in Salt. Consideration of collective memory can be part of this engagement and contribute to heritage community awareness, necessary for sustainable urban conservation, specifically the social features of this sustainability (Haddad & Fakhoury, 2016, p. 58) for those marginal groups who are still living in the inner city or those who own heritage residences and have abandoned them, or Salt. Governments also recognize the contribution of built cultural heritage to the well-being of urban communities, with tranches of potential transactional and emotional benefits driving the work of their heritage agencies. In Canada, the Ontario Heritage Trust (2015, p.  3), a government heritage agency of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, identified a set of heritage priorities for 2015–2017, including: engage youth and diverse audiences, collaborate and build community conservation capacity, provide conservation solutions for provincially significant heritage assets, build brand recognition, innovate, and creatively utilize new technologies. Such priorities can lead to the empowerment of diverse audiences in the protection of Salt heritage. Without community participation in Salt, trust and relationships can be damaged by lack of stakeholder representation and decision-­ making can overlook the concerns of local communities (Haddad et al., 2009). In some cases, the reasoning behind this mistrust can be limited resources and staff capacity. Participatory engagement is essential in ‘fostering stakeholders’ responsibility for site management and developing relationships with managers’ (Lochrie, 2016, p. 1392), in addition, it is essential for site managers to administer and involve different interests of public and private bodies, businesses, local communities, private building owners and tourists. Haddad et  al. (2009) point out that important

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heritage sites can be consumed with negativity when local community involvement is minimal and there is a lack of cooperation between stakeholders.2 This chapter explores the efforts undertaken over the past three decades by various donor-funded heritage-led urban development studies and projects to propose master plans, action plans and an architectural register for the city of Salt, while focusing on the activation and empowerment of local communities to protect the meaning and value of their shared cultural resources. The main obstacles to local participation and the implementation of these studies and projects are further examined and light is shed on the role in one scheme, Her4Dev, of multidisciplinary and community involvement. The level of responsibility of the professional communities involved in the various endeavours is also interrogated, particularly in those projects with a central local empowerment remit.

8.2 The ‘Face’ of Salt: An Overview of Historic Buildings, Spaces and Projects Salt is located 30 km to the west of the capital Amman, with a population of around 140,000 inhabitants. The old city extends over three hills, Jada, Qala’ and Salalem, with the central Ain Saha (Spring Square) at their meeting point in the crook of the valley (Fig.  8.1). Most of the traditional urban heritage residences and mansions

Fig. 8.1  The hill of Jada towering over the Saha. (Photograph © the authors)  An example of this negativity occurred in Salt in 2010, when some workers renting the shops in the centre (from the local community) held a strike to stop the acquisition and demolition of the commercial buildings where their shops were located. 2

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date back to the period between 1890 and the late 1920’s, a testimony to the flourishing economic centre at the end of the nineteenth century. They were built in soft yellow marl-limestone, crafted by local and migrating master builders, coming mainly from Nablus,3 other Palestinian cities and the Syrian capital, Damascus, using local technologies and later newly imported materials of metal I-sections and red tiles for roofing. Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi, an author and reformer of the early twentieth-century referred to Salt as the ‘second or smaller Nablus’ in relation to the migration of families from Nablus to Salt, where they settled, worked in trade and contributed to the development of the urban scene (Ad-Daoud, 2009, p. 371). The ‘face’ of Salt, between the beginning of the last and the present century, has been affected by the establishment of modern Jordan and the declaration of Amman as its capital, with several families, economies, and facilities leaving and migrating there. The project of modernization that accompanied the emerging country also took its toll on the fabric of Salt, especially after the demolition of several city centre landmarks in the late 1960s, and the construction of new buildings in their place. This led to a continuous degradation of the historic fabric, especially with the widening of new streets and the neglect of the many grand traditional family houses. Attempts have been made, however, to stem the neglect. Two of these surviving grand family residences in Salt – once homes to the Touqans and the Abu Jabers – have been turned into museums while others, such as the Mou’asher House, have been restored and re-used by their owners as madafa (social spaces).4 In addition, restoration of religious buildings has been carried out, notably on the Church of the Good Shepherd (English Church) of the Christian Missionary Society (b. 1867), the Latin (Catholic) Church (b. 1871) and the Small Mosque (b. 1906). Parallel to the restoration projects outlined above, several studies5 of differing scale and emphasis were undertaken in which an architectural register, or inventory, was proposed. These studies were spearheaded in the mid-1980s by the  The influences on the architectural style of Salt are nuanced and cannot be characterized simply as Nablusi (one of the co-authors is conducting further research in this field). Builder’s names, however, are known, with the most renowned being Akrouk. 4  Madafa, social spaces that once straddled the private and public spheres, and bore witness to the prestige of a tribal leader, politician or wealthy merchant, are now more of a civilian institution (Maffi, 2009). 5  One of the main studies was the development of ‘Salt: A Plan for Action 1989–1990’ conducted by the Royal Scientific Society (RSS), incorporating the first definition of a historic core and strategic plans for parts of the core. Several studies of different scales and objectives followed suit during the following three decades, but the proposal for an architectural register of the city remained only a topic for study. The later studies funded by the Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA), the ‘Survey of the Cultural Resources in Salt 2010’ and ‘The Development of City Core Special Regulations for Salt 2010’ under the ‘Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Urban Development Project’ (CHTUDP), financed by the World Bank addressed again the register and the delineation of the core. The ongoing project of the JICA ‘Ecomuseum’ and the implemented projects of the ‘Third Tourism Development Project/Secondary Cities Revitalization Study by Cotecno for Salt’ financed by the World Bank, both promoted mainly a tourism driven approach and are based on donor driven criteria. 3

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establishment of the Salt Development Corporation. The next section provides an overview of these studies as they attempted to define the register of Salt and orient the development of its assets.

8.2.1 Planning Studies: Registers and Heritage Protection Actions 8.2.1.1 ‘Salt: A Plan for Action’ by the Royal Scientific Society Commissioned by the Salt Development Corporation and financed by USAID, the RSS conducted a pioneer study between 1989 and 1990 that laid the groundwork for developing the first register of the city’s 675 traditional buildings and delineating its historic core (Fig. 8.2). The RSS value assessment study6 categorized the pre-1950, yellow limestone heritage buildings into five grades, based on condition, architectural, urban and historical value. One of the deterrents to the register’s implementation was the absence of a national umbrella and appropriate legislation to protect post-1700 architectural heritage.7 Although a new law was enacted in 2005 to define the registers for post-1750 urban and architectural heritage, no register has yet been published. The action plan proposed by the RSS study was divided into three main parts: implementation, management and financial. The implementation plan recommended adopting cultural and tourist development projects for the revitalization of the core. It also proposed addressing the housing needs of the community by rehabilitating traditional abandoned buildings in a small, selected neighborhood. A heritage protection area was defined as an ‘area of implementation’. In a move towards building the capacity of the municipality, it also recommended establishing a technical arm within the Salt Development Corporation (SDC), although this was not adopted. Stakeholder involvement, however, remained limited to the technical expert team and the SDC advisory and management team, and the municipality role was similarly restricted to one recipient of the final study. The documents and final publication were issued in English, with only a short summary in Arabic, posing a language barrier for most municipality employees. Local community participation was also minimal, limited to a final public panel discussion. Although extensive fieldwork for documentation was undertaken in the city, including a social profile for the inner city, the proposal for the reuse of traditional houses in the selected neighbourhood of the core to accommodate local community needs was not adopted.

 The study did not use Geographic Information System (GIS) as it was not available at that time for the city. 7  At the time, the Antiquity Law of 1988 was the only legislation that could protect a heritage resource, and it specified mainly those built before 1700 as antiquity. A later change specified antiquity as pre-1750. 6

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Fig. 8.2  RSS study and the protection zones. (Image by the authors, courtesy of CulTech)

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8.2.1.2 ‘Basic Survey of the Cultural Resources in Salt’ by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) projects in Salt targeted the development of heritage tourism, with their volunteers, deployed via the Japanese Overseas Volunteers Cooperation (JOVC), conducting an architectural and urban survey of the city’s heritage assets. The resulting publication catalogued 1019 resources, using GIS to register the different built heritage components of the city. The publication, Report on the Basic Survey of the Cultural Resources in Salt, for Eco-museum and Community Development in Salt, posited an ecomuseum8 for Salt as a mechanism to ‘materialize tourism development’ (JICA et al., 2016) (see ongoing projects below), and included three tourists’ trails. Several workshops with local focus groups were conducted to document intangible resources related to the ecomuseum project, and were linked to fieldwork assessing the physical assets of Salt. However, the project did not prioritize the needs of the local community, and yet defined its objectives. It assumed that implementing the Japanese model9 of an ecomuseum would be the solution leading to community development, without undertaking, or accessing extant literature on, relevant socio-economic studies. 8.2.1.3 Salt Special Regulation Project, ‘Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Urban Development’ The Salt Special Regulation Project, ‘Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Urban Development’ (CHTUDP), was a World Bank-financed joint venture by Dar Al-Omran and Euronet Consulting. The project, running from 2007–2010, re-­ established the cultural significance of the traditional buildings of the city of Salt. One hundred and twenty buildings were surveyed and a master plan, which included details of proposals for special conservation areas and special development corridors, was formulated. The project recommended the establishment of a city-core management unit as well as a dissemination plan to inform the public about the new core regulations. Although there were several components advocated by the CHTUDP in relation to adopting participatory approaches, building capacity, and establishing partnerships with the private sector, the As-Salt City Development Project Unit (SCDPU) was the sole sustained initiative. The Salt Municipal Council only adopted the special regulations and the delineation of the core after revisions made in 2014 by Cultural Technologies for Heritage and Conservation (CulTech), a specialist Jordanian NGO. In 2015, a master plan based on Salt City Core Special  The ecomuseum is based on the idea that aspects of the cultural (tangible/intangible) and natural heritage of a defined geographical territory should be conserved, interpreted and used in a sustainable way. Characteristics assigned to these ‘museums without walls’ include in-situ conservation, fragmented site interpretation and a democratic, community-based approach (see Davis, 1999). 9  The Salt Ecomuseum utilises models extant in Japan, such as the Hagi Machijyi Museum (open-­ air museum), that comprises core museum, satellites and discovery trails. 8

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Regulations (CCSR) was proposed, and eventually approved and endorsed by the Higher Planning Council of Jordan.

8.2.2 Heritage for Development Her4Dev is a European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI) project funded by the EU under the call, ‘Investing in People for the Rehabilitation and Management of Historic City Centres’ (2012–2014). It aimed at building and reinforcing the capacities of cultural actors and networks – local public, private and civil society actors  – in the development of rehabilitation plans for three historic city centres, Salt, Ramallah and Bethlehem. CulTech led the project in partnership with the municipality of Salt. The objectives for Her4Dev concentrated on first reviewing and examining the findings of the previously conducted studies in relation to the proposed buildings register and the designation of the historic core of Salt. The recommendation for the designation of Salt’s historic core, as a zone with special regulations by Her4Dev was based on: (1) Conducting an updated significance assessment for the heritage buildings based on new assessment forms supported by the first GIS for Salt to publish the architectural register. The Her4Dev team of experts, in partnership with the local municipality and a group of architecture interns from the German Jordan University and young local professionals, conducted a field survey and a detailed assessment for 50 buildings. (2) Selection of an inhabited action area (Daraj Ar-Rummanat) to test the proposed historic zoning recommendations by the 2010 Dar Al-Omran study. The new findings from the fieldwork and assessment of the needs of the neighbourhood, which consisted of 22 households, contributed to the final recommendations. The categories of heritage values proposed by the Her4Dev evaluation form emphasized social and cultural criteria that reflect tangible and intangible assets, in addition to an economic classification, to contribute to the final grade given to a heritage building (Fakhoury & Haddad, 2014, p. 24). Several focus group sessions to discuss the proposed categories led the selected social groups to co-produce knowledge with their heritage professional allies, and this consolidated the definition of the assessment categories further. Representatives from the Khader neighbourhood attended the first group meeting, which also included an activist senior citizen and a local historian belonging to a family of merchants still working in the historic centre. The meeting not only redefined the ‘cultural value’ category for the re-assessment of heritage buildings, but also provided extensive documentation of the different participants’ memories of Spring Square and related surrounding historic buildings. The different socio-cultural identities of the participants attending the multiple sessions sharpened as a result of the discussion, as did a sense of belonging to community. The participants included neighbourhood representatives, such as merchants, residents, and members of NGOs, whose diverse socio-­economic

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and cultural backgrounds cover the hybridity of the Salt community. Additionally, members from the Municipal Council and the Municipality of Salt, whose specialties ranged from architecture and urban planning to administrative work, were strongly represented in the sessions. The fieldwork and related informal meetings with local community members were crucial to both the team and the local people, who included women, youths and foreign workers. In order to enhance the traditional built environment of the selected quarter, Daraj Ar-Rummanat, a final stakeholder meeting with neighbourhood representatives and the municipal council was conducted to discuss the zoning requirements for the protection of heritage assets, community priorities related to rubbish collection, open spaces for children, and safety measures to consolidate derelict heritage sites (Fig. 8.3a). Her4Dev addressed further local participation by engaging local professionals at the municipality, or working in Salt, and by instituting ongoing coordination with the mayor and members of the elected municipal council. By 2015, this had become the main driving force for the adoption of the special regulations for Salt city core. Specifically, Her4Dev contributed to raising awareness of collective memory and heritage assets associated with Spring Square and the city core by holding meetings with several focus groups, and later by holding a public workshop (Fig. 8.3b). The four main historians of the city and the Her4Dev team leader led the public workshop meeting, discussing both the tangible and intangible assets associated with Salt’s historic core and main open spaces. This was followed by a public debate in April 2013, in association with a local non-governmental organization. It was clear that Spring Square in the historic core continues to be an essential part of the collective memory, even after the destruction of the spring, and the demolition of the Great Mosque and the late nineteenth century Wakalet al-Sukkar building, named after the mercantile Sukkar family who constructed it. The meetings helped to document the memory of the audience and further plan a proposal for interpreting the different layers of Spring Square’s open spaces during the last hundred years, information that would inform the public at large of these assets. The strategic plan, developed by Her4Dev in its second year, was to improve the infrastructure and delivery of heritage information for Salt municipality staff and stakeholders. To facilitate this, Her4Dev availed themselves of GIS, the original RSS proposed categorization for the architectural register. This also supported building the capacity of the SCDPU, a group mandated to manage the development projects at the historic city core. The data of the different studies by RSS, JICA, Dar Al-Omran and Her4Dev established the base documentation of the GIS, and this system was used to update the recommendations for a comprehensive land use plan and create suggested buffer zones. This GIS-based practice supports the SCDPU’s use of new technology. The SCDPU and the Salt Municipality Planning Unit still need to develop detailed building regulations for the city core using the GIS overlays, however, and empowerment of the local community and reinforcing their capacities still need to be further endorsed with access to information.

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Fig. 8.3 (a) Municipal council members and the mayor attending an Her4Dev workshop with the local community for the proposed regulations for Daraj Ar-Rummanat. (Photograph © the authors). (b) Invitation to a collective memory workshop for Spring Square. (Photograph © the authors)

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By the end of the project, a manual and set of instructional cards10 presenting practical guidelines for the maintenance of heritage buildings targeting the local community were published. The published technical cards, supported by instructions, diagrams and photographs, address the main maintenance, preventive conservation, and repair guidelines for three selected deterioration problems, namely the repair and repointing of traditional stone walls, the treatment of traditional roofs, and fighting biological growth affecting traditional buildings. Significantly, the solutions did not only address the community of experts and technicians, but also the residents of Salt, allowing them to follow up on basic conservation actions, with practical solutions that would help build knowledge for the maintenance of their houses. Instructional card workshops, hubs of information-sharing and empowerment, strengthened participants’ diagnostic and maintenance capacity, and were attended by Her4Dev and SCDPU team members (two architects, one planner), three CulTech team members, interns from the local community of Salt and the German Jordan University, technicians and local workers. The training workshop was undertaken with restoration experts to transfer practical knowledge of materials and techniques to the local participants (Fig. 8.4a). Eventually, technical guidelines were developed, while building the capacity of the main local actors and interns. Unfortunately, the degree of community empowerment delivered by using the above-mentioned cards could not be clearly evaluated for many reasons, one of which was the limited duration of the Her4dev project. In addition, the local SCDPU unit did not widely disseminate the cards, nor evaluate the use of them after distribution due to the lack of an evaluation strategy. The partners also realized early in the project that maintenance and conservation of heritage assets needed an institutional and technical set up beyond SCDPU, to ensure sustainable technical guidance. The Her4Dev project instigated introductory training in documentation and assessing the value of heritage buildings for the members of SCDPU, but no expert technical body to date has been established at the Salt Municipality  – or indeed in other municipalities across Jordan – for advice on technical conservation aspects to orient the public. Currently, SCDPU’s focus concerns dealing with construction permits (new building infills or extensions to traditional buildings), rather than following up on technical guidance for rehabilitation beyond the distribution of the cards. The SCDPU and the municipality are now proposing an advisory committee that qualifies as a technical arm to follow up and advise on the technical aspects when necessary.

 The cards (Fig. 8.4b, c) describe problems and practical solutions, including the kind of expertise required in each scenario. Either a technician, mastering traditional or modern construction techniques, or an architect-restorer is recommended for the kind of expertise needed for each problem. 10

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Fig. 8.4 (a) Training workshop (June 2013) in assessing the deterioration of lime mortars and rising damp. (Photograph © the authors). (b) Level of expertise specified for restoring each problem. (Image by the authors, courtesy of CulTech). (c) ‘Repointing’ card. (Image by the authors, courtesy of CulTech)

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8.2.3 Ongoing Projects and Heritage Assets of the City 8.2.3.1 The Salt Ecomuseum Project As a continuation of the Historic Old Salt Museum project, which opened in 2010, JICA, in cooperation with the SDC, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and the Salt Municipality, launched the Sustainable Community Tourism Development in As-Salt City project in 2012. Its aims included raising local community awareness of heritage assets and training local tourist-guides, in parallel to launching the ‘Salt Ecomuseum’ at the grand, early twentieth century Abu-Jaber family residence. As noted above, ecomuseums embrace all aspects of tangible and intangible cultural heritage within a defined geographical area, often operating as ‘museums without walls’ with the intimate involvement of local communities in the process of caring for their heritage. This involvement provides opportunities for local people to conserve and exhibit the unique aspects of their locality (see Davis, 1999). In Salt, residents exhibit their traditional homes, dressing in traditional costumes and serving food typical of the era or tradition in question. Having been trained how to receive tourists, women have a key role here, hosting groups touring the city, and making them lunch (Goussous, 2016). The Open House programme, part of the annual Salt Festival running under the Salt Ecomuseum initiative since 2013, also facilitates opportunities for visitors to access private residences and engage with the living heritage of local people (Fig. 8.5). A recent study undertaken in Salt, which aimed to assess local community awareness of their cultural heritage and the role of the Salt Ecomuseum project in protecting culture and traditions and displaying them to visitors, revealed low to medium levels of positivity towards the initiative by the interviewed sample. For example,

Fig. 8.5  Lunch served for tourists at one of the heritage houses included on the trail. (Photograph © Salt Development Corporation)

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there was low agreement with the statement that the government was right in supporting the implementation of the Ecomuseum project in Salt city (Shalabi, 2015).11 8.2.3.2 Nomination File for the Inscription of Salt on the UNESCO World Heritage List After many years in process, the nomination file for the inscription of Salt on the UNESCO World Heritage List was finally declared in January 2017 and submitted for the second time. Accordingly, As-Salt Eclectic Architecture (1865–1925): Origins and Evolution of an Architectural Language in the Levant was prepared and submitted as a serial property (Fig. 8.6). The dossier included 23 buildings, out of which seven are completely or partially abandoned or vacant (As-Salt City Development Projects Unit/SCDPU & As-Salt Greater Municipality, 2016, p. 6). In addition, a buffer zone for the nominated properties was proposed. The nominated properties faced several challenges in conservation, and detailed building regulations for the proposed buffer zone of around 250,000 m2 would need to be developed and declared to the community. This would be a test for the local municipality, but presented an opportunity to set the pace for integrated conservation action, where the protection of heritage resources could lead to sustainable development, respond to community needs, and institutionalize a technical support unit. It would be an ambitious blueprint for the reuse of many abandoned nominated edifices. However, no structured awareness plan for engaging the public during the ongoing  2017  nomination was undertaken in Salt, either to engage the public with the details of the nominated properties or in the process of proposing Outstanding Universal Value elements for inscription on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. With no clear dissemination plan to underpin the release of information, the topic of the nomination dossier was presented via local media in a very generalized way.12

 The following sample of questions had low agreement scores for answers in the questionnaire: The Salt Ecomuseum project raises the level of local community members’ understanding and awareness of the importance of the sustainable development of heritage and historical resources of the region; The Salt Ecomuseum project enriches the local culture; The Salt Ecomuseum project fosters the contribution of local people in the preservation of the natural environment. 12  The main activity for mobilizing the folder was undertaken in Paris in January 2017, with publicity in the local media. 11

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Fig. 8.6  Nomination File for inscription of Salt on the World Heritage List. (Image by the authors)

8.3 Assessment of the Participatory Approaches Undertaken While Conducting the Major Heritage and Planning Studies Meaningful participation cannot occur without the two-way communication principles and practices. According to Aycrigg (1998, cit. Mefalopulos, 2008) in the Development Communication Sourcebook (and others, e.g. the World Bank), there are four levels of participation and communication: (1) Information sharing about what is being done (one-way communication), (2) Consultation with a stronger

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emphasis on stakeholders’ feedback only (one-way communication), (3) Collaboration for a balanced input in decision-making (two-way communication), and (4) Empowerment to ensure shared decision-making (Maharani, 2013, p. 36). In their analysis of the adoption of participatory approaches during the execution of the main heritage and planning studies for the city of Salt over the last three decades, the authors draw on these principles to create a set of participatory ‘indicators’ for these projects. The indicators (see Table 8.1) comprise community representation, building capacity through internships, and public communication plans. Through an analysis of the data captured by the authors (see Table 8.2, for the indicators used as a basis for investigating the implemented projects), the following observations and conclusions have been drawn: • Community representation13 in both the studies and implemented projects has mainly been conducted with the involvement of focus groups of primary professionals. This has sometimes included selected stakeholders from the community to brief them about the results, but seldom amounted to a full and substantial representation of communities at city scale (city consultation). In addition, not enough attention has been given to building local capacity for technical conservation during the projects’ study stages to engage the local groups effectively. Her4Dev was an exception, however, with training constantly built into every activity of the project at every stage. More recently, JICA’s ‘Sustainable Community Tourism Development in As-Salt City’ project for the ecomuseum (2016) adopted more tools to engage with the community, beyond attending workshops for raising awareness of cultural heritage. Three selected families, direct beneficiaries, were empowered to host tourists in their houses in addition to the training of eight local tourists’ guides. • Most of the stakeholder meetings undertaken could be described as informative, or at best consultative, with an emphasis on stakeholders’ feedback (based on one-way communication). They could hardly be termed collaborative, i.e. empowering the community through engagement in decision-making.14 • The main planning studies were not accompanied by communication or marketing plans that addressed the public at large. However, several publications relating to the heritage studies were issued that were either sold to the public, such as, Salt: A Plan for Action (RSS, 1990), or distributed, such as the Manual for the Conservation of the Historic Centre of Salt (Her4Dev  project, 2014) and the related cards. In addition, the Salt Ecomuseum project developed an awareness handbook, Rediscover and Save Our As-Salt, and ecomuseum/trail leaflets.

 It is outside the scope of this chapter (and the limited availability of data) to robustly interrogate issues of representation (i.e. which groups were involved in the meetings, and which excluded and why). From the authors’ observations at more recent meetings, those who are usually invited are the same leaders of society and related professionals. The issue of concern here is more the type of meeting or session and type of participation (e.g. informative, one-way, two-way…). 14  This is based on the observation of the authors, who participated in several stakeholder meetings related to the above and had direct access to the different study teams during the last two decades. 13

1990

Year

Basic Survey 2010/JICA

2010

2005 Cotecno-­ Urban Study/WB3

RSS

Study or project

Study phase, methodology, tools for participation Communication/ dissemination Community representation & Building plan engagement capacity City consultation Youth training Focus groups & internships with Salt Preparatory & Publication of community for local stakeholder professionals results at large meetings No No Publication Meeting with availed to SDC professionals and administrative sold at SDC members Meeting with historians and architects Yes No Meeting with Preparatory stakeholders to meetings & disseminate interviews results Questionnaires Rapid assessment No Indirectly Limited access to Focus groups publication Workshops with community members

Table 8.1  Major planning studies and participation indicators

Recommended but not implemented

No

No Indirectly, through fieldwork

No

(continued)

Establish the SCDPU in 2005

Establish community technical support programme Other A register was Recommended only proposed but not implemented

No

Build community conservation capacity No

Conducted a social assessment

Other Contribute to heritage awareness of the community Indirectly, through field work

Results, recommendations, implementation

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No

2016 Technical focus groups

Inscription Folder Preparation

Table by the authors

No

2014 Focus group Stakeholder meetings: neighbourhood representatives

Her4Dev/ CulTech

Yes Architecture graduate and post-graduate internships New employees for the municipality Indirectly No

Public Seminar Publication guidelines/free cards for non-experts availed

Study phase, methodology, tools for participation Communication/ dissemination Community representation & Building plan Year engagement capacity City consultation Youth training Focus groups & internships with Salt Preparatory & Publication of community for local stakeholder professionals results at large meetings No No SSR Project 2010 Technical focus No groups Dar Al-Omran/ WB3

Study or project

Table 8.1 (continued)

Establish community technical support programme City Core Management Unit (CMU) recommended but not implemented

Recommended

Recommended

Build community conservation capacity No

Publication targeting non-experts

Other Contribute to heritage awareness of the community Fieldwork

Meeting with Municipal Council

Not to date Supporting publication by Municipality

–

Other Manual for conservation was drafted Community activities recommended but not implemented Manual published

Results, recommendations, implementation

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Table by the authors

Saha & Extension of the Mosque Project (Bittar/ WB3) ‘Sustainable Community Tourism Development in As-Salt City’ – Salt Ecomuseum (JICA) Design & Implementation Oukba bin Nafei Project (Dar al Handassah & Municipality)

Implemented Projects JICA (HOSM): Rehabilitation of the Historic Old Salt Museum, Streets and the Main Saha

2014– ongoing

2012– 2016

Year Studies (1999– 2001) Opening of museum 2010 2012 No

Youth training & internships for local professionals No

Training of 8 tourist guides & 3 selected resident owners to accommodate tourist experience Yes, during the planning No meetings with owners and tenants – conducted for appropriation purposes

Focus group in the planning process only, not for the duration of the project Focus groups Stakeholder meetings and workshops

Community engagement: focus groups Yes, preparatory meetings with owners and tenants were conducted for temporary evacuation of tenants during implementation

Design & planning stage

Table 8.2  Implemented projects and participation indicators

No

Monthly newsletter Leaflets

No

Communication-­ dissemination plan/Publication of results No

–

Salt Ecomuseum programmes Publications

No

Other: contribute to heritage awareness of the community Impact assessment was conducted for the project

No

Not to date

No

–

Not to date

No

Implementation stage Establish Build community community technical conservation support capacity programme No No

Open House for tourists Established Salt Spring Festival Awareness publications Contribute to a network of open spaces programme

Provide public space

Other impacts Provide space for community to practice traditional board games

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• The RSS study/Cotecno-Urban study/World Bank3 (WB3) recommended the adoption of a technical support unit and the SSR project/WB3 recommended a city core management unit, but the recommendations were not fully implemented to achieve the goals set. • The main planning studies, including the RSS ‘Salt: A Plan for Action’ and the delineation of a historic core, have not been championed and have therefore not been implemented. The land-use plans prepared by the CCSR were not approved by successive municipal councils subsequent to their submission, but a Her4Dev seminar of December 2013 did set the pace for the municipal council and the current mayor to adopt and later approve them in 2015. • The RSS study and proposed listing for the register included social value aspects as part of the assessment of the architectural and urban heritage, while both the SSR and Her4Dev studies included the explicit appraisal of social and economic values in the significance assessment of heritage buildings. Most of the implemented projects were based on the aesthetic and visual aspects of revitalization. JICA’s Historic Old Salt Museum (HOSM) project, for example, aimed to develop tourism infrastructure and achieve socio-economic revitalization by focusing on the aesthetics of the visual experience for tourists. This was reflected in the prioritization of refurbishing open spaces and creating panoramic lookouts. The extended Spring Square and the restoration of the three building facades (WB3 project) also addressed the aesthetics of place-making for tourists by demolishing all white, modern institutional buildings dating from the early 1970s (Fakhoury & Haddad, 2014). As Khirfan (2014, p. 51) notes, both projects advocated ‘policies and intervention strategies that prioritized the visual experience of potential tourists’. In addition, the projects were not always welcomed by the local community (see Table 8.2), especially during implementation and operation. The renters of the temporarily closed shops, for example, demonstrated during the rehabilitation of the Historic Old Salt Museum of Abu Jaber and the JICA-financed Spring Square project, and the merchants affected by the Oukba bin Nafei open space project were against its implementation. More recently, in a survey for the JICA Salt Ecomuseum (see Shalabi, 2015), the participants in the questionnaire did not ‘strongly agree’ that ‘the project can bring further job opportunities to Salt’, and did not ‘strongly agree’ that ‘the Ecomuseum preserves the history, culture, and tradition of the area’ (ibid, pp. 101, 122). A recommendation to increase heritage awareness programmes for the local community in a regular and consistent manner, involving all sectors of the society and utilizing a bottom-up policy, is crucial to better protect the heritage of Salt.

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8.4 Investment in the Local Community of Salt According to Hawkes (2001, p. 23), ‘Culture is not a pile of artefacts – it is us; the living, breathing sum of us.’ Cultural heritage is subjected to many pressures and risks, however ‘co-operation and engagement with associated and local communities is essential as part of developing sustainable strategies for the conservation and management of settings’ (ICOMOS, 2005: Article 12). Cultural heritage conservation helps a community preserve its history, identity, and environment, strengthen the sense of continuity, and protects economically valuable physical assets. In Salt, local communities should prioritize which cultural assets to care for, considering both cultural significance and livelihood implications, but approaches to date have focused more on appeasement through informative participation, rather than allowing them to have a role in decision-making processes (see Garrod et  al., 2011). Indeed, Salt historic core as a World Heritage Site needs to aspire to collective management and shared responsibility, especially with limited funding and staff capacity. Reaching a consensus and ensuring community participation in decisions regarding heritage conservation is, however, very challenging, but eventually a balance needs to be struck between the ‘conservation loom’ (i.e. the need to focus on various aspects of conservation and argue from the point of view of heritage) (Haddad & Fakhoury, 2016, p. 58), and local community involvement.

8.4.1 The Discourse of Conservation for Local Community Development Socio-cultural sustainable regeneration of historic urban environments must make places for local people. Cotecno’s urban study/WB3 mission was to restore the city’s core ‘as public space of social encounter and communication’, to reconstruct social cohesion, especially for the youth and both genders, and revive the urban and commercial centrality of the core. Thus, the extension project of Spring Square was developed with these goals in mind. However, the resulting place hardly attracted any women or groups of youths and young families – for many reasons. The driving force behind the WB3 Spring Square project was to demolish the modern building fronts from the historic location of the Saha and preserve the traditional building facades, presenting it as a main tourist attraction and one of the cultural symbols of the core. The aesthetic treatment did not accommodate the local users’ needs; their priorities lay elsewhere, in a desire for smaller neighbourhood gardens and open spaces for their children and youths (Fakhoury & Haddad, 2014). Beside the main open space at the core, there is the Oukba bin Nafei open space (plaza), which is currently being developed to contribute to the network and quality of open spaces in the city. Such schemes should also be coupled with priority community

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development objectives and projects, including the selection of creative and alternative uses for adjacent heritage properties appropriated by the municipality. In fact, these are critical and essential issues for any intervention level (Haddad & Fakhoury, 2016, p. 54). A dialogue with the local community about the benefits of tourism revenue, including planning for tourism facilities and activities, should also be developed and consider their needs as a priority. For example, while there is a requirement for increasing the number of open spaces in the city, there is also a clear urgency towards integrating transportation planning and pedestrian networks with the existing historic and heritage trails. Hence, the daily needs of the local community, as well as tourists need to be considered. Meanwhile, stakeholder involvement and collaboration can be problematic due to conflicting interests. Ultimately, there is a need to ensure proper participation of the local stakeholders in the protection and conservation of Salt’s architectural heritage. It is not enough to provide the local community with only the technical guidance, they need to be engaged in any new intervention involving their heritage assets, including related maintenance works.

8.4.2 Towards Successful Participatory Approaches The success of Salt historic core conservation, management and marketing still depends on the political will of the government and local authorities, supported by available funds. Essentially, the issue for this historic core is not so much about the criteria of significance, but the politically charged process of who decides what is important. Haddad et al. (2015, p. 186) note that ‘the development of policies, and a long-term plan of action, requires coordination at the administrative level, and in Jordan legal, technical, organizational, and financial aspects need to be considered’. This is particularly true when one considers that there is no effective national body for the conservation of architectural and urban heritage, nor implementation of Law No. 5 of 2005 on the Protection of the Architectural and Urban Heritage. The aforementioned legislation states that a national committee is to be assigned to follow up on several tasks, including the publication of the register and technical conservation aspects. It also calls for an administrative unit to be installed at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. Thus far, a register has not been published and the committee, if not supported by a national centre of expertise, will not be able to deliver. The United Kingdom Heritage Lottery Fund (2010, p. 5) argues that ‘community participation can involve a significant shift from providing activities for existing and potential audiences to involving them in the development of activities.’ The following suggestions are prerequisites for ensuring and strengthening community participation in the heritage management of Salt.

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8.4.2.1 The Need for Enhancing Heritage Community Recognition, Especially in Relation to Heritage Tourism Sites Re-introducing the city’s original family names to the streets, squares and neighbourhoods can reinforce the association of the local community to their city and enhance a sense of ownership of public spaces. Such community recognition can strengthen and revitalize the collective memory of the city core (Haddad & Fakhoury, 2016, p. 51). The Open House programme of the ecomuseum initiative (see above), operated in association with three local families and the SDC to share traditional lifestyles with tourists, could be a starting point for more community recognition and community based tourism initiatives. Collectively, the museums in Salt tell its story from a range of ethno-culturally and thematically diverse perspectives. The goals of the Eco-city museum sites still need to include further conservation measures of its traditional buildings and cultural artifacts, further educational and community programmes, and interpretation consistent with its significance within the city museum plan. Actioning these goals would benefit the local community further. 8.4.2.2 The Need for a Salt Community Response Programme The Salt Municipality needs to create and build the capacity of a technical unit and a community response programme intended to assist the local community and community organizations by providing education and technical advice on the conservation of Salt’s heritage, building local awareness and capacity for heritage planning and facilitating conservation solutions in the community across the city. The cards developed by the Her4Dev programme can assist the technical unit in building local awareness and provide a basis for the preventive and maintenance programmes. 8.4.2.3 Cultural Heritage and Creative Partnerships Many implemented projects in Salt are not developed or managed with local root organisations or partners. For example, the museums, interpretive centres and community spaces (such as the Saha) are public projects managed by the directorates of Tourism and Antiquities or the Municipality of Salt. The majority of heritage buildings are privately owned and poorly maintained, despite great potential for the community to be involved in their preservation. In Salt, new partnerships are critical for future conservation projects. Current and past international-donor projects seldom built capacity for local architects and restorers, nor provided training for local volunteers (refer to Tables 8.1 and 8.2). There is an urgent need for successful cultural heritage partnerships; combined with urban conservation measures at Salt’s historic core, they can play a vital role in its socio-economic development. Adopting further development and financial programes, which encourage small and medium businesses to invest in heritage, are also needed to encourage the remaining residents and businesses to invest in their cities.

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The initiative for inscribing the properties of 23 buildings on the World Heritage List needs to be capitalized upon for the benefit of the local community. The leading team managing this folder in 2015 did not develop a clear communication plan involving the community, or prioritize participatory engagement, since no general public consultation was held to discuss the nominated properties and their associated proposed protection endeavour. The municipality is mainly building on appropriating the historic buildings and it does not have in place any incentive plan (tax or financial) yet to engage the local community in creative partnerships. Opportunities for financing the conservation of at least two nominated properties are being pursued (al-Jaghbeer and Falah al-Hamad) and their appropriation. Therefore, the local community must be given the opportunity to work in collaboration with the Municipality of Salt, the SDC, and the leading unit for heritage conservation, in order to identify and prioritize the cultural resources that require conservation and the implementation of projects. 8.4.2.4 Marketing and Communication Plans The main engagement strategies employed for publicising and reinforcing heritage sites’ status usually utilise online platforms, events, publications, branded signage and educational materials. Such forms of engagement also offer potential marketing and promotional opportunities, not only for the local community but also for site managers (McDonald, 2011; Lochrie, 2016, p.  1412). Important, however, is the strategy, which should involve a participatory rather than an informative approach to engagement (Lask & Herold, 2004). McDonald (2011) also argues that events and festivals could assist people in becoming more personally attached to their heritage, resulting in heightened public involvement. In Salt, the multiple ownership patterns that characterize the city’s historic core necessitate a successful marketing and communication plan that enhances the sense of belonging for the whole community. Thus, marketing and communication plans should not only include information, such as marketing brochures extolling the significance and meaning of heritage buildings, but also create multimedia campaigns about their benefits for local community development.

8.5 Summary and Concluding Remarks This study sought to explore how the heritage of Salt has been administered in relation to stakeholder and community support, and to map the extent of its success. For the city, heritage management and the support of site stakeholders are critical, with the sheer size and multiple ownership patterns of the city making this even more challenging. The city’s main heritage projects were explored in order to provide a more in-depth investigation into the challenges of shared management amongst the various stakeholders. Across these projects, the studies have not clearly highlighted

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the significance of a stakeholder approach, and the municipality has not enabled their integral role in the city core development. Several studies have addressed building capacity – and the establishment of SCPDU was a response to that – but Her4Dev was the only project to implement this. More generally, the study has revealed that the implemented interventions mainly tackled the refurbishment of segments of streets, open spaces, the main plaza and the establishment of the first Salt historic museum. Building local capacity for heritage protection and effective community participatory approaches, however, has not been adopted. The implemented projects did not propose serious reform to the legal framework for heritage and building maintenance regulations, develop tax and financial incentives, nor adopt a comprehensive urban conservation approach coupled with community development. Furthermore, the studies have been conducted with the support and backing of the society leaders, which in reality meant more of an elitist awareness that was divorced from empowering the masses. Given the limited impact of studies and projects undertaken during the last three decades, which only limitedly engaged the Salt community, there is a need for the authorities to urgently address participatory practice. Moreover, given the financial obstacles through which heritage protection and management must navigate, stakeholder engagement and involvement has never been more significant. Overall, the importance of stakeholder engagement within Salt’s historical core cannot be overestimated. In fact, giving stakeholders an active role in management through community-­led ventures or representative mechanisms can permit ideas exchange and project development. However, there is a need for enhancing heritage community recognition, especially in relation to the heritage tourism destination sites. This should be combined with a Salt community response programme in order to assist and involve local people and community organizations in conservation solutions across the city. By employing interactive strategies such as community representation, raising heritage awareness, marketing, and communication plans, managers could identify further relationships being built up within their stakeholder networks. Finally, the Salt authorities should re-think local community creative partnerships and develop heritage awareness campaigns that promote  – to local people  – the social, economic and heritage benefits of inscribing their city on the World Heritage List.

References Ad-Daoud, G. (2009). As-salt and its environs [Arabic] (2nd ed.). Ministry of Culture. As-Salt City Development Projects Unit (SCDPU) & As-Salt Greater Municipality (2016). As-salt eclectic architecture (1865–1925); origins and evolution of an architectural language in the Levant, Nomination File for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Davis, P. (1999). Ecomuseums: A sense of place. Leicester University Press. Fakhoury, L., & Haddad, N. (2014). Manual for the conservation of the historic Centre of Salt [Arabic]. CulTech.

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Garrod, B., Fyall, A., Leask, A., & Reid, E. (2011). Engaging residents as stakeholders of the visitor attraction. Tourism Management, 33(5), 1159–1173. Goussous, S. (2016, March 7). JICA supporting ‘ecomuseum’ in salt to showcase daily life, traditions. The Jordan Times.http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/jica-­supporting-­eco-­ museum-­salt-­showcase-­daily-­life-­traditions. Accessed July 17, 2018. Haddad, N. A., & Fakhoury, L. A. (2016). Towards developing a sustainable heritage tourism action plan for Irbid historic Core. International Journal of Architectural Research, 10(3), 36–59. Haddad, N., Waheeb, M., & Fakhoury, L. (2009). The baptism archaeological site of Bethany beyond Jordan: Towards an assessment for a management plan. Tourism and Hospitality Planning & Development, 6(3), 173–190. Haddad, N. A., Akasheh, T. S., Lerma, J. L., & Khresat, B. R. (2015). Towards a risk management and conservation plan for the Djin blocks at the world heritage site of Petra, Jordan: The case of Djin block no. 9. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 17(2), 175–191. Hawkes, J. (2001). The fourth pillar of sustainability: Culture’s essential role in public planning. Common Ground Publishing in Assoc. with the Cultural Development Network. ICOMOS. (2005). Xi‘an declaration on the conservation of the setting of heritage structures, sites, and areas. https://www.icomos.org/xian2005/xian-­declaration.pdf. Accessed 17 July, 2018. JICA/Kaihatsu Management Consulting & Hokkaido University. (2016). The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan sustainable community tourism development project in As-Salt City, project completion report. Jordanian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. Khirfan, L. (2014). World Heritage, Urban Design and tourism: Three cities in the Middle East. Routledge. Lask, T., & Herold, S. (2004). An observation station for culture and tourism in Vietnam: A forum for world heritage and public participation. Current Issues in Tourism, 7(4–5), 399–411. Lochrie, S. (2016). Engaging and marketing to stakeholders in World Heritage Site management: A United Kingdom multiple case study perspective. Journal of Marketing Management, 32(15–16), 1392–1418. Maffi, I. (2009). La madāfa en Jordanie: un lieu de mémoire. Etudes rurales, 184, 203–216. Maharani, D. N. (2013). An evaluation of the participatory communication approach for the development of the Kotagede heritage area: A case study of the Rekompak-Jrf Heritage extension program in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. M.A. thesis, Faculty of the Graduate School-Ateneo de Manila University. McDonald, H. (2011). Understanding the antecedents to public interest and engagement with heritage. European Journal of Marketing, 45(5), 780–804. Mefalopulos, P. (2008). Development communication sourcebook: Broadening the boundaries of communication. The World Bank. Shalabi, M. (2015). Preliminary assessment study of JICA Ecomuseum project in Salt City in terms of community involvement activation, MSc unpublished thesis, German Jordan University. The Heritage Lottery Fund. (2015). 20 years in 12 places: 20 years of lottery funding for heritage. A report prepared by Britain Thinks for the Heritage Lottery Fund. https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/20_years_in_12_places_main_report.pdf. Accessed 17 July, 2018. The Ontario Heritage Trust. (2015). Corporate business plan 2016–17. The Ontario Heritage Trust. https://www.heritagetrust.on.ca/user_assets/documents/2016-­17_OHT_Business_Plan_ Dec23.pdf. Accessed 17 July, 2018 The Royal Scientific Society. (1990). Salt: A plan for action (Vol. 1). Salt Development Corporation. The United Kingdom Heritage Lottery Fund. (2010). Community participation. https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/guidance/thinking_about_community_participation. pdf. Accessed 17 July 2018.

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Leen Fakhoury is industrial professor at the German Jordan University, publishing widely with extensive academic and research experience. She has been coordinator/researcher for projects funded by the EU and UNESCO, and an invited keynote speaker at several international conferences. She is an urban heritage specialist working in the preparation of urban regeneration schemes, tourism development plans and action projects for historic centres in Jordan. Her work as heritage expert and team leader for the Taybet Zaman Project, rejuvenating a traditional village into a tourist development, helped garner the 1996 Tourism for Tomorrow Award by British Airways. She has conducted cultural resource management and risk assessment plans for several heritage sites and has been vice-president for the NGO Cultural Technologies in Jordan since 2012.  

Naif A. Haddad is currently a professor at Queen Rania’s Institute of Tourism and Heritage at the Hashemite University. He had previously served as Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Design, and Dean of Scientific Research at the American University of Madaba in Jordan. He has worked and been involved in diverse international and local research programmes, including projects for documentation, interpretation, restoration, conservation, adaptive re-use, heritage multimedia, tourism, planning and development, structural behaviour, and the protection and management of urban heritage, historic buildings and monuments. Professor Haddad is a member of the National Committee for the Protection of the Architectural and Urban Heritage. He also works in multimedia as consultant, creative/art director, scriptwriter and set designer.  

Part III

Heritage in Crisis: Acts of Resilience, Recovery and Reconfiguration

Chapter 9

Conflicting Futures for Non-conflict Archaeology: A Lebanese Case Study Alison Damick and Hermann Genz

9.1 Introduction Conflict heritage and archaeology1 is indisputably a popular topic among scholars working in the Middle East (Cunliffe, 2014; Kila & Zeidler, 2013; Meskell, 2002, 2010; Perring & van der Linde, 2009). Increasingly in recent years, post-conflict archaeology and heritage work has gained traction as a topic of equal interest to the discipline (Moshenska, 2015; Newson & Young, 2015, 2018; Plets, 2017). However, as Newson and Young (2018) point out, most of these studies focus on large, monumental architectural sites and major cities such as Palmyra, Beirut, and Babylon, while the more ‘quotidian archaeology’ of rural and smaller-scale places and peoples often disappears without remark. In addition, there is a tendency to characterize the primary issues related to site preservation with reference to the armed conflict Note to the Reader  This contribution was completed before 2018. The major events in Lebanon since then, and changes effected by them, are therefore not considered in this discussion. These include but are not limited to the Lebanese popular revolution of October 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 (which continues through the present), the Beirut port explosion of 2020 and its aftermath, including the collapse of the Lebanese economy and power grid. These events have had serious impacts on every aspect of life in Lebanon, including its archaeology and cultural heritage management communities that are not reflected here.  Referring here to archaeology taking place in active conflict zones and addressing the immediate impact of conflict on archaeology, as opposed to the archaeology of conflict, which studies the material traces of past conflicts. 1 

A. Damick (*) Far Western Anthropological Research Group, Davis, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] H. Genz Department of History and Archaeology, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_9

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itself – whether in its active stage or ‘post’ the event. In Lebanon, this is especially true, as armed conflict, its legacies, memories, and threats, dominates the heritage literature as a systemic force acting upon heritage preservation in the country (Bajjaly, 2011; Fricke, 2005; Nagel, 2002; Sader, 2012; Volk, 2008). In this chapter, the authors explore the conditions under which archaeology in conflict zones but outside of conflict itself interacts with environmental research, administrative infrastructures, and public perceptions of history and modernity through their experiences at a relatively small, quotidian2 site on the northern coast of Lebanon.

9.2 The Lebanese ‘Non-conflict’ Context The Lebanese Civil War was comprised of a series of violent conflicts involving internal and external armed forces between 1975 and 1990 that wreaked havoc on the material and cultural landscape of Lebanon. Understandably, this complex and devastating war attracted a great deal of international attention at the time. Since that time, Lebanon has primarily been in the media for its various other episodes of armed conflict, such as the July War of 2006, the Beirut Siege of 2012, and border fighting related to conflicts in neighboring Syria. Frequently, imagery of these recent conflicts has been juxtaposed with nostalgic images of Lebanon’s early twentieth century status as the beautiful, cosmopolitan ‘Paris of the Middle East’, a storied destination for tourists and pleasure-seekers on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea (Rowbotham, 2010). The sense is that of possible futures lost, the trajectory of a nation broken by conflict, and struggling to both restore and reinvent itself. This is the context in which archaeology, a discipline that already has the tension between past, present, and future at its core, now finds itself. Since the end of the Civil War, archaeology in Lebanon has been conducted under two main administrative frameworks. First, there is the Direction Générale des Antiquités du Liban (the DGA), which is the government division within the Ministry of Culture that manages archaeology throughout the country and maintains its own staff of archaeologists. Second, there are a number of universities and research institutions, both local and foreign, that run archaeological and heritage projects with the permission and supervision of the DGA, including the Institut Français du Proche Orient (IFPO), ICOMOS Lebanon, Balamand University, Lebanese University, and the American University of Beirut. Whether undertaken by the DGA or research institutions, relevant legislation pertaining to the management, protection, and regulation of cultural properties in Lebanon – both movable and immovable – is derived from a complex network of overlapping documents. Cultural property is largely still covered by the Antiquities Law No. 166 of 1933, although modified and updated by the 2016 Cultural Heritage Decrees 3057 (urban excavations) and 3058 (integration of immovable antiquities), and Law 37 from 2008 (protection of cultural properties). Laws guiding work in

 After Newson and Young (2018).

2

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relation to antiquities are found under the jurisdictions of the Ministries of Public Works and Transport (Law No. 69 of 09.09.1983), the Interior and Municipalities (Law No. 118 of 30.06.1977), and the Environment (Law No. of 08.07.1939).3 The DGA is an acting member of the Higher Committee of Urban Planning, and they have a priority role in assessing any case related to historical properties. The Civil War of 1975–1990, of course, disrupted the system in many ways, and meant that for many years this role has only intermittently been asserted; the current Director of the DGA, however, is very active on this committee, in parallel with the Civil Planning Council for Building Permits. Given the above, from a legal standpoint, archaeological work and its products are tied up in a network of political relationships that must be coordinated across department boundaries, and conceptual relationships that can frequently make it difficult for the public to understand exactly how decisions are made (such as pertaining to building permits or preservation protocols). Likewise, the multiple levels of government involved in the administration of different parts of cultural and environmental landscapes can blur the distinction between the two. While these issues are present throughout the country in different ways, one of the most iconic examples of the complex and politically fraught intersection of archaeological, environmental, political, and financial interest groups is the Lebanese coastline. According to a rather poetic 1925 French Mandate law, in Lebanon ‘the seashore extending to the farthest point that waves reach during winter, as well as sand and gravel beaches’, is public domain which ‘can neither be sold nor acquired as a property over time’ (Decree No. 144/S; see Lamy & Bou Aoun, 2017 for further discussion). While this decree has never been removed from law, it has been systematically weakened over time by illegal development and various subsequent decrees that allowed for the issuance of special building permits, temporary installations (that later became permanent), and other kinds of legal loopholes (ibid.). A 2009 report by the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, Directorate General of Land and Maritime Transport, recorded that only about 20% of the coastline was left available to full public access at that time, and of the inaccessible areas, around 52% were either entirely illegal or extended beyond their legally granted limits (Assaf, 2009). These development projects have obviously had an enormous impact on the natural coastline, damaging both terrestrial and marine biodiversity, polluting hydrological systems, and increasing coastal erosion. In the process, much archaeological heritage has been damaged and lost entirely, despite the best efforts of the DGA, which has resources too limited to meet the demands of such rapid urban expansion. The coast of Lebanon therefore presents a uniquely high-density and high-­ intensity landscape context in which to explore the concepts of community, community heritage and archaeology, and their entanglements with politics, environment, and memory. The particular case of community archaeology at Tell Fadous-­ Kfarabida, located directly on the north-central coast, is an ideal example of an archaeological site that is not in the midst of armed conflict, but whose coastal

 For further description of the relevant clauses, see the Citizen’s Charter for Heritage (2001).

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resources are nonetheless under the systematic assault of the post-conflict conditions described above. Furthermore, because it is a smaller, less well-known site, the history of its discovery and archaeological investigation gives better insight into the plight of large swaths of undocumented and unprotected heritage subsumed by development along the Lebanese coastline without the fanfare received by visually dramatic sites like the nearby World Heritage Site at Byblos, for instance. It also happens to be located along a particular strip of coast just south of modern Batroun that has been the epicenter of recent development for commercial entertainment purposes such as beach hotels, clubs, restaurants, and the like.

9.3 Tell Fadous: Description of the Site The site of Tell Fadous-Kfarabida is a small (1.5 hectare) Early and Middle Bronze Age settlement located just 2  km south of Batroun and 12  km north of Byblos, directly on the coast (Fig. 9.1). Located in what many consider to be one of the most politically secure parts of Lebanon, the region has undergone drastic development in the past decade as a resort destination for both local and foreign visitors. This beautiful coastal stretch of land was, as recently as 2004 at the beginning of the Tell Fadous-Kfarabida Archaeological Project, still relatively sparsely occupied, an idyllic Mediterranean littoral dotted by a series of small villages alongside some of the cleanest coastal water in the country. Now, a little over 10 years later, there is barely any undeveloped land to be found – and most of it is home to private beach bars and

Fig. 9.1  Tell Fadous-Kfarabida, as seen from the north. (Photograph © the authors)

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Fig. 9.2  View of the coastal stretch along which TFK is situated, showing the extent of urban development. (Photograph © the authors)

resorts whose blaring music and restriction of coastal area access are themselves legal violations, aside from their environmental and archaeological impact (Fig. 9.2).4 While residents complain of the noise, space, and trash brought in by these developments (Fig.  9.3), the resorts also bring in significant money to the local municipal governments in the form of taxes, associated commerce, and other incentives. It is therefore not always in the immediate interest of local government to take much notice of the legality of developers’ practices, which can cause conflicts of interest with other members of the local community. Nonetheless, as co-directors of the Tell Fadous-Kfarabida Excavations, we strongly agree with Jeanine Abdul Massih’s (2010, p. 69) sentiment that ‘the participation of municipalities and localities as well as their inhabitants in the management of a city or region’s heritage, under the supervision of the DGA, is… the only way to ensure [its] survival’.5  Lebanon does in fact have legal noise ordinances in residential areas; these are regularly exceeded by construction noise during the day and nightclub noise at night by a range of 20–40 decibels (see MOE Resolution 1/52, 1996; for more discussion, Korfali & Massoud, 2003). There have been extensive studies on the illegality of the privatization of the Lebanese coast during and since the Civil War (for a small sample, see Ladki & El Meouchi, 2013; Makhzoumi, 2016; Masri, 1999). 5  Indeed, it is only through years of cooperation between the American University of Beirut research project, the DGA, and local community activists that we have been able to secure the preservation of even a small part of the ancient site of Tell Fadous-Kfarabida. As such, any of our concerns should here be understood in that context. We are very grateful for the cooperation that has been offered to us by local organizations and national leadership, especially that facilitated by and 4

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Fig. 9.3  Locals and project members discussing trash dumping on the archaeological site area in 2014. (Photograph © the authors)

The archaeological site of Tell Fadous-Kfarabida (TFK) was accidentally discovered in 2004 when a then American University of Beirut (AUB) Master’s student noticed walls sticking out of a profile of a recent bulldozing operation, and reported this to the Archaeology program at AUB, who in turn reported it to the DGA. These walls turned out to be part of a Bronze Age settlement dating to the third and second millennia BCE, which has subsequently been the focus of research for an AUB and international archaeological team (Fig. 9.4). The site is remarkable as one of the only Early Bronze Age sites in Lebanon that had only limited occupation after its abandonment until the twentieth century, leaving most of the third millennium BCE architecture largely intact. It is also one of only two Early Bronze Age sites in Lebanon to have a secure series of Carbon 14 dates across multiple occupation horizons (Höflmayer et al., 2014), and to have systematic archaeobotanical sampling across all levels, providing unique insight into the coastal subsistence economy (Genz, 2014; Genz et al., 2016). It is therefore archaeologically very significant, but was essentially invisible to the public until the chance passing of a student trained to look for such things. Sites like TFK, along with even less visible prehistoric remains, are the kinds of places that are likely disappearing under a bulldozer every day, sites which routinely ‘have taken a back seat to major architectural and urban through the Director General of the DGA, Mr. Sarkis al-Khoury, and our regional DGA representative, Ms. Samar Karam. Their extensive efforts should be highlighted as critical to the success of archaeological preservation and research in this area, and to any level of local engagement and cooperation that is attained.

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Fig. 9.4  Bulldozer profile on the west side of the archaeological tell, as it was being recorded by AUB archaeologists in 2004. (Photograph © the authors)

sites’ but which ‘are important both to the local community and the wider region as symbols of the history, place, and people, and as elements of identity’ (Newson & Young, 2018, p. 156). After its discovery and initial rescue, archaeological investigations took place at TFK in several phases: first from 2004 to 2005, then 2007–2011, and finally again from 2014 to 2016 (see Genz, 2014). The name of the site is derived from the two modern communities that flank it geographically: Kfarabida, the official municipal name for the village seated just on the foothills above the site, and Fadous, which is a traditional family name that has become the toponym for the community along the coastline. The land on which the site sits is divided into a number of plots owned by private citizens (this has varied, as claims are sold and negotiated, between four and seven unique owners). The land in that area is some of the most expensive in Lebanon, due to its recent boom in commercial entertainment potential in the form of (it is hoped) profitable beach hotels, resorts, and clubs. Ironically of course, the appeal of this area when the development boom began was that it was some of the only undeveloped coastal area left in Lebanon that still boasted clean water, intact (if rocky) beaches, and proximity to the well-preserved historic centers at Byblos and Batroun, local wineries and fresh, quality seafood. All these apparent draws for a tourist crowd (foreign or local) have subsequently been threatened, if not outright decimated, by the aggressive development projects that have torn into the coastline.

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The archaeological project at Tell Fadous-Kfarabida first attempted to initiate community outreach in 2009, under the direction of Dr. Hermann Genz and with cooperation from local community collaborators in the villages. While the project had quite a few local partners from the outset, the 2009 season was the first time that an open public event was planned. It was intended to be a lecture by the Director of the excavation, followed by an open forum for discussion and a reception at the home of one of the local partners of the project. The goals were to engage the local village community in the research project, which at that point was still not widely understood in the community, and to share information and solicit collaborative input for preserving and presenting the site moving forward. However, an unexpected local dispute over the parameters of the presentation emerged that prevented this event from taking place. While the details of this dispute are best left within the community for the time being, the result was that the officials in charge preferred to cancel the event rather than risk further conflict.

9.4 The Recent Campaigns Nothing more was attempted in terms of active local community outreach until the renewal of excavations in 2014. When the DGA requested that the excavations be renewed, it was partly due to the increasing threat of destruction to the site posed by new and expanding construction projects adjacent to the site. The authors had proposed a new survey around the site area to map the extent of ancient settlement in the area before it was erased and to take environmental samples for analysis. However, the DGA requested instead a return to on-site excavations at the TFK tell, both for security concerns and to mitigate the threat of damage by the developers. As long as active research was taking place on site, it fell under automatic protective legal guidelines which were otherwise much more difficult to mobilize. The team agreed to return to the excavations for an additional three-year campaign, from 2014 to 2016, for the above reasons and because there were indeed many research questions left unanswered by previous operations. However, since we wouldn’t be able to excavate forever of course, we knew that getting the local village more actively involved in the archaeological research and presentation of the site this time around was not only ethically preferable, but it was the only practical way of ensuring the archaeological site’s protection in the face of future development proposals promising economic growth. Active community engagement therefore became one of the project priorities for this campaign. Of course, all such plans depend on the local village communities wanting to preserve the site. We could make our case, as archaeologists, but our priorities are obviously and understandably different from those of the larger community and its diverse component interest groups, and ultimately the decision rested (and continues to rest) with them. If archaeological preservation was not a goal they were

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interested in rallying behind, we would need to more actively re-frame and re-­ budget the project to preserve as much archaeological data as possible before it was removed. Fortunately, an archaeologist and colleague had personal contacts in the village who he thought might be interested in the project, and put the team in touch with two local interested parties. One of the two was already developing a local municipal movement to preserve the beaches and natural environment around the village(s) to protest the encroaching development projects and minimize their destructive impact on the very stretch of coastline on which the site is located. The other local contact had an interest in eco-tourism as an alternative development plan for the area, and so was also invested in maintaining the environmental and historical integrity of the area around the village. At the time of writing, the former party in particular remains closely involved with the local environmental activist group ‘Save Kfarabida’, which continues to incorporate archaeological and historical heritage concerns into its agenda for coastal protection against over-development.6 With these local partners’ assistance, as well as that of others with longer standing relationships to the project, the archaeological team were able to organize a series of local events over the course of 2014–2016 to bring the larger community together around the site, and to engage with the broader preservation interests of the community members. Specific community-based events over the 2014–2016 campaign included site tours and presentations, joint lectures delivered both by the co-­ authors and their colleagues and by AUB students in the village, hosting local children on-site to participate in the excavation and learn about archaeology, and submitting a report written for the public to the local historical society’s publication (Figs. 9.5, 9.6, and 9.7). Community members who attended these events shared photographs and opinions on social media, broadening the reach. Local journalists also became involved and published several print and broadcast reports. By explicitly linking the preservation of the archaeological heritage with the natural heritage, and the ways in which the histories of each are linked to contemporary economic and cultural priorities, the team were able to establish a more secure connection with community interests. For instance, the hills above Kfarabida and around Batroun are now in the heart of the new Northern Lebanese Wine Trail, which we are able to link to the ancient traces of viticulture present in our archaeobotanical records. Similarly, the clear importance of the sea to both an ancient and modern livelihoods and senses of connectivity has provided a critical sense of identity linking past and present, and reinforcing the local motivation to keep the coastline and its resources  – both natural and cultural  – clean, well-preserved, and publicly accessible.

 The group’s activities can be observed and their contact information located on their Facebook page (2016). The names of the individuals involved are withheld here as the local political situation remains unpredictable, and occasionally disputes surrounding the archaeological project have been used for personal causes. 6

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Fig. 9.5  AUB students describing ongoing excavations to the local community during visitor’s day events. (Photograph © the authors)

9.5 The Bigger Picture Meanwhile, the co-authors and their colleagues were still working with the DGA to negotiate the best possible outcome for site preservation that would also benefit local landowners. We are acutely sympathetic to the concerns of the landowners who wanted to develop – it is, after all, their land, and whether or not they were properly informed of its archaeological significance at the time of purchase, they had purchased it as an investment and intended source of income, the denial of which is understandably disappointing. It is, however, important to note that this is not a situation in which the land was being used for subsistence farming or other primary income generating activities, which would lend themselves to an entirely different set of ethical arguments. There is one landowner whose plot adjacent to the site is used for subsistence agriculture (orchards), and one who had a small local business (cement-making), and we spent a long time ensuring that their plots were never threatened by archaeological research or preservation efforts. The primary land claims at stake, on the other hand, were those of developers who had purchased the land to build houses or hotels, and who had many other sources of income. Nonetheless, the team were eager to come to compromises that would help integrate archaeological preservation and research with the plans of all the landowners, and with the larger public interest. In one case, we have in fact been reasonably successful: one of the landowners who had originally planned to build his hotel directly through the center of the archaeological site was convinced to build a

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Fig. 9.6  AUB students describing ongoing excavations to the local community during visitor’s day events. (Photograph © the authors)

smaller version next to it instead, with only light, foundation-less cabins on top surrounding the excavated areas and incorporating them as tourist attractions in his landscaping. It is not the ideal solution from the archaeological perspective or public accessibility, but it is a reasonable and practical solution to a complicated problem that often ends much worse. However, in other cases we were not able to reach such an agreement, and therefore are currently working with the DGA and local collaborators to pursue other options. Some of these are also not ideal solutions for any party involved, but coming to a degree of decisive action is an important statement on behalf of the public interest and the government’s intent to protect its cultural resources. The issue of private landowners’ relationships with the government and with archaeologists in Lebanon, such as we have encountered at Tell Fadous-Kfarabida, is a complex one, encountered not just in fixed land use cases, but also regarding movable artifacts. When objects are found on private property, but the land itself is

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Fig. 9.7  Project members and community members at a locally organized half-day seminar on the archaeological project. (Photograph © the authors)

not designated as an archaeological site, there are multiple and often difficult reactions. Helene Sader (2012) has documented the way in which local populations feel justified in their illicit excavation of archaeological material on private property, and the selling of artifacts found there. As she describes, although the 1933 Lebanese Antiquities Law clearly offers provisioning for the government to assess and purchase any antiquities found on private lands, people don’t trust the government to give them a fair deal, and indeed (not entirely unreasonably) they tend to measure ‘fair’ in these cases by what they could get for their finds on the illegal market. This is similarly so in terms of the issue of immovable site preservation; whereas the same law provides for the government, through expropriation, to pay a reasonable market price for the land on which critical archaeological sites are located, landowners often understand market value very differently than the government does (or can afford to). This is not always rooted solely in economic interest; when excavations have taken place on private land, despite what the law stipulates, people may feel that their property rights to that land should supersede the government’s claims to historical content. Because Lebanon does not have a clearly defined sense of national unity,7 and in many ways operates on a day-to-day level as a series of  Again, it should be emphasized here that the issue of national identity came to the forefront of Lebanese cultural politics in important new ways during the popular revolution that began in October 2019. Those new developments are unfortunately beyond the scope of this paper. 7

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loosely networked and overlapping micro-communities, it is particularly difficult for many people to concede that the benefit of their property should go to any kind of unified national interest (ibid.). Just as many people distrust and disapprove of the law that provides for the government’s right to expropriate land, they also distrust archaeologists until their intentions for the land in the long-term are made clear. This is due in part to the fact that archaeologists work under the permission and auspices of the DGA, so in many ways represent an extension of that ambiguous national infrastructure that grants permission to outsiders8 to conduct work locally. It is also due in part to the historic role that archaeologists, until recent decades mostly foreign, have played in the colonization of the region’s histories, antiquities, and people. We encountered this distrust as well in the villages around Tell Fadous-Kfarabida, when we tried to gain access to a neighboring plot of land for ground survey and were told that the landowners would not permit it because, even though they emphasized they had no problem with us ‘personally’, they were worried that the government would take away their property and give it to us should anything be discovered there and they did not trust our assurances to the contrary. The case is similar for sites such as Tell Fadous-Kfarabida itself, which does not suffer from the unsanctioned removal of movable antiquities, i.e. looting, but rather from its permanent position on private land with significant investment and development value. In this case, rather than resenting the government for co-opting the antiquities on the property for the sake of their own market value, landowners resent the government depriving them of the greater value they imagine that future (now banned) development on the site might provide.

9.6 A Future for the Past? Herein lies an important part of the problem. While none of the observations made so far in this chapter are necessarily unique to Lebanon, in this sense of futurity they begin to circle around something more contextually specific. In development of property for commercial use as a resort, hotel, restaurant/bar or nightclub, landowners are participating in a collective imaginary of the future that is in their minds apolitical: the capitalist future of money-generating, consumer-oriented business, whose success and riches are ostensibly up for grabs by any motivated individual, and mediated by a flexible central authority (Mouawad & Baumann, 2017). There is competition, and instability, but no automatic restriction to accessing this imagined future that there might have been in a more securely centralized, hierarchically organized previous version of society.

 Even if the archaeologists are Lebanese, they very rarely are from the area where the archaeological project is located, and are therefore considered ‘outsiders’ as well, though on a lesser scale than non-Lebanese archaeologists. 8

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Archaeology and antiquities, however, appear in this imaginary as part of a politicized, colonial, and sectarian history in which there is no automatic gain for the average investor, and in which it is difficult to root a global vision of the future. The issue at hand, then, has less to do with a public uneducated about the past, because education does not always (or even usually) change a popular desire to be free of the past (Kersel, 2007). The problem does not necessarily have a basis in the reality of income or financial stability, either, because as often as not, resorts and beach bars fail in an oversaturated market, and promises of touristic development around antiquities are seen as unappealing. And it certainly is no longer useful to consider the situation as part of the consequences of active armed conflict, wherein human lives and security take precedence over all else. If the concerns were only material and logistical, a solution would be more readily available. The authors suggest, rather, that the problem has more to do with both a material and an ideological reimagining of what modernity for Lebanon means, what it should look like, and how it can be reconciled with a landscape bearing the scars of the past. This is partly the temporal politics of archaeology; in actively engaging with the material traces of the past and making them part of contemporary lifeways, we are required not only to assert a sense of history, but to reckon with what that history says about our current societies and relationships, and our imagination of the future. Which kinds of historical practices and relationships do we uphold, and which do we reject? From where do we understand our current behavior to have derived, and are we comfortable with that moving forward? This can be a troubling experience, not least because of the checkered ways in which archaeology has been used to manipulate and exploit over the years. In many cases, complete demolition and/or rejection of the significance of archaeology may be seen as a legitimate way to ‘reset’ for an imagined more neutral and, ideally, prosperous modernity. To bulldoze and rebuild can be a kind of iconoclasm not only of the objects and sites themselves, but of the labor of archaeology and archaeologists’ role in historical deceptions and oppression, and the inaccessibility of land. This latter is particularly true on the Lebanese coast, where the government and outside forces have been complicit in removing so much of the land from the control of the public. This is also specifically a vision that has been historically reproduced in Lebanon as the country reinvented itself several times throughout the twentieth century  – importantly, not always in the context of war. The Ottomans, the French Mandate, and the Lebanese Republic both at its debut and again in the post-Civil War years have all reconstructed new versions of a ‘more modern’ and ‘more ideal’ city, based on developments that, while different in orientation and design, shared the goal of reorganizing the past into a more unified vision of the future. The traces of their efforts still permeate downtown Beirut, which has been perhaps the most extensively documented part of the country (Makdisi, 1997; Nagel, 2002; Sawalha, 1998). The Ottomans centered their version of Beirut around a regularized sense of time – a giant clock maintaining public attention to and spatial orientation around prayer times that still stands in the central Place de l’Etoile. The French opted instead for a regularized sense of space, demolishing the meanderings of Ottoman

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streets, perceived as disorderly and uncivilized, in favor of resurrecting the classical lines of the Roman city beneath, and even actively preserving Roman columns and ruins to emphasize the connection between the past empire and the current one (Makdisi, 2006). In the 1940s and 50s, the newly minted Lebanese Republic largely maintained the French city center and embraced its title as the ‘Paris of the Middle East’, modeling itself on what those in power saw as the kind of city that linked both history and modernity with a sense of prosperity, and European capitalism and cosmopolitanism (Makdisi, 2006; Monroe, 2016). After the Civil War destroyed most of this downtown, the reconstruction projects of the 1990s, led by the multi-national corporation Solidère, re-invented the notion of modernity yet again through re-­ organization of the city center, this time focusing on investment in high-end retail, residential, and hotel development. This time, development seemed designed to keep the messiness of daily life at bay (for instance, public street performance and food carts were banned in the city center) and to project a new, elite, shiny, and un-­ scarred face to the world, preserving only the most visually stunning parts of the Roman architecture and historic souks. In doing so, the government expropriated almost 90% of land in the Beirut Central District, in most cases giving landowners highly devalued Solidère stock in lieu of actual monetary compensation (Seeden, 2000). Along with this last re-development came an international team of archaeologists, whose purpose was to excavate and record whatever they could of the ancient and historical layers below the city before the developers built over it. In point of fact, the archaeological teams and the developers were not strictly working together, and had very different goals and an often antagonistic relationship (see Makdisi, 1997, 2006; Nagel, 2002; Seeden, 2000). Nonetheless, the public saw their land taken and archaeologists set to work on it, followed by the rise of the ‘modern’, over-urbanized, over-developed city of the future that transcended the wounds of the past by largely ignoring them, covering them up, pouring money on top of them and then restricting access to their legacy. Makdisi (1997) documents the ways in which popular sentiment emerged that foreign archaeologists’ interests were afforded more respect in many cases than the families who had lived on that land for centuries. Since this process in Beirut was reported at such high volume across international media, its effects were felt throughout the country. Is it any wonder that after the dust settled from that process in Beirut,9 landowners elsewhere were wary about the relationship between archaeologists and land expropriation, and their own position in the new future? Along the coast, the intensification of development practices that strip land away, and the increasing distrust of government corruption that underwrites land loss, only amplifies these feelings. We frequently heard the  Arguably, it has not actually settled yet. There are still a number of historical preservation activists and groups in direct conflict with developers on a daily basis, and one of the authors regularly receives communications from non-archaeologist friends in Beirut who see downtown excavation areas covered with white tarpaulin and want to know what is being hidden. Typically, this tarpaulin is just protection from the sun for the workers, but the mistrust is deeply rooted and easily exposed. 9

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sentiment that if it could happen in Beirut, to places of such renown, it certainly can happen in the more rural areas, to less influential people and their places. Indeed, it is easy to empathize, when we have struggled ourselves, with the assistance of the DGA, to find ways to preserve TFK along with its coastline in a way that is sustainable for and accessible to the local community.

9.7 So, What Next? In her writing on the looting and destruction of movable cultural heritage, Morag Kersel (2007) argues persuasively that increased education or legislation alone are not sufficient to motivate producing populations (looters and middlemen) to limit their activities. Instead, she proposes the situation requires attention to reducing demand and increasing responsibility and awareness in the consumer market (often located abroad). Perhaps we can extend this proposal to our consideration of immovable heritage in coastal Lebanon, too. That is to say, when archaeological objects or remains appear to potential consumers (such as landowners, tourists, or collectors), they must represent a potential future landscape as accessible and profitable as that provided by concretized coastlines vibrating with the newest club music. This is where the real, long-lasting work of (post)-conflict archaeology lies: after the immediate violence is over, and attention has passed to other, more immediate dangers on the international stage, how does archaeology contribute to local, personalized senses of a desirable future? Moreover, how can we learn to talk and write about post-conflict archaeology as part of the present and future, rather than an emblem of the violent past? Neil Brodie (2015) has characterized such problems in his discussion of Libya’s heritage crisis, as factors of the way in which cultural heritage policy is developed and applied, especially when it comes to the material investment in the protection of endangered cultural properties by the international community. Brodie (ibid., p. 215) observes that in cases of conflict endangerment, ‘policy actions are reactive. They occur after significant damage has already been caused’, and tend to be ‘country-­specific’. For instance, on the ground, it is a fact that Lebanon’s cultural property may come under increasing danger due to absorbing the effects of wars in Syria and Iraq, such as growing populations seeking labor and housing. However, the international money allotted to protect cultural property affected by those wars goes to those countries only, not to the countries absorbing their impact. As Lebanon moves farther away from its own active war, and other countries develop their own armed conflict scenarios, the international attention and willingness to provide aid shifts focus as well. There is little media visibility for archaeological sites and objects destroyed by something as mundane as construction, especially when it is labeled as ‘development’ and ‘progress’, and when there is such dramatically visible destruction going on just over the hills. This is true despite the fact that the absence of a prolonged post-conflict approach to archaeological preservation is actively reshaping

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landscapes and livelihoods on a massive, daily scale (Newson & Young, 2018), and is clearly a topic that brings together environment, politics, and heritage across the board from legislation, to activism, to research. This gets to the heart of what the authors call here ‘conflicting non-conflict archaeology’: that which takes place in the everyday after-effects of more active armed conflicts past, the forgotten waves of the unremarkable, churned up by storms just over the horizon, and breaking against silent shores.

9.8 Conclusions As the first author has argued elsewhere (Damick, 2011; Damick & Lash, 2013), we maintain that the only way to simultaneously address policy, community stakeholder, and ‘consumer’ mindsets is via direct engagement and collaboration with the local community – importantly, through listening to and working with multiple stakeholder understandings of and intentions for the future of their history (see for example Lorenzon & Zermani, 2016; Näser, 2019; Näser & Tully, 2019). After all, preserving a site simply for the sake of its preservation, rather than so that it might continue to participate in the unfolding history of its community, is much like restricting objects from the market just so that they can pile up, largely forgotten, in storeroom basements. In this sense, the authors see a lot of opportunity for the preservation of Tell Fadous-Kfarabida, as well as its incorporation into a new vision of a communal future for the Kfarabida and Fadous villages based on shared (though not identical) history. We also consider it to have great potential to become a keystone case study for community-based heritage preservation along the complex and besieged Lebanese coastline, through close coordination with the local environmental activism efforts. These local activists are working hard to bridge the administrative and conceptual gap between natural and cultural preservation, and TFK is poised to be a part of that effort. This is strategically practical, of course, since coastal development/urban sprawl is the ‘common enemy’, between our professional interests and community goals, and it allows the environmental and heritage causes to share a motivated activist base. But it is also conceptually important that archaeology not continue to distance itself from the present and future, even as it reaches to understand the past. Finally, we must work against the tendency to only consider landscape destruction as urgent and systematic when it takes place under armed conflict, and at major architectural and urban centers. Indeed, we suggest that these are the only effective strategies to build better community archaeology programs in post-conflict and conflict-adjacent zones, where systematic destruction of antiquities is part of a larger future-building agenda that extends long past the conflict itself. We must start to understand non-conflict, low-­ visibility heritage destruction as a potentially greater systematic threat to that of active warfare, and equally part of such iconoclastic visions of the future. Our strategies must be as urgent, and as locally engaged.

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Acknowledgments  This work could not have been completed without a broad support network of individuals and groups in Kfarabida and Fadous, whose names we withhold for their own security but to whom we are very grateful. Likewise, we are indebted to our DGA representative, Ms. Samar Karam, and the Director of the DGA, Mr. Sarkis El Khoury, and all our project participants, particularly the archaeology students from AUB.  The Tell Fadous-Kfarabida project has been funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the American University of Beirut, Columbia University, and a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant.

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Makdisi, U. S. (1997). Laying claim to Beirut: Urban narrative and spatial identity in the age of Solidere. Critical Inquiry, 23(3), 661–705. Makdisi, U.  S. (2006). Beirut, a city without history? In U.  S. Makdisi & P.  A. Silverstein (Eds.), Memory and violence in the Middle East and North Africa (pp.  201–214). Indiana University Press. Makhzoumi, J. (2016). From urban beautification to a holistic approach: The discourses of ‘landscape’ in the Arab Middle East. Landscape Research, 41(4), 461–470. Masri, R. (1999). Development – At what Price? A review of the Lebanese authorities’ management of the environment. Arab Studies Quarterly, 21(1), 117–134. Massih, J.  A. (2010). The archaeological heritage of Lebanon. Near Eastern Archaeology, 73(2/3), 68–72. Meskell, L. (2002). Archaeology under fire: Nationalism, politics and heritage in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Routledge. Meskell, L. (2010). Conflict heritage and expert failure. In S. Labadi & C. Long (Eds.), Heritage and globalisation (pp. 192–201). Routledge. Monroe, K.  V. (2016). The Insecure city: Space, power, and mobility in Beirut. Rutgers University Press. Moshenska, G. (2015). Curated ruins and the endurance of conflict heritage. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 17(1), 77–90. Mouawad, J., & Baumann, H. (2017). Wayn al-Dawla? Locating the Lebanese state in social theory. Arab Studies Journal, 25(1), 66–90. Nagel, C. (2002). Reconstructing space, re-creating memory: Sectarian politics and urban development in post-war Beirut. Political Geography, 21(5), 717–725. Näser, C. (2019). Exploring attitudes towards the archaeological past: Two case studies from majority Muslim communities in the Nile valley. Journal of Social Archaeology, 19(3), 379–402. Näser, C., & Tully, G. (2019). Dialogues in the making: Collaborative archaeology in Sudan. Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage, 6(3), 155–171. Newson, P., & Young, R. (2015). The archaeology of conflict-damaged sites: Hosn Niha in the Biqa’ valley, Lebanon. Antiquity, 89(344), 449–463. Newson, P., & Young, R. (Eds.). (2018). Post-conflict archaeology and cultural heritage: Rebuilding knowledge, memory and community from war-damaged material culture. Routledge. Perring, D., & van der Linde, S. (2009). The politics and practice of archaeology in conflict. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 11(3–4), 197–213. Plets, G. (2017). Violins and trowels for Palmyra: Post-conflict heritage politics. Anthropology Today, 33(4), 18–22. Rowbotham, J. (2010). ‘Sand and foam’: The changing identity of Lebanese tourism. Journal of Tourism History, 2(1), 39–53. Sader, H. (2012). Between looters and private collectors: The tragic fate of Lebanese antiquities. In S. Mejcher-Atassi & P. Schwartz (Eds.), Archives, museums, and collecting practices in the modern Arab world (pp. 57–69). Ashgate Publishing Ltd.. Save Kfarabida. (2016, September 7). Save Kfarabida [Facebook]. Retrieved from https://www. facebook.com/pg/savekfaraabida/. Sawalha, A. (1998). The reconstruction of Beirut: Local responses to globalization. City & Society, 10(1), 133–147. Seeden, H. (2000). Lebanon’s archaeological heritage on trial in Beirut: What future for Beirut’s past? Cultural Resource Management in Contemporary Society, 14, 168. Volk, L. (2008). When memory repeats itself: The politics of heritage in post-civil war Lebanon. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 40(2), 291–314.

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Alison Damick is an environmental archaeologist, paleobotanist and geoarchaeologist with ongoing research projects in Lebanon and New Mexico. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 2019. She is currently a National Science Foundation Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Environmental Archaeology Lab and the Anthropology Department at the University of Texas at Austin. She co-­directed the Tell Fadous-Kfarabida excavations in Lebanon from 2014 to 2016. Her research focuses on the multi-scalar social and environmental effects of changing landuse practices during periods of climatic and political variability in past societies, particularly the North American Southwest and Southwest Asia. She also maintains a strong commitment to developing the connections between human-environmental histories and contemporary communities, and in being accountable for the politics of narrating those histories.  

Hermann Genz received his PhD from the University of Tübingen in 1998. He is currently Professor of Archaeology at the American University of Beirut. He directed and co-directed excavation projects in Lebanon at Tell Fadous-Kfarabida (2004–2016), Tell Mirhan (2017–ongoing) and Baalbek (2012–ongoing). His research focuses on the Bronze and Iron Ages of the Eastern Mediterranean, especially the Levant and Anatolia. For the Levant, his research interests include the transition from village communities to more complex forms of socio-political organisation, often called ‘city-states’ in the late fourth/early third millennium, and the ultimate incorporation of the Levant into large empires in the second millennium BC. Further fields of interest are the chronological and functional aspects of Bronze Age pottery, the storage and trade of agricultural goods, mining and metallurgy, and trade relations between the Levant and the neighbouring regions as well as interrelations between human societies and their environment. His research in Anatolia centres on the archaeology of the Hittite Empire as well as the Iron Age cultures of Central Anatolia. Special points of interest are the foreign relations of the Hittites, the reasons for the collapse of the Hittite empire and the re-emergence of social complexity in the Iron Age.  

Chapter 10

The Management of Syrian Archaeological Heritage Before and During the Syrian Conflict: A Comparison Study Isber Sabrine

10.1 Introduction Syria, located at the crossroads of the Mediterranean and of the great empires of Ur, Babylon, Akkad and Sumer that arose in Mesopotamia, has been involved in the tide of momentous historical events, in addition to playing an influential role in the rise and spread of major world religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) – all of which left their imprint on an area that we now consider important to world history.1 Syria is an open-air museum with six declared World Heritage Sites: the ancient cities of Damascus, Bosra, and Aleppo; the archeological site of Palmyra; the fortresses of Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah el-Din; and the ancient villages of northern Syria also known as the ‘Dead Cities’. To this we must add Syria’s 12 inscriptions on the World Heritage Tentative List, including the ancient sites of Ebla, Apamea, Dura Europos and Mari, and the Norias (water wheels) of Hama. Aside from these sites which are, by definition, of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’,2 there are numerous rare and important collections of antiquities housed in the country’s museums, notably in Raqqa, Homs, Hama, Damascus, and Aleppo, as well as built heritage such as the castle of Qal’at Ja’bar, and a profusion of 10,000 tells, or archaeological mounds, 5000 of which are scattered in the region of Jazira in northeast Syria (Ali, 2013). Prior to 2011, this cultural wealth was the subject of 138 national and foreign archaeological missions (cf. Table 10.1).  For useful references on the importance of Syria and its history through recently excavated archaeological sites, see Akkermans and Schwartz (2003), Kanjou and Tsuneki (2016). 2   Article 1 of the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural Heritage, 1972. 1

I. Sabrine (*) Spanish Research Council (CSIC), Arab Network of Civil Society to Safeguard Cultural Heritage (ANSCH), Heritage for Peace, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_10

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Table 10.1  The number of archaeological missions in Syria before and during the conflict. (Table by the author) Missions National Joint Foreign Total

2009 35 58 28 121

2010 57 47 33 137

2011 27 10 2 39

2012 23 0 0 23

2013 28 0 0 28

2014 22 0 0 22

Since the beginning of the conflict in 2011, Syria’s cultural heritage has been one of the victims of the war. It has suffered shelling, looting, and demolition, and many sites have been used for military purposes. All six Syrian World Heritage Sites are in danger (UNESCO, 2013). Right from the start, the international media have reported on the destruction (see Cunliffe, 2012), their output increasing as the conflict continued, especially when ISIS started to destroy archaeological sites such as Palmyra, the Monastery of St. Elian, Raqqa, Mari and Doura Europos. They have played an important role in raising awareness of this issue, providing many reports about the destruction of Syria’s World Heritage Sites and the extensive devastation of numerous other archaeological and architectural heritage resources, including churches and mosques. Sites affected by illegal excavations and illicit trafficking have also received a lot of attention. The destruction of Syrian heritage has always been shown in the media as a consequence of war, but there are other indirect reasons for its destruction that are related to the way that it was managed before the conflict began. This chapter provides a critique of these indirect reasons, examining a tranche of inadequacies and failings in pre-conflict management frameworks and processes within legislative structures, excavation projects, museums and the institutions that manage archaeological heritage, before turning to the situation contemporaneous with the conflict. The latter is discussed in terms of how the conflict has affected the sites, and how these sites have suffered from illegal excavation, looting, and destruction. It will highlight the actions taken by the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM), the main body responsible for Syria’s antiquities, and other important institutions to safeguard Syria’s archaeological heritage during the conflict. An exploration of the relationship between local communities in Syria and the country’s archaeological resources is presented in both parts, and provides an opportunity for future crucial engagement.

10.2 Contextual Overview: Heritage Institutions and Pre-­conflict Community Engagement This section will present a brief overview of the national Syrian institutions involved in the management of cultural heritage before providing examples of community participation in heritage practice prior to 2011. The institutional focus will be on the DGAM, its structure and remit.

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The DGAM was created after Syria was granted independence in 1946 (DGAM, n.d.-a), formed as part of the process of establishing an independent Syrian institution of archaeology. From 1946 until today, it has remained the main body involved in the preservation of archaeological heritage, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture. The adoption of the Syrian Law of Antiquities (No. 222) in 1963 aided in structuring the work of foreign archaeological missions in Syria, and gave the DGAM the authority to act as the main institution responsible for archaeological research. In addition to the central administration in Damascus, the DGAM has 14 branches around Syria, one in each province. The DGAM is charged with various activities, namely excavations, the registration and administration of sites, preservation, reconstruction and restoration, museums, and the control of illegal excavations and illicit trade (ibid.). Prior to 2011, there were also several associations dedicated to cultural heritage, but their role was small. Most were established between 1950 and 1960 and were involved in raising awareness of cultural heritage by organizing conferences and archaeological tours. Of these early associations, the most active today are the Association of Friends of Damascus (n.d.), the Adeyat of Aleppo (n.d.), and the Syrian Historical Association of Homs, all of which were founded before the current Syrian regime came to power (Gillot, 2008, p.  131). These groups suffered from a lack of governmental support, funding, and resources. With more support, these associations could play a very important practical role, as they have extensive experience of their specialist areas. The role of local communities in the management of cultural heritage is also crucial. ‘Community archaeology has given local communities and groups around the world a voice in archaeology and heritage management’ (Chirikure & Pwiti, 2008, p. 469) and local participation helps them to access their heritage. In the last decade, considerable work has been done on the use of archaeological sites for the economic and educational benefit of local communities, and their participation is the best way to protect archaeological heritage. According to Damm (2005, p. 76), ‘community participation is not just about engagement, it is about giving power to the local communities in all aspects of heritage, including research and management.’ Local archaeological heritage is a valuable tool to foster a sense of pride, and working out how to ‘show it off is as important as the conservation works’ (Grimwade & Carter, 2000, p. 36). In Syria, the involvement of local communities in heritage management was always modest, and limited to individual efforts, a selection of which is presented here. One of the most important initiatives is the Urkesh Eco-Archaeological Park in Tell Mozan. The ancient city of Urkesh is located in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains in northeastern Syria, near the Turkish border. Excavations began in 1984 under co-directors Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellatti, with the former remarking that, It is, then, with tender care that we must nurture a project like ours – aimed at a remote Syrian past, and yet so full of meaning for the Syrian present. So, we had to design wholly new ways of showing how much life there is in the remoteness of a buried past. It is a moral presence. But not in the rhetorical sense that we only speak about it rather, in the very concrete and real sense that we are transforming culture into social glue. (Buccellati, 2014a)

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This archaeological project had a very important aim, raising local awareness of the importance of local culture through training in conservation and education at all levels in the villages of Tell Mozan (Fig. 10.1), and its close neighbour, Umm er-­ Rabia. During this project, a well-regarded social initiative for development was initiated, called the Gates of Urkesh. Aimed at renewing local handicraft traditions in the two villages, the initiative encouraged participants to produce hand-made items to sell to tourists. The project has become a model scheme at the grassroots level (Buccellati, 2014b). Also significant was the education programme, ‘Youth and Heritage’, implemented in Sweida province in 2010. The aim of the programme was to increase the participants’ appreciation of their cultural heritage as natives of Syria, and mobilize young people to become conservators and advocates of local historic sites (Alkateb, 2013, p. 191). This scheme attempted to promote the local community’s awareness of its oral heritage, facilitate access to surrounding archaeological sites, encourage active youth participation, build the capacities of local actors in the cultural field, and increase internal tourism. It included training and educational activities for teenagers and young adults to give them an opportunity to develop the perception of their cultural heritage as an asset (Alkateb, 2013, p. 191). During the project, participants from Palmyra and Sweida created anthologies of local songs and tales, and produced two short cartoon films that targeted local children. The project also resulted in two travelling multimedia exhibits – cultural buses – of project productions that travelled to Damascus, Palmyra, Sweida and their surrounding villages (ibid., p. 194).

Fig. 10.1  Children visit Tell Mozan. (Photograph © the author)

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Another initiative that worked with local communities was the project at Sheikh Hilal village in the Syrian Desert, conducted by the local association, the Friends of Salamiyah, with funding support from the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development. Against a backdrop of desertification and subsequent prohibition on cultivation around the village in 2000, this project aimed to preserve the threatened architectural heritage through local community participation in training programmes on the restoration of the distinctive mudbrick village houses, or qobahs,3 characterized by their distinctive mud domes (SANA, n.d.). The project also worked to create local handicrafts such as embroidery, needlework and pottery.

10.3 Pre-conflict Archaeological Heritage Management: Limitations and Absences Prior to the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, very little attention was paid to identifying and analysing the major issues in managing Syria’s archaeological heritage. Attention was solely focused on archaeological excavations. This absence of pre-­ conflict research has limited understandings of the impacts of war on the country’s cultural wealth. Through an engagement with the author’s work at the DGAM between 2004 and 2010,4 and with secondary sources, the most significant facets and loci of archaeological heritage management in Syria are explored here in terms of their limitations. These are most acutely apparent in the legislative frameworks within which the country’s heritage assets are located.

10.3.1 Legislative Framework Heritage laws are one of the most significant tools in the management of cultural heritage. Several studies have provided overviews of public support in heritage management processes, including the obstacles to it within legislative frameworks and administrative practice (Cleere, 2010, pp. 4–12). Scholars have also discussed cultural heritage management within the context of international conventions and guidelines (e.g. Doumas, 2013, p.  112; Abdelkader et  al., 2016, p.  8), including those of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization  The qobahs of Sheikh Hilal were built by farmers in the 1920s on Byzantine foundations, their thick walls and small windows making them comfortable across the seasons. Twelve were restored by local people using local materials – mud, straw, untreated wood and limewash. 4  The analysis here is based on the author’s personal observations while working at the DGAM. As a student on placement at the directorate, the author participated in several archaeological missions as well as working with DGAM staff on exhibitions in the National Museum in Damascus (coinciding with Damascus becoming the Arabic Capital of Culture in 2008). During this period, the author also worked in the Directorate of Excavations as part of the administrative team. 3

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(UNESCO) and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). The World Heritage Convention (1972), for example, recognizes the importance of state parties’ legislation to control all activities and development processes. Unfortunately, whilst today Syria’s heritage managers work closely with these organizations wherever possible, the country’s antiquities laws do not reflect modern international legislation. Syria’s heritage is governed by the Law of Antiquities No. 222, dating back to 1963. Together with amendments made in 1999, it is the main regulatory legislative device for protecting cultural heritage. According to this law, the Ministry of Culture – represented by the DGAM – is the principal national administrative entity of all archaeological sites, monuments, objects and museums. These are all declared to be public national property. The law then sets up the main tools to prevent the destruction, transformation and damage to all of Syria’s movable and immovable antiquities. The Syrian Law of Antiquities explains the nature of Syria’s heritage, its framework, categories, management, and the names of the State authorities in charge of its protection. It identifies antiquities as cultural property, and distinguishes clearly between movable and immovable forms of heritage. It lays down the national regulations surrounding cultural property, and explains the expected penalties in cases of destruction, or in the event of failure to protect them. The law also classifies the rights and duties of all workers in the field of archaeology and heritage, as well as setting out the framework for foreign archaeological research teams working on Syrian territory. This law has always been the main legal tool for cultural heritage protection in Syria. However, it has created many difficulties for the management of Syria’s archaeological heritage. Following here are some of the main limitations.5 Lack of Identification  The Syrian Law of Antiquities identifies items of a certain significance which is in the general interest to preserve, but it lacks ways of distinguishing between types of cultural heritage. Syrian heritage is defined only as antiquities, and these are classified into just two types  – movable and immovable.6 Natural heritage, intangible heritage, and many other types of heritage more commonly considered elsewhere today are excluded. In addition, antiquities are only considered to be included in the definition if they are more than 200 years old. The delineations are not compatible with the international conventions which have adopted and encouraged many definitions of the concept of heritage.7 Nowadays, heritage laws need to identify the wide concept of cultural heritage, to include all forms of cultural heritage meaning, from the cultural resources of living populations (both tangible and intangible) and archaeological resources, to cultural landscapes

 The collection and analysis of data on the limitations of the Syrian Law of Antiquities was carried out by the author as an observer of, and as an employee embedded in, the DGAM over a 6-year period. 6  Article 1 of the Syrian Law of Antiquities No. 222. 7  See, for example, the definitions in the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (UNESCO, 1972). 5

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(landforms and biotic as well as non-biotic features of land resulting from cultural practices over time). Lack of Broader Institutional Framework  The law defines the DGAM as Syria’s main heritage management authority, without clarifying the role of any other national stakeholders. The law contains no elaboration on overall coordination between the central DGAM office, and its regional departments, but also between other organizations and institutions  – national and local.8 The lack of legal form identifying the relationships between the DGAM and other stakeholders has created tension, exemplified by the conflict that has arisen between the DGAM and the Ministry of Tourism over the use of archaeological sites and historic monuments. The law specifies that the DGAM should, for example, mark historic properties, monuments and archaeological sites on the relevant maps, and that both they and the maps should be consulted during urban planning, but this rarely occurs. No Clear Ownership  The law states that the DGAM retains certain management rights for sites and monuments, even if they do not own them. Antiquities – such as historic buildings – may be privately owned, or owned by other institutions,9 such as the Ministry of Religious Endowments and Religious Bodies (Awqaf), who own many religious properties (mosques, churches, monasteries, etc.) and have many responsibilities in their management. However, in order to preserve immovable registered antiquities, and to maintain their features and decorations, only the DGAM have the right to carry out maintenance and restoration.10 In addition, the owner of a registered immovable antiquity may not destroy, move in full or in part, renovate or change the immovable antiquity (often their home) in any way without prior permission from the DGAM.11 This section of the law gave the DGAM a huge responsibility that it lacked the capacity to conduct comprehensively.12 Yet, the law does not identify clearly what rights other institutions who own cultural property have, as opposed to the DGAM. For example, in the World Heritage Ancient City of Bosra, many people own houses in the ancient city and there was often tension between those people and the authorities as they were not allowed to carry out any kind of modification to their property. Many of the houses are very old, and people wanted to add modern amenities, an act that is forbidden by the law. Absence of Private Sector Involvement  The law does not consider the private sector as a stakeholder in the management of cultural heritage. For example, there is no role for private companies to participate in management plans of a­ rchaeological

 See Article 19 of the Syrian Law of Antiquities No. 222.  See Articles 18, 19, 20 and 21 of the Syrian Law of Antiquities No. 222. 10  See Article 22 of the Syrian Law of Antiquities No. 222. 11  See Article 23 of the Syrian Law of Antiquities No. 222. 12  See Articles 20 and 22 of the Syrian Law of Antiquities No. 222. 8 9

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sites and historical monuments; the private sector exists only in the tourism sector as travel agencies. Absence of Local Community Involvement  Lastly, the involvement of the local community in heritage management is vital for a meaningful outcome in any heritage development process (Abdelkader et al., 2016, p. 10) but the law does not take the interests of, and involvement with, local communities into consideration. They have no responsibility in decisions relating to the protection of cultural heritage, and there are no provisions for consultations on what should be protected. Nor is there any framework that allows the DGAM to involve communities in the management of what should also be their cultural heritage. As a result, the implementation of the law on the ground led to tensions with local communities. Conflicts arose, for example, between employees of the DGAM and local people because of building restrictions close to archaeological areas.13 Syrian law gives the DGAM the right to prevent all construction in archaeological areas, but it does not give compensation to affected local people. In addition, many local people worked at archaeological sites as vendors, trying to sell handcrafted products to benefit from tourist revenue. This often led to tension between those vendors and the authorities, as archaeological sites lack organized markets for the local craftsmen (Zobler, 2014, p. 7198). Aware of the problems, Syria intended to reform the legal and the institutional structure of cultural heritage management and an important initiative started in 2010, aiming to update the law in light of its problems and international developments (see DGAM, 2007).

10.3.2 Sites and Monuments The management of Syria’s archaeological sites and historical monuments is the task of different directorates at the DGAM. The work is normally coordinated by three bodies, the architecture directorate, the building directorate and the site management directorate. Every directorate has several units which carry out different tasks. The management of archaeological sites and historical monuments also suffered from problems before 2011, mainly coalescing around a lack of institutional interdependence, financial deficiencies and vague curatorial strategy.14 Lack of Co-ordination Between Institutions  Prior to the conflict, there was a lack of coordination between the Ministry of Tourism and DGAM regarding the management of archaeological sites and historical monuments. The contribution of

 The author witnessed several conflicts between local people and employees of the DGAM, arising because people were not allowed to build close to the archaeological areas. 14  All the data in this section was collected by the author through interviews with DGAM staff and direct observation. 13

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the Ministry of Tourism was very limited and it focused just on the touristic promotion of Syria’s archaeological heritage. Lack of National Funding  The lack of funding by DGAM led to limited implementation of the management plans in the archaeological sites and historical monuments. The strategy that DGAM followed regarding to the implementation of the management plans was dependent on international funding. Lack of Clear Restoration and Conservation Strategies  The DGAM had no clear strategy regarding the restoration and conservation of archaeological sites and historic monuments before the conflict. Essentially, the DGMA depended on foreign archaeological expeditions to do restoration work such as the conservation of the Royal Palace in Qatna (see Italian Archaeological Expedition at Qatna, 2006). The Aga Khan Foundation was the main foreign institution which supported the DGAM in restoration and conservation. In partnership with the DGAM, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) implemented several restoration and conservation programmes in Qalat Salah el-Din, Aleppo Citadel, and Masyaf Citadel (Aga Khan Development Network, n.d.).

10.3.3 Excavations The Excavation Directorate of the DGAM deals with excavation, investigation, archaeological surveys, and publications. It also gives the necessary authorizations to foreign scientific expeditions. Archaeological missions are classified into three different categories. The first is the foreign missions, which represent the majority of archaeological expeditions. The second is the national missions, of which there are few. The third is the joint missions, where Syrian and foreign archaeologists work together and which are co-directed by a Syrian and a foreign director. The foreign missions tended to be the most active and productive. Gillot (2010, p. 10) explains that, ‘In spite of the increase in jointly managed projects, the majority of archaeological scientific production emanates from foreign missions, which possess both the scientific and technical knowledge and the funds necessary to manage research, excavation and publication’. According to the former Director of the Excavation Directorate at the DGAM, Michel Maqdissi (2014; pers. comm. October 2015), there were 120 archaeological missions in Syria before the conflict, including French, British, German, Spanish, Italian, American, Polish, and Japanese missions. All the archaeological research in Syria was organized following the colonial model originally set up under the French Mandate (Gillot, 2010, p. 14). Lack of Communication Between Institutions  One of the biggest problems affecting the management of archaeological sites before the conflict was the lack of communication between the related institutions. This gap occurred at different levels. The first was at the ministerial level, between the Ministry of Culture and the

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Ministry of Tourism, which disagreed regarding the management of antiquities. They are split between two different conceptions of the values and functions of archaeological sites and remains (ibid., p. 11). The second was the lack of communication between central and local authorities regarding heritage sites. Local authorities (DGAM directorates in provinces, provisional councils, etc.) considered that the intervention of central government was either restrictive or insufficient (ibid.). Lack of Arabic Publications  According to the Syrian Law of Antiquities, excavation directors should present a report to the DGAM at the end of their excavation campaign. Prior to 2011, all the reports presented were very brief, without any common method or standard system of presentation between the archaeologists. In addition, all the reports were in English or French, without consideration of the limits of the language abilities of DGAM employees, thus disassociating them from the knowledge of the heritage they were responsible for. In addition, all the most important archaeological publications are written in foreign languages, except a few journals, such as Alhuliat Alatharia Asuria (The Archeological Annals) and Mahad Alhadara (Cradle of Civilization), which are in Arabic (DGAM, n.d.-a).

10.4 Pre-conflict Museums: The Prevalence of ‘Old Museology’ In the last 20 years, the number of studies dedicated to the management of museums has grown enormously (see Davies et al. 2013, p. 350). More recently, museums researchers have noted a shift in perspective and new orthodoxies in their discipline and practice, developments often described as ‘new museology’. According to McCall and Gray (2014, p. 55), this ‘started with the intention of introducing a new philosophy around how museums function and a changed relationship between museums and their societies and communities’. This section briefly examines the structure, management and development of museums in Syria before the conflict of 2011, attempting to discern how deeply ‘traditional’ museology was embedded and whether newer ways of working had begun to find purchase. The Directorate of Museum Affairs within the DGAM is responsible for the management of Syrian museums. It has three divisions, the first being the documentation and museum exhibition unit, whose main task is to register, describe, and evaluate antiquities which have been discovered and transported to museums for exhibition. This unit also has the important task of holding exhibitions inside and outside Syria. The second unit is responsible for developing existing museums and suggesting the establishment of new museums in the country, while the third has an educational and public relations remit, carrying out the task of encouraging schools and universities to visit museums, and preparing tourist guides and brochures for the museums in cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism. Syria has 38 museums, divided into 5 categories (DGAM, n.d.-b):

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• National museums. There are two – the National Museum of Damascus and the National Museum of Aleppo. • Regional museums. Syria’s 12 regional museums are in Hama, Homs, Daraa, Deir al-Zour, Palmyra, Idlib, Latakia, Bosra, Tartous, and Kenitra. • Popular Art and Traditions. These comprise seven museums distributed between the cities of Damascus, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Bosra, Palmyra and Deir al-Zor. • Archaeological museums. There are three archaeological museums: Arwad Museum, Dura-Europos Museum and Aleppo Citadel Museum. • Specialist museums. Fourteen museums fall into this category, including the Museum of Medicine and Science in Damascus, the Historical Museum of Damascus, the Calligraphy Museum in Damascus, the Museum of Mosaics in Maarat al-Numan (Fig.  10.2), the Citadel of Damascus, and the museums of specific regional areas, such as the museum of Deir Atiya, the museum of Sheik Saleh al-Ali, and the museum of Apamea. For several years before the start of the conflict, the DGAM carried out projects to develop Syria’s museums. These included, for example, a bilateral agreement between Syria and Italy15 in 2007, which resulted in a restoration-focused project to develop a high-tech lab in the National Museum (Damascus) and provide training in the latest technologies, and to establish an exhibition room for Syrian mosaics for restoration purposes. DGAM projects also involved restoring the Citadel of

Fig. 10.2  The destruction of Maarat al-Numan Museum. (Photograph © the author)

15

 The Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, Lebanon and Syria, Beirut Office (n.d.).

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Damascus, and strengthening the management ability of the directorate by establishing an inventory database for Syrian cultural heritage. Other international projects included an agreement with the Louvre Museum in 2008 to encourage the development of archaeological sites with professional staff; there were staff exchanges to study and to restore artworks in Syrian museums, and to train Syrian students in the field of restoration. The agreement also provided for the refurbishment of the exhibition rooms of the Eastern Antiques Department in the National Museum, and for the introduction and exhibition of Syrian antiquities in the Louvre (Alkhatib & Yazaji, 2010, p. 191). Unfortunately, this agreement was cancelled in 2011 due to the conflict. This development of Syria’s museums focused on museum methods, ‘the how to’ matters of conservation and administration with little attention paid to the new museological purposes of museums and their changed relationship with society. These basic aspects still required development – digitalized inventories and emergency plans were needed (see below), but we can also see that Syrian museums were still far from the newer orthodoxies  – diversifying publics and audiences, shifts to multi-disciplinarity (curators with multiple skills), and the prioritization of learning in museums – being embraced elsewhere. Lack of Trained Personnel  Syria has no faculties of Museum Studies and the majority of employees in Syrian museums are not trained to work in them. As a result, the museums have suffered from the absence of professional museum personnel. This has impacted all areas of museum practice. Lack of Inventory and Documentation  The lack of inventories was one of the biggest problems facing all the Syrian museums before the conflict. Every year, they received thousands of objects resulting from the archaeological excavations carried by foreign and national missions. The majority of those objects lacked any inventory or documentation; the knowledge about their origin was retained solely through identifying the location from where they had been retrieved. The lack of documentation lessened their scientific value and made it difficult to study them. Lack of Emergency Plans  No Syrian museums had any emergency plan, placing the museums, their collections, and their staff at risk. A robust emergency plan can help to prevent and minimize damage occurring from disasters (either manmade or natural). Modest Role in Education System  Museums have often played an important role in education in many countries, but in Syria this role was almost absent. The only museum that had an educational role was the Museum of Damascus, which carried out some activities related to cultural heritage education for local primary schools. This educational programme in the museum ran from 2007 to 2008, and allowed the children the opportunity to write in cuneiform, make clay figurines, and conduct their own mock archaeological excavations. The aim of this programme was to involve

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local school children in their heritage, which is infrequently mentioned in primary school books (Zobler, 2011, p. 180). Lack of Syrian Visitors  The number of local visitors to the museums before the Syrian conflict was very modest, the majority being foreign tourists, despite the free entrance for Syrians (ibid.).

10.5 Pre-conflict Heritage and Engagement: Limitations and Contestations As community involvement in local heritage was largely a result of individual initiatives, there were a number of problems besides those raised by a legal framework that did not account for organizations other than the DGAM. The areas constraining the interface with communities before 2011 are summarized here. Lack of Raising Awareness  Prior to the conflict, there was no policy for raising awareness of the importance of any heritage in Syria either locally, nationally, or even globally. The strategy was simply to spread awareness and link it to government or public institutions without the participation of the local community (Kanjou, 2014, p.  275). The government strategy not to involve local communities in the management of archaeological heritage led local people to consider heritage as an entity not belonging to them; rather, the majority considered that heritage belonged to the government (ibid.). Lack of Cultural Heritage Education  The educational system in Syria is limited regarding cultural heritage education. Syrian school history books concentrate almost exclusively on Arab history after the advent of Islam (Loosley, 2005, p. 590), although some school trips are organized to visit the most important archaeological sites (Admin, 2015). In addition, the role of the museums in cultural heritage education is very limited (see above). Lack of Resources  The DGAM had no budget for community involvement, and the national and foreign archaeological missions in Syria always received limited funding. The majority of the budget that was available was dedicated to archaeological research, and as McManamon (2000) observes, community archaeology requires a huge investment of resources that is not always available to researchers who are under pressure to publish rather than interact with the public. Conflicts Between Local Communities and Archaeologists  Archaeologists sometimes considered local communities to be a threat to the safety of archaeological sites. Contestation surrounding the use of sites is raised by Gillot (2010, p. 11), who notes that,

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The local use of archaeological space is often in conflict with archaeological research activities and protection measures, in such a way that local populations are perceived, by institutions and archaeologists, as a threat to the knowledge and protection of archaeological sites. Therefore, local populations are usually excluded, or access is limited by private ownership. These measures can lead, in some cases, to misunderstanding and strong opposition towards archaeological research and conservation procedures. Some scholars (e.g. Loosley, 2005) consider, therefore, that archaeological research and archaeological heritage are somehow unfamiliar or external to Arab and Muslim societies.

In addition, the majority of the archaeologists do not share the results of their discoveries with the local population; they are far from being involved as a crucial partner on archaeological excavations.16 Limited Economic Benefits for Local Communities  The only benefit of nearby sites and monuments for local communities is employment, usually when some locals become workers in archaeological projects, but this work is usually only temporary, and is frequently poorly-paid, menial labour. According to Gillot (ibid., p. 13), working with foreign archaeological missions is often better paid than the national DGAM expeditions, with seasonal salaries (normally 1–2 months) paid by the foreign archaeological missions superior to the local and average salary in agriculture or industry. DGAM did not have an adequate budget for the archaeological research needs, and the benefits for local communities through archaeological excavation was very limited and just for short periods of time. The project at Mari (Tell Hariri) stands as an alternative example, where the French archaeological mission trained local people in mudbrick building and conservation techniques and paid them as craftsmen (Sebastien Rey, pers. comm. 2012).

10.6 Syrian Archaeological Heritage Management During the Conflict Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011, its humanitarian, political and socio-economic repercussions continue to be catastrophic. As a result of the ongoing war, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed, and more than half of Syria’s population has been displaced (World Vision, 2017). The Syrian refugee crisis has become the biggest after the Second World War (UN Refugee Agency, 2016). This conflict has also led to the destruction of a significant amount of Syria’s cultural heritage. Many historical landmarks have been damaged or destroyed, while archaeological sites have been systematically plundered. Many actions have been taken both nationally and internationally to help protect it, but the conflict

 There were a few examples of positive relationships between archaeologists and local people, especially with long-term research programmes, where local workers became mediators between the two parties, and dialogue assisted the archaeologists in their interpretation of cultural material (see Gillot, 2010, p. 13). 16

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demonstrated new challenges that people were unprepared for, and the policies for the protection of cultural heritage in Syria have failed (Brodie, 2015, p. 1). This section briefly summarizes Syria’s archaeological heritage during the conflict, focusing on the reasons for its destruction, with a short analysis of how the management of heritage before the conflict has influenced the destruction during it. It is not the goal of this chapter to explore the many welcome attempts of the international community to assist in the protection of Syria’s heritage; these can be seen in other publications (for lists of actions, see Perini & Cunliffe, 2015; Leckie et al., 2017; for a more detailed analysis of them, see Al Quntar & Daniels, 2016).

10.6.1 Syrian Conflict as a Direct Reason for Damage Since 2011, many initiatives have documented the damage to Syria’s cultural resources. The DGAM published both regular updates (see DGAM, n.d.-c) and annual reports of the status of archaeological heritage from 2011 to 2016 (see UNESCO, n.d.-a). Damage to the Soul: Syrian Cultural Heritage in Conflict (Cunliffe, 2012) was one of the first reports published collating the damage occurring (in May 2012), and other important initiatives have also played a vital role in documentation, including the Syrian Heritage Archive Project (SHAP, n.d.), Le patrimoine archéologique Syrien en danger (2011), and the Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology (APSA, 2012), who publish regular updates online. Heritage for Peace (n.d.) publishes a regular newsletter collating updates and ASOR (American Schools of Oriental Research) Cultural Heritage Initiatives working with The Day After Heritage Protection Initiative publishes regular reports online, as well as special reports (Danti & Ali, 2014; ASOR, 2016, n.d.). While it is outside the remit of this chapter to provide a detailed discussion of the damage to Syria’s heritage, the most known types of damage sustained during the conflict up until the middle of 2018 are listed here: • • • • •

Direct bombing and damage to archaeological heritage sites. Military use of archaeological areas. Civil occupation of archaeological sites and historical monuments. Illegal construction. Illegal excavations.

Despite efforts by international organizations and international projects, many issues remain, such as the ongoing need for damage assessment and data collection which suffer from a lack of standardization and a high duplication rate.

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10.6.2 Pre-conflict Management as an Indirect Contributor to Damage 10.6.2.1 Application of the Syrian Antiquity Law and International Law During the Conflict Although the conflict is the direct reason for the damage to the archaeological heritage, other reasons are now highlighted, related to the way in which the heritage was managed prior to 2011. The legal framework is foremost on the continuum of responsibility for damage. The Syrian Law of Antiquities, as mentioned above, was a weak law and was poorly applied, with no regard to local communities. Local communities before and during the conflict often considered heritage sites to belong to the government, rather than managed by the government on their behalf. The absence of government authority and authority figures during the conflict has provided local communities with the freedom to act without fear of arrest or prosecution, for example, to build illegally on heritage sites (Kanjou, 2014, p. 275). The application of the antiquity law before the conflict led to a huge gap between the local community and heritage authorities, contributing to a lack of respect for heritage during the conflict. Even where it is possible to access a site, the DGAM does not always have the requisite support to enforce the law. The Syrian Law of Antiquities during the conflict was not applicable in the areas where the DGAM could not reach, and the non-governmental authorities which replaced the Syrian government in some areas did not give any importance to its use in their territories. The nature of Syrian legal frameworks – a very centralized system with no broader institutional or non-governmental (NGO) stakeholder provision – has also meant a greater negative impact from sanctions. Sanctions, imposed by the United States and the European Union against activities involving the financial system, extended to the DGAM, thus barring foreign heritage professionals from working directly with the directorate (Al Quntar et al., 2015). Another important legal issue is the application of international law. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), customary international law should apply at all times in all conflicts, and is binding on all parties, with several articles calling for respect for cultural property and prohibiting looting.17 It is these laws in particular which affect military conduct regarding cultural heritage during conflict. There are also a number of international treaties and conventions regarding heritage protection in conflict, only some of which were signed by Syria before the conflict, but no action was taken to implement them in national law. Several authors have discussed the ways in which international law should work to protect Syria’s heritage during conflict (Gerstenblith, 2016; Cunliffe et al., 2016). It is a complex area to navigate, but succinctly put, international law has not been respected by any parties involved in the conflict  – state, non-state or civilian  These articles are available on the website of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in their Customary International Humanitarian Law database (ICRC, 2005). 17

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(Gerstenblith ibid.) – and for several reasons, including its lack of implementation in national law, prosecution is unlikely. 10.6.2.2 Museums Syrian museums before the conflict faced problems due to deficiencies in – or even the total lack of  – security measures, protection measures, emergency planning, insufficient staff training in packaging, conserving and handling objects, and in records archiving (Jamieson, 2014, p. 477). These museums were not ready to face an actual conflict situation. Although the DGAM played an exceptional role in trying to protect them once it became clear emergency measures were needed, the challenges in transporting and storing thousands of objects very quickly was immense. According to the DGAM, since the beginning of the crisis, all the museums have been emptied of their contents and the artifacts have been stored in secure locations. In addition, burglar alarms have been installed in some museums and citadels, and the number of guards and patrols has increased. (Abdulkarim et al., 2016, p. 10)

However, all the packing, transport, preservation and storage of Syria’s museum collections were done very quickly, and with inexperienced staff. Lack of planning meant that there were no plans to prioritize the most important objects. As a result, thousands of objects were packed and stored without regard for curatorial standards in collections management and care, and hundreds of objects were destroyed in the process. Loss of documentation was a major issue, as many objects were accompanied by brief, but crucial records logging inter alia their source location. The whereabouts, or indeed continuing existence of these records, is unknown and potentially devastating for the scientific record if they are permanently lost. To their credit, the DGAM have put an exceptional amount of work into digitizing museum records and documenting objects. By 2016, more than 118,000 objects (Abdulkarim et al., 2016, p. 10) had been documented and archived in cooperation with international bodies, using excavation records to reconstruct the inventories of the Raqqa Museum (which was looted before its collection could be moved, see Fig. 10.3),18 and the Deir ez-Zor Museum.19 In addition, training courses have been held for some (but not all) staff in emergency packaging and handling of objects, documentation, as well as other relevant courses (Abdulkarim et al., 2016). There are also problems storing all the objects – for example, the Aleppo museum collections were packed up, but for some time there was no adequate storage as they were kept in a basement to protect them from shelling. Unfortunately, the basement was below the water level and it flooded, threatening the packages. Some objects are too large to be packed up and stored, and these had to be left in situ but heavily  For more information, see the Focus Raqqa Project, (n.d.).  For more information, see Digitizing the Official Inventory of the Museum of Deir ez-Zor Project (Deir ez Zor Project, n.d.). 18 19

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Fig. 10.3  Raqqa Museum after liberation form ISIS. (Photograph © the author)

sandbagged – the picture of the sandbags around the historic entrance to the Aleppo Museum has become one of the iconic heritage pictures of the conflict. Lastly, many museums lacked adequate security measures, and a small number of thefts occurred before all the museum contents could be packed up (Abdulkarim et al., 2016, p. 30). Indeed, there are reports of curators sleeping in some museums to protect the building from burglaries (Dagher, 2014), as had happened during the looting of the National Museum of Baghdad. To try and deal with these problems, some security measures have been installed (see Abdulkarim et al., 2016, p. 32) and emergency plans have also been developed and implemented for some museums, such as at the National Museum of Aleppo (Jamieson, 2014, p. 468). 10.6.2.3 Excavations During the conflict, the approach of the Directorate of Excavation has changed significantly. Archaeological excavation is no longer the priority it was before, partly due to budget cuts at the DGAM, but primarily due to the lack of security at many archaeological sites. The new approach has been to focus on archaeological documentation and the preservation of the administrative and scientific heritage kept in the archive of the Directorate of Excavation, particularly the archives and reports of the archaeological missions (Abdulkarim et al., 2016, p. 43). According to the excavation agreements between the DGAM and foreign missions before the conflict, the latter were obliged to pay the guards of archaeological

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sites within which they were working. Unfortunately, after 2011 most missions were unable to send the guards’ salaries because of the political issues between the various governments, and the international sanctions of Syrian banks. As a result, about 40% of the guards no longer receive any money (Sarkis, 2014) and many no longer carry out their work. In addition, as security broke down, many guards found it harder to visit their archaeological sites, creating numerous opportunities for looters. The difficulties experienced by the guards and the ensuing effects at the sites suggest that the DGAM’s site monitoring system may have been weak, and highlighted the DGAM’s dependence on foreign archaeological missions. In addition, before the conflict, the majority of the archaeological missions would store their finds in their on-site mission houses. These storage facilities lacked any security measures, and during the conflict they had become an easy target for looters, exemplified by the plundering of the Heracla storage in Raqqa in 2013 (DGAM, 2013b). It is also worth noting, unfortunately and unavoidably, that the lack of excavations means that new students are not being trained, and are unable to gain experience, impacting Syria’s next generation of archaeologists. 10.6.2.4 Local Communities The conflict has significantly affected local communities, and many people living around archaeological sites have been forced to abandon their homes (Al-Khateeb, 2015). The impact of their situation on these places has been considerable, with violations against, and vandalism of the sites increasing. Desperation and necessity have played their part here, but pre-conflict lack of awareness and education has compounded the issue. Some sites, especially in Idlib Province, have become shelters for local people, with buildings re-occupied in Serjilla, al-Bara and Btirsa and used as shelters for refugees (DGAM, 2013a). The lack of work and the need for resources to survive during the war has also pushed many locals to loot many archaeological sites (Brodie & Sabrine, 2017). In addition, the lack of security and changes in law enforcement priorities have allowed illegal construction by local communities in many archaeological sites (Cunliffe, 2012, p. 18). The conflict has demonstrated, however, that there are local communities that care about protecting archaeological sites. Local initiatives to protect cultural heritage mainly rely on limited community resources, and a lack of resources remains an issue. The tight financial constraints of the DGAM, and the access issues due to the security situation, meant these initiatives have not always received central government support. Despite this, they have contributed to heritage protection and restoration. For example, in the Church of Saint Mary of the Holy Belt (Um al-Zenar Church), local community volunteers created a garden over the pit where extremists burned bibles and icons, and locally financed major restoration work to cleanse the nave and sanctuary of the thick soot and the heavy smell of burnt furnishings and timbers (Lamb, 2015). At Crac de Chevaliers, local volunteers have worked with DGAM craftsmen since May 2014, making remarkable progress repairing and reconstructing parts of the castle. In Idlib Museum, former DGAM employees

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worked together with local people to secure the museum collections and to put them in a safe place. Another example demonstrates how deeply refugees care about their heritage, when they chose to recreate 12 of Syria’s landmarks in miniature in Zaatari Camp, Jordan (Dunmore, 2016). It is also worth noting that some projects, such as the Urkesh Eco-Archaeological Park, continued during the conflict. For example, local people bought materials to cover the walls of the tell to protect it from the rain and there was no damage to the site (Buccellati, 2014a). There are also stories of locals who put themselves in danger in order to protect archaeological sites, risking snipers, gunfire, and airstrikes to check the sites, record damage, and make emergency repairs. They have also faced down gangs of armed looters, and posed as undercover antiquities buyers (Cunliffe, 2016). These individuals also risk tension and conflict with members of the local community who were actively engaged in looting, and who always try to tarnish the social reputation of the heritage workers engaged in documenting and controlling those acts. The heritage workers also risked being identified by hostile parties as being involved with various political factions, suffering hostilities with private landowners over archaeological space, and experiencing friction with refugees who were living in some of the Dead Cities (Cunliffe et al., 2022). Heritage groups in the local community always suffered huge difficulties in order to do their work, from lack of passports to access international training, to a lack of institutional affiliation, an absence of funding and resources, and insufficient language ability to seek support (ibid.). All these examples demonstrate the extensive efforts of the Syrian locals to protect their heritage (also, e.g. Figs.  10.4 and 10.5).

10.7 Conclusions The role of the DGAM in managing Syria’s archaeological heritage before the conflict was crucial. The DGAM has always been the main authority responsible for archaeological excavations, the registration of archaeological sites, the management of Syrian museums, and the reconstruction and restoration of historic buildings and archaeological sites. All these tasks are colossal and complicated. The DGAM did not receive the needed support from other Syrian institutions, indeed, their involvement was minimal. In addition, the participation of Syrian civil society in the protection, management and promotion of cultural heritage was very limited – very few cultural heritage NGOs existed before the conflict. The discussion presented in this chapter on the management of Syria’s archaeological heritage before the conflict leads us to the fact that the legal and institutional structure of cultural heritage management was not appropriate to its needs. During the conflict, Syria’s heritage has faced many challenges. The DGAM has lost access to hundreds of archaeological sites, many located in opposition areas, and has not been able to continue normal operations – there are few excavations and little research, with restoration projects stopped altogether, although the protection

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Fig. 10.4  Member of the Syrian Heritage Center for Cultural Heritage Protection. (Photograph © the author)

Fig. 10.5  Restoration of a mosaic by the Ministry of Culture in North and East Syria at the site of Shiuk Tahtani. (Photograph © the author)

and documentation of museum collections, archives and archaeological sites became its main priority initially. The role of the international community in supporting the DGAM has been limited (see Al Quntar & Daniels, 2016; Perini & Cunliffe, 2015; Leckie et  al., 2017), although UNESCO did establish the

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International Observatory of Syrian Cultural Heritage,20 an entity focused on raising awareness, providing a forum for international expertise to collaborate (UNESCO, 2017a), building capacity, and assisting the DGAM with training programmes outside Syria (UNESCO, n.d.-b). UNESCO also conducted a few missions inside Syria, such as the damage assessment expedition to Aleppo in the winter of 2016/2017 (UNESCO, 2017b). Unfortunately, the complexity of the political situation has prevented the DGAM from collaborating with many international initiatives, and in other cases the collaboration has been very limited. The Syrian conflict demonstrated the ineffectiveness of national and international law in the protection of cultural heritage. The applicability of international law to non-international conflict and to non-state actors remains very problematic (Van der Auwera, 2013). UNESCO, for example, can work with the DGAM, but cannot work with any other heritage groups in the opposition areas, whilst some countries are forbidden from supporting the DGAM, as their governments refuse to recognize the Syrian regime. National law has proved an ineffectual safeguarding tool, and although there was an intention to reform the legal and the institutional structure surrounding Syria’s cultural heritage, this has been stopped because of the conflict. This need for reform remains a vital priority when the conflict is over, but whether it will occur remains to be seen. Going forwards, the protection of Syria’s cultural heritage will be crucial, not least because the country’s cultural wealth can act as an important element in reconciliation between Syrians, providing a common focus and foundation for the diverse elements that shape Syria’s rich fabric. The way Syria’s heritage is to be managed after the conflict will be a central part of the country’s revival, and local communities’ involvement will be part of that ‘renaissance’ of heritage (Kanjou, 2018). Acknowledgments  I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to my colleague Dr. Emma Cunliffe from Newcastle University, her valuable comments and feedback were of immense help. I am very thankful to Dr. Juan Jose Ibanez, from the Spanish National Council and Dr. Gabriel Alcalde from Girona University for their advice. I would also like to express my deepest appreciation to all my DGAM colleagues who provided me with the needed information.

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Cunliffe, E., Muhesin, N., & Lostal, M. (2016). The destruction of cultural property in the Syrian conflict: Legal implications and obligations. International Journal of Cultural Property, 23(1), 1–31. Cunliffe, E., Sabrine, I., & Fischer, G. (2022). The extraordinary, ordinary Syrian: Syria’s heritage protectors. Dagher, S. (2014, April 25). Amid Devastation of Aleppo, Syria, Archaeological Museum Fights to Preserve Heritage. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/amid-­devastation-­ of-­aleppo-­syria-­archaeological-­museum-­fights-­to-­preserve-­heritage-­1398456094. Accessed 10 June 2017. Damm, C. (2005). Archaeology, ethnohistory, and oral traditions: Approaches to the indigenous past. Norwegian Archaeological Review, 38(2), 73–87. Danti, M. D., & Ali, C. (2014). ASOR Syrian heritage initiative (SHI): Planning for safeguarding heritage sites in Syria, weekly reports 16–17. ASOR Cultural Heritage Initiatives. http://www. asor.org/wp-­content/uploads/2019/09/ASOR_CHI_Weekly_Report_16–17r.pdf. Accessed 30 Jan 2017. Davies, S. M., Paton, R., & O’Sullivan, T. J. (2013). The museum values framework: A framework for understanding organizational culture in museums. Museum Management and Curatorship, 28(4), 345–361. Deir ez-Zor Project. (n.d.). Digitizing the Inventory of the Museum of Deir ez-Zor (Syria). https:// digitmusdeir.geschkult.fu-­berlin.de/html/. Accessed 23 May 2020. DGAM. (2007). Completing new draft law on protection of Syrian archaeological heritage 21.12.2013. http://www.dgam.gov.sy/index.php?p=314&id=1114. Accessed 11 Feb 2017. DGAM. (2013a, October 27). Recent photos of some archaeological sites in Forgotten Cities, Idlib. Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums [website]. http://www.dgam.gov.sy/ index.php?d=314&id=1082. Accessed 10 June 2017. DGAM. (2013b, March 11). Gunmen attack Heracla warehouse and robbed hundreds of artifacts. Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums [website]. http://www.dgam.gov.sy/index. php?d=239&id=1051. Accessed 10 June 2017. DGAM. (n.d.-a). Periodicals issued by the general directorate of antiquities and museums. Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums [website]. http://dgam.gov.sy/index. php?m=302. Accessed 14 Jan 2017. DGAM. (n.d.-b). Structure of the Syrian museums. Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums [website]. Available at: http://dgam.gov.sy/index.php?m=309. Accessed 12 Jan 2017. DGAM. (n.d.-c). Our heritage empowers us to shape our present and future. Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums [website]. http://www.dgam.gov.sy/. Accessed 18 May 2020. Doumas, C.  G. (2013). Managing the archaeological heritage: The case of Akrotiri, Thera (Santorini). Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 15(1), 109–120. Dunmore, C. (2016, March 2). How art is helping Syrian refugees keep their culture alive. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/global-­development-­professionals-­network/2016/ mar/02/art-­helping-­syrian-­refugees-­keep-­culture-­alive. Accessed 01 Feb 2017. Focus Raqqa Project. (n.d.). Raqqa City of Culture. Safeguarding historical and archaeological heritage. http://www.focusraqqa.com/focusraqqa/index.php?lang=en#home. Accessed 23 May 2020. Gerstenblith, P. (2016). The destruction of cultural heritage: A crime against property or a crime against people? John Marshall Review of Intellectual Property Law, 15(3), 336–393. Gillot, L. (2008). La mise en valeur des sites archéologiques: un rapprochement entre archéologie, tourisme et développement. Le cas de la Syrie. Unpublished Thesis. Université Libre de Bruxelles. Gillot, L. (2010). Towards a socio-political history of archaeology in the Middle East: The development of archaeological practice and its impacts on local communities in Syria. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 20(1), 4–16. Grimwade, G., & Carter, B. (2000). Managing small heritage sites with interpretation and community involvement. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 6(1), 33–48.

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Heritage for Peace. (n.d.). Heritage for peace. http://www.heritageforpeace.org/. Accessed 21 May 2020. ICRC. (2005). The customary ILH database: Rules and practices. https://ihl-­databases.icrc.org/ customary-­ihl/eng/docs/home. Accessed 23 May 2020. Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, Lebanon and Syria, Beirut Office, Syria. (n.d.). Projects which are suspended. Italian Agency for Development Cooperation [website]. http:// www.aicsbeirut.org/portal/en-­US/syria/19/. Accessed 30 Jan 2017. Italian Archaeological Expedition at Qatna. (2006). The Conservation of the Royal Palace. Italian Archaeological Excavation [website]. http://www.qatna.org/en-­conservation.html. Accessed 18 May 2020. Jamieson, A. (Ed.) (2014). Collections at risk: Sustainable strategies for managing near eastern archaeological collections. Workshop. Proceedings, 9th ICAANE, Basel 2014, Vol. 1. Kanjou, Y. (2014). The Syrian cultural heritage tragedy: Cause, effect and approaches to future protection. Journal of Disaster Mitigation for Historical Cities, 8, 271–278. Kanjou, Y. (2018). The role of the local community and museums in the renaissance of Syrian cultural heritage. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies, 6(4), 375–391. Kanjou, Y., & Tsuneki, A. (2016). A history of Syria in one hundred sites. Archaeo Press. Lamb, F. (2015, April 25). Is the Phoenix Rising from the Ashes in Syria? Counter Punch. https:// www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/29/is-­the-­phoenix-­rising-­from-­the-­ashes-­in-­syria/. Accessed 10 June 2017. Le patrimoine archéologique syrien en danger. (2011, July 27). Le patrimoine archéologique syrien en danger [Facebook]. https://www.facebook.com/Archeologie.syrienne/. Leckie, L., Cunliffe, E., & Varoutsikos, B. (2017). Towards a protection of the Syrian cultural heritage: A summary of the international responses. Volume IV (October 2015 – December 2016). Heritage for Peace. Loosley, E. (2005). Archaeology and cultural belonging in contemporary Syria: The value of archaeology to religious minorities. World Archaeology, 37(4), 589–596. McCall, V., & Gray, C. (2014). Museums and the ‘new museology’: Theory, practice and organizational change. Museum Management and Curatorship, 29(1), 19–35. McManamon, F. (2000). The protection of archaeological resources in the United States: Reconciling preservation with contemporary society. In F. P. McManamon & A. Hatton (Eds.), Cultural resource management in contemporary society: Perspectives on managing and presenting the past (pp. 160–167). Routledge. Perini, S., & Cunliffe, E. (2015). Towards a protection of the Syrian cultural heritage: A summary of the international responses. Volume III (September 2014  – September 2015). Heritage for Peace. http://www.heritageforpeace.org/news/ reports-­towards-­protection-­syrian-­cultural-­heritagesummary-­international-­responses/. SANA. (n.d.). An important tourist and heritage development project, Sheikh Hilal village in Hama Badia [Arabic]. Discover Syria [website]. http://www.discover-­syria.com/news/3052. Accessed 20 June 2017. Sarkis, M. (2014, October 29). Syria’s cultural heritage under threat. Qantara.de [website]. https:// en.qantara.de/content/syrias-­cultural-­heritage-­under-­threat-­virtually-­nothing-­is-­left. Accessed 20 Jan 2017. SHAP. (n.d.) Syrian Heritage Archive Project [website]. https://project.syrian-­heritage.org/en/. Accessed 18 May 2020. Syrian Law of Antiquities No. 222. (1963/1999). Published in the official gazette no.11. https:// en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/syrie_dec222_engtof.pdf. Accessed 12 Jan 2017. UN Refugee Agency. (2016, Mar 15). Syria conflict at 5 years: the biggest refugee and displacement crisis of our time demands a huge surge in solidarity. UNHCR News [website]. http://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2016/3/56e6e3249/syria-­conflict-­5-­years-­biggest-­refugee-­ displacement-­crisis-­time-­demands.html%20. Accessed 18 Jan 2017.

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UNESCO. (1972). Convention concerning the protection of the world cultural and natural heritage. Adopted by the General Conference at its seventeenth session, Paris 16 November 1972. https://whc.unesco.org/archive/convention-­en.pdf. UNESCO. (2013, June 20). Syria’s six world heritage sites placed on list of world heritage in danger. UNESCO [website]. https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1038. Accessed 30 May 2020. UNESCO. (2017a, March 8). UNESCO hosts first international coordination meeting for the recovery of Aleppo’s heritage. UNESCO News [website]. https://en.unesco.org/news/unesco-­hosts-­ first-­international-­coordination-­meeting-­recovery-­aleppo-­s-­heritage. Accessed 12 May 2017. UNESCO. (2017b, January 19). UNESCO reports on extensive damage in first emergency assessment mission to Aleppo. UNESCO [website]. https://en.unesco.org/news/unesco-­reports-­ extensive-­damage-­first-­emergency-­assessment-­mission-­aleppo. Accessed 12 May 2017. UNESCO. (n.d.-a). Observatory of Syrian cultural heritage, reports. UNESCO [website]. https://en.unesco.org/syrian-­o bservatory/damage-­a ssesmentreports?title=&field_institution_tid=All&date_filter%5Bvalue%5D&field_report_tags_tid_1=&order=field_ institution&sort=asc. Accessed 30 May 2020. UNESCO. (n.d.-b). Observatory of Syrian cultural heritage, the emergency safeguarding of the Syrian cultural heritage project. UNESCO [website]. http://en.unesco.org/syrian-­observatory/ emergency-­safeguarding-­syrian-­cultural-­heritage-­project. Accessed 12 Jan 2017. Van der Auwera, S. (2013). International law and the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict: Actual problems and challenges. The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, 43, 175–190. World Vision. (2017). Syria refugee crisis: Facts you need to know. World Vision [website]. https://www.worldvision.org/refugees-­news-­stories/syria-­refugee-­crisis-­war-­facts. Accessed 18 Jan 2017. Zobler, K. A. (2011). Syrian National Museums: Regional politics and the imagined community. In Contested cultural heritage (pp. 171–191). Springer. Zobler, K. A. (2014). Dead cities and living communities: Syrian archaeological heritage management. In Encyclopedia of global archaeology (pp. 7194–7199). Springer. Isber Sabrine is a Syrian archaeologist specialising in cultural heritage management, as well as a certified National Tourist Guide in Syria. He has been a member of the Syrian Spanish team of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) since 2005, becoming a researcher working on cultural heritage projects at the Council’s Institución Milá y Fontanals in 2018. He is currently chair and co-founder of the international NGO Heritage for Peace. Since 2015, he has been involved in cultural initiatives for refugees and immigrants in Europe, notably leading the Abuab Initiative, a social project that uses cultural heritage as a tool for intercultural dialogue with refugee and migrant groups from the Middle East and North Africa. In 2020, he took up the leadership of ANSCH (the Arab Network of Civil Society to Safeguard Cultural Heritage).  

Chapter 11

Invoking Awneh: Community Heritage in Palestine Hamdan Taha and Iman Saca

11.1 Introduction Following the transfer of authority to the Palestinian side in 1994, a national body for the management of archaeological resources was established for the first time since the termination of the Department of Antiquities in 1948 (Taha, 2010, 2014b). The work moved from a conventional concept of practice, with a monopoly of colonial powers during the British Mandate and the Israeli Occupation, to a new participatory approach under the Palestinian Authority, with the involvement of academic institutions, non-governmental societies and community representatives, beside the formal governmental body. However, the notion of community heritage is rather a new concept, even though the act of community participation and volunteerism, helping each other, or awneh, is deeply rooted in traditional Palestinian society. Awneh binds together the Palestinian community in response to social, economic and political challenges imposed by political turmoil and the lack of services and stability. It is the local collective and the desire to survive and thrive no matter the challenges that have made awneh an integral part of Palestinian society – past and present. This chapter will focus on examples that illustrate the involvement of local communities in the planning process of various archaeological and heritage projects since 1994, and how public involvement in its various forms were a major factor in the success of these projects. Getting involved and involving the public in archaeological and heritage work is not only a politically correct way of conducting H. Taha (*) Independent Researcher, Palestine, Ramallah e-mail: [email protected] I. Saca Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, St. Xavier University, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_11

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archaeology but the authors believe it is also an ethical and practical responsibility. As both Watkins and colleagues (2000) and Marshall (2002) argue, archaeologists no longer have exclusive rights to the past, but various publics have a stake in the past as well. Currently, we are witnessing increased interest by local and descent communities in their heritage, and a change in the history of power relations between archaeologists/heritage workers and these communities. As heritage professionals, we are aware of the social and political context of our excavations, restorations, and research questions. Researching the past is no longer about ‘dead cultures and peoples’, but is now undertaken with a clear understanding of the strong relationship between the past, present and future. Today, we are witnessing a movement towards advocating for the rights of local and indigenous communities, respect for alternative views, for others’ rights and beliefs and the invaluable role local communities can play in the protection of archaeological and cultural heritage sites. We can comfortably say that we are witnessing a genuine concern on the part of many archaeologists and heritage workers for the ethical and practical implications of their work. The first example of community engagement in Palestinian heritage practice presented here is from the UNESCO-listed Tell Balata Archaeological Park, Nablus. The second focuses on the conservation of the historic centres of Bethlehem and Hebron, specifically examining the ‘Conservation Plan for the Historic Centre of Bethlehem’ and the conservation of the old city of Hebron by the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee. The third example focuses on the myriad local ethnographic and site museums scattered throughout Palestine. Museums, especially ethnographic museums, have a deep history in Palestine and many were established as personal initiatives by local community members. The fourth and final example focuses on the two major UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Palestine – ‘Birthplace of Jesus: Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem’, and ‘Palestine: Land of Olives and Vines – Cultural Landscape of Southern Jerusalem, Battir’ – and the community engagement and involvement in the preparation of their nomination files. In all these examples, various activities were carried out by project organizers and partners to ensure the comprehensive participation of various target groups. The project partners were diligent in analyzing the inputs of the various groups, the integration of which was an essential part of the work.

11.2 Community Engagement in Archaeological Work The main task of the newly established Department of Antiquities in 1995 was the protection and conservation of the most endangered archeological sites in Palestine. Among the well-known, previously excavated locations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are the major sites of Tell Ta’annek, Tell el-Fara, Tell Dothan, Tell Balata, Tell en-Nasbeh, Tell et-Tell, Kh. Radana Tell es-Sultan, Hisham’s Palace and Tell el-Ajjul (Taha, 2010, 2014b), many of which were left without protection during the British Mandate period and the subsequent years of Israeli occupation. Clearance and reassessment of some of these sites  – Tell es-Sultan, Hisham’s Palace, Tell

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el-Ajjul and Tell Balata  – were undertaken according to a master plan, which intended to develop them into archaeological parks. Excavation was carried out through joint co-operation based on principles of mutual interest and mutual respect. This modality of joint co-operation was adopted later in several further initiatives, including the joint Palestinian-French excavation at Tell el-Blachyia, the joint Palestinian-Dutch excavation at Khirbet Bal’ama and Tell Balata, the joint Palestinian-Italian excavation at Tell es-Sultan in Jericho, the joint Palestinian-­ Norwegian excavation at Tell el-Mafjer, the joint Palestinian-Swedish excavation at Tell el-Ajjul and the joint Palestinian-American excavation at Hisham’s Palace (Taha, 2010, 2014b). A community engagement component was introduced as a significant part of these projects and involved the participation of local organizations and workers, with a series of outreach activities conducted in co-operation with schools and the production of community-based publications about the archaeological heritage. All these activities are illustrative examples of a post-colonial model of co-operation in archaeology. As part of this paradigm shift to the post-­ colonial, Tell Balata is significant and will be examined more fully here.

11.2.1 The Site of Tell Balata Tell Balata is identified with ancient Shikmu (Shechem) and described in 1925 by Alt (cit. Wright, 1965, p.  9) as the ‘Uncrowned Queen of Palestine’. The site is located between the mountains of Gerizim and Ebal with a view of the large, fertile valley of Askar to the east. It features a Canaanite urban centre, and was inhabited 6000 years ago, reaching its zenith in the Middle Bronze Age, when its cyclopean wall, monumental gates, fortress temple, and domestic quarters were built (Horn, 1964; Wright, 1965, 2002; Dever, 1974; Campbell, 1993, 2002, 2014; Taha & Kooij, 2014a, p. 7). In the Late Bronze Age, Labaya became king of Shikmu and rebuilt the city, which flourished in this period, as evidenced in its material culture. The city was abandoned in the first century BC, and the new city, Nablus (Neapolis), was erected in the Roman period. The village of Balata was built on the southern edge of the ancient tell in the Medieval period and continues to the present time, inheriting the legacy of the ancient tell. After the political upheaval of the Nakbah1 in 1948, thousands of displaced Palestinian refugees from cities and villages inside the Green Line2 found shelter in the refugee camp adjacent to Balata village. Throughout the last century, the tell was excavated by several

 The Nakbah, or catastrophe, refers to the expulsion of ca. 900,000 Palestinians from their homeland, and the destruction of more than 600 cities and villages in the areas proclaimed as Israel in 1948. 2  The ‘Green Line’, or 1949 Armistice Line, refers to the boundary separating pre-1967 Israel from the West Bank. It continues to function as a de-facto political administrative divide between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. 1

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archaeological expeditions (see Thiersch & Hölsche, 1904; Sellin, 1914, 1926a, b, 1927a, b; Böhl, 1926, 1927, 1931; Welter, 1932; Wright, 1956, 1965; Toombs & Wright, 1961, 1963; Bull, 1961; Bull et al., 1965; Taha & Kooij, 2014a, pp. 11–26). An indicated above, the archaeological site was left unattended during the Israeli occupation period, but comprehensive clearance work was carried out in 2010 with the full participation of the local community. This was followed by excavations in 2011, yielding considerable archaeological results with respect to the history of the site (Taha & Kooij, 2014a, pp. 103–112, 159). Both excavation and clearance work were carried out by students and workers from the neighbouring villages. Fieldwork in such a densely-populated area would not have been possible without the cooperative attitude of the local community around Tell Balata.

11.2.2 Community Engagement at Tell Balata One of the best illustrative examples of community engagement in archaeology in Palestine is the Tell Balata Archaeological Park project, conducted between 2009 and 2014. The project was a joint undertaking of the Palestinian Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, the Faculty of Archaeology of the University of Leiden, and UNESCO’s Ramallah Office in cooperation with the local community (Kooij & Taha, 2010; Taha & Kooij, 2014a). The project’s main concern was the rehabilitation of the neglected archaeological site and creating a modern archaeological park for the benefit of the local community. This involved drawing the local community’s attention to the site, thus contributing to a sense of heritage value and responsibility. It also aimed to attract external visitors, thus potentially contributing to its economic growth as a tourist attraction. The site management and public awareness activities were done according to a management plan, which also provided guidance for the future sustainability of the site (Taha & Kooij, 2014a; Dries & Linde, 2014). The project traced the changing landscape, building encroachment around the site, in addition to the demographic growth over the last century, but the promotion of the site, i.e. publicizing the values it may represent for the local community, disseminating archaeological knowledge and interpretive material, and raising public awareness of its significance, was of primary importance. This was facilitated through the production of outside signage, information leaflets as well as the creation of a visitor centre with dedicated parking. The centre’s remit was to acquaint audiences with the archaeology of the site through exhibitions, digital facilities and the use of an education room. Local events, lectures and festivals were also organized for the local community and visiting tourists (Taha & Kooij, 2014a). Significantly, the site was the subject of an oral history project, which families living nearby were encouraged to contribute to with their stories.

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11.2.3 Local Community Narratives If we expect lots of visitors, we should be organized and well prepared, so that even more of them will come. (Adel Said Qesab, a 56-year old gentleman)

Local narratives about the site of Tell Balata represent a social connection with local tangible heritage. Some aspects of this relationship were recorded partly in the ethnographic work conducted by Linda Ammons (1978) about the life of the Palestinian village. This concept has become well-established in post-modern Palestinian archaeology, with examples of its use including the the Khirbet Bal’ama Archaeological Project (see Taha & Kooij, 2007). As at Khirbet Bal’ama, where researchers captured data on local community knowledge and story-traditions surrounding the water tunnel complex (ibid, p.  11), the oral history project at Tell Balata sought to acknowledge the relationship between the site and the narratives of local people, capturing local views about the ancient tell (Taha & Kooij, 2011; Taha, 2014a; Dries & Linde, 2014). A collection of stories was amassed by a joint Palestinian-Dutch team under the supervision of Monique van den Dries and Sjoerd van der Linde (Dries & Linde, 2014, pp. 136–138) within the framework of the Tell Balata Archaeological Park project, directed by this chapter’s first author, together with Gerrit van der Kooij. A total of 26 interviews were carried out with a variety of community members and other stakeholders, with data collected on audio recordings, film footage and photographs, all of which were transcribed and archived systematically. The Tell Balata narratives represent a cross-generational record of native stories by people living around this historical site (Taha & Kooij, 2011, 2014a). It is a random and spontaneous collection by men and women, the elderly and the young, including the smallest children who are still forming their attitudes towards the place. Their testimonies, personal feelings, and life experiences connected to the site clearly distinguish the ancient tell as a source of inspiration that activates their historical imagination, causing them to wonder about the previous peoples living there. The narratives also reveal how closely the history of the people of Balata is connected to the tell (Dries & Linde, 2014). The previous excavations and personal contacts with foreigners played a role in shaping the older generation’s views of the site. Several respondents were involved with archaeological expeditions, and their memories are still full of stories about Tell Balata and the way in which its surroundings transformed over time. Some of the protagonists in the site’s archaeological story, such as the late field archaeologists Naser Dweikat and Jabr Salman, have become true icons (Taha & Kooij, 2011). Remarkably, a number of local people can even still remember the names of archaeologists who worked at the site in the last century. Seventy-eight-year-old R. Dweikat (Taha & Kooij, 2011) relayed memories of her brother when he was a foreman on the American expeditions, and octogenarian F.  Asad, a dig worker, was able to describe the daily life of the excavation  – the camp, washing pottery, and myriad other details. The latter felt responsibility for the site, saying ‘As you take care of your home, [so] you should take care of the site’ (Taha & Kooij, 2011). Another respondent, Sheikh Mazen

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(Taha & Kooij, 2011) described his experience as a teenager, declaring that the excavations were like a three-month celebration for the villagers working at the site. For the children, the site was a playground where they flew kites or played hide-and-­ seek. Ultimately, there is almost nobody in Balata village who does not have a memory or anecdote concerning the ancient peoples, prophets, treasure and expeditions. It is extraordinary to observe the great interest that is demonstrated in these living testimonies (Taha & Kooij, 2011). These stories represent a local perspective on the past, and a dialogue between popular narratives of the site and discoveries made by archaeologists over the past century (Taha, 2014a). Furthermore, these testimonies showed clearly that the role of the local community goes beyond passive engagement toward more interactive participation in, and interest (even expectation) in seeing the site developed as an archaeological park open for visitors. It is a chronicle of historical research that started 100 years ago and how it changed from being conducted by foreign expeditions to one where local archaeologists and residents are involved in writing their own history. They are now owners of this history, which is a source of self-esteem and an integral part of cultural identity, not just for Balata village, but for the people of Nablus in general, including the refugee camps, which form a new neighbourhood for this historical place. Almost all interviewees were presented with printed material with their portraits and some quotes and text. This material formed a direct link between the community and the project and was distributed on the open day (see more below) organized at the end. The research results of the project will be considered for the future management plan for the Tell Balata Archaeological Park.

11.2.4 Community Heritage Outreach Activities A community and education programme (see Taha & Kooij, 2014a; Dries & Linde, 2014) was also developed for Tell Balata, based on an initial proposal, Promotion, Awareness and Education Proposal Tell Balata (Linde & Dries, 2010), and established following discussions and agreements between MOTA-DACH, Leiden University and UNESCO. The ‘Balata Community and Outreach Programme’ was facilitated by the MCRC (Multipurpose Community Resource Centre) in Nablus, and comprised multiple community outreach activities, including an educational programme, a teacher’s handbook, site interpretation, social media, a community open day, publications and the production of the documentary film, ‘Shikmu: Uncrowned Queen of Palestine’ (Maysara Films). The education of children and youths was an integral part of the project and was implemented during the 2010/2011 fieldwork season (Dries et  al., 2014, pp. 141–143). The general goal was to develop interest, knowledge and an understanding of archaeological heritage and archaeology among the community. In 2010, some pilot lessons were designed and realised by Hanneke van der Kooij, assisted by Nikki Dijkshoorn, Jehad Yasin and Sufyan Ediass. Several children’s activities were also developed for the open day, with approximately 300 children

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engaged. Two groups of children aged 9–12, and one group of youths aged 13–19, mainly from Nablus Old City and Balata Camp, participated in the MCRC Summer Camp at Karmel School. As a result of these pilots and other educational activities, a teacher’s manual and later, a teacher’s handbook were prepared. The teacher’s manual, describing the lessons and approaches, was supplemented by lesson packages – plastic boxes with all the necessary materials and information to undertake the lessons in the future. The handbook (see Dries et al., 2014, p. 147) featured Tell Balata as a primary example, and its basic outline, contents, goals, and production process were instituted jointly with Palestinian teachers. It was used to supplement the formal curriculum at primary schools, a decision agreed upon in a meeting with representatives from the Nablus Bureau of Education and MCRC, and further evaluated by an educational steering group consisting of teachers from the Ministry of Education and the UNWRA, coordinated by the Department of Antiquities in collaboration with MCRC.  Further contacts were established by the Department of Antiquities at the highest level of the Ministry of Education to ensure viability and sustainability. The production of the book was co-ordinated by the educational experts of the Joint Team, and involved teachers, specialists and representatives from the Palestinian Authorities. The Teacher’s Handbook was distributed to all schools in the Nablus district. Site interpretation consisted of the development and production of interpretive material (see Taha & Kooij, 2014a, pp. 161–164; Dries et al., 2014, pp. 153–154). This included a bilingual site leaflet (Arabic and English), available at the entrance to Tell Balata and distributed in the neighbourhood and among tourism offices, and a bilingual site panel (Arabic and English) with a map and descriptions, placed at the official visitor entry point at the south-western edge of the site. A further site map for visitors, also with English and Arabic text, was produced to be downloaded from the Park website, and other interpretive material was designed for posters, entrance tickets, the future logo of Balata Park and the main website of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. Site interpretation also features as part of a social media offering, with a Facebook page, and a website hosting general information, site description, visitor information and a news section, as well as a downloadable oral history booklet and academic literature. All social media, integrated and accessible via a detailed social media strategy, were to be further developed as part of the management plan (Dries et al., 2014, p. 154). The whole project team, in collaboration with local partner MCRC, prepared an open day for the communities of Balata, Nablus and their surrounding areas (Dries & Linde, 2014, p. 139). The open day (Fig. 11.1) was held on a Sunday afternoon and publicly announced digitally, and by paper invitations handed out in the connected villages. It was a popular family event with over 600 people attending. There were activities for children, guided tours at the site, archaeological workshops, exhibitions, information on the project, and a drawing competition. In addition, the Arabic site leaflet was generally distributed, and the booklet Stories about Tell Balata circulated family-wide. The day was covered extensively by local and international radio and television and proved to be highly appreciated by the participants. For a broader cohort, a series of publications about the history of the site was

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Fig. 11.1  Activities of the open day at Tell Balata. (Photograph courtesy of the Tell Balata Archaeological Park)

produced within the framework of the Tell Balata Archaeological Park project. Four books were published by the Palestinian Department of Antiquities, including the scholarly publication, Tell Balata: Changing Landscape (Taha & Kooij, 2014a), the Teacher’s Handbook for Archaeological Heritage in Palestine (Taha & Kooij, 2014b), and the Tell Belata Archaeological Park Guidebook (Taha & Kooij, 2014c) in Arabic and English, as well as the small booklet, Stories about Tell Balata.

11.3 Community Engagement in the Conservation of Heritage Centres The other key area of community engagement in cultural heritage in Palestine is in the conservation and preservation of the country’s most endangered historical centres (Taha, 1998, 2010, 2014b). Major projects have been carried out throughout the country by the Department of Antiquities and non-governmental organizations, including in the historic urban centres of Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, Nablus, Gaza and Khan Yunis, as well as in many other historic cores in rural areas and villages, such as Dahiryieh, Taybeh, Sabastyia (Fig.  11.2), Arraba, Burqin, Sanur, Birzeit, and Azzaryia. In the decade preceding the millennium, a series of Department of Antiquities projects was particularly significant for direct co-operation and collaboration with local communities, most notably the scheme collectively known as the Emergency Clearance Campaign of One Hundred Sites (1996–1998) (Taha, 1998), and a project for the protection of cultural and historical landscapes (1998–2001) funded by the Dutch government. The two programmes covered major archaeological sites

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Fig. 11.2  Public meeting with the local community at Sabastyia. (Photograph © Hamdan Taha)

and historical buildings, as well as historic mosques, churches, monasteries, sanctuaries, and examples of traditional vernacular architecture. The work involved clearance, documentation, consolidation, conservation, and salvage excavations of inter alia the ancient churches of Burqin and Abud, the Crusader churches of Sebastyah and al-Bireh, the historic Mamluk mosques of es-Sabeen and Burham, the Omari mosques of Dura and Birzeit, and the sanctuaries of El-Qatrawani and Maqam en-­ Nubani (Taha, 1998, 2010). The work was carried out in co-operation with municipalities, village councils and community organizations. Communities were involved on a number of levels and through various voluntary activities. As most of the historical structures are privately owned, one level of co-­ operation was initiated through a formula that required owners to release the use of a building to the community for a set period (usually 10–15  years) in return for funding and the professional supervision of restoration work. On another level, co-­ operative encounters involved ‘in-kind’ participation, whereby restoration/construction material was provided gratis by local families to support well-known buildings (e.g. the Mamluk Mosque in Khirbet es-Sabeen, south-east of Jenin, and the Church of St. Georgious in Burqin, west of Jenin), as well as other structures collapsing on or near their lands. Volunteerism was widespread too, with residents – young and old – helping to clean up the historical buildings, some even providing their own vehicles to assist with the removal of debris and waste. For others, volitional guarding and protecting the sites for the duration of projects marked their contribution. Of paramount importance, however, was the information and stories

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communities shared about the sites and buildings in their areas, data that enriched both projects by adding meaning and value to the work that was being undertaken. Archaeological and natural sites were also included in these projects, namely the eighteenth century castle at Ras Karkar, the Crusader Khan in al-Bireh, the Mamluk bathhouse in the old town of Hebron, the Ottoman Qaem-Maqam house in Tulkarem and the Beit ez-Zarru villa in Ramallah. Maqam (shrine) el-Qatrawani near Attara was also conserved, together with the small natural forest and terraced landscape surrounding it. The same approach, focusing on the combination of ecology and historical technology, displaying ancient and traditional hydrological features in their natural and cultural landscapes, followed at the site of Dura el-Qarei. Other historic buildings were restored to house ethnographic and archaeological museums as well as other types of cultural centre. Within the framework of ‘Bethlehem 2000’ (see El-Hasan, 1999), a large project for the restoration and rehabilitation of archaeological sites and historic buildings in the Bethlehem area3 was carried out in co-operation with the UNDP and funded by the Japanese government. An ethnographic museum displaying the history of olive oil production (Al Bad Museum, also known as Badd Giacaman, see below), established in the Old City of Bethlehem, is an example. In Gaza, comprehensive restoration and rehabilitation work was carried out in the historic palace of Qaser el-Basha, and further projects were executed between 2004 and 2005 at seven sites4 in the northern districts of Palestine, funded by USAID (Taha, 2004), as well as restoration and consolidation work conducted around the same time on the Mamluk castle of Khan Yunis. A series of restorations was also undertaken by non- and semi-governmental organizations, including the Welfare Association in the Old City of Jerusalem, the Riwaq Centre5 in a series of rural areas in Palestine, the Centre for Cultural Heritage Preservation in Bethlehem (CCHP) in the historic core of Bethlehem, and the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC) in the Old City of Hebron. The work of the two latter organizations is explored further here.

11.3.1 Conservation Plan for the Historic Centre of Bethlehem The CCHP is a semi-governmental institution, established by a presidential mandate in 2001, with a mission to provide a sustainable mechanism for the protection and management of cultural heritage resources in Bethlehem (Juha & Atrash, 2011). The Bethlehem Area Conservation and Management Plan (Serreni et al., 2012) was the first major scheme carried out by the centre in co-operation with local and  The Bethlehem area comprises the municipalities of Bethlehem, Beir Sahor, Beit Jala and Doha, and has a population of about 100,000. 4  The seven sites included Khirbet Bal’ama, Burqin, Arraba, Deir Istyia, Barqawi Castle and the villages of Irtah and Kur. 5  Riwaq is a Ramallah-based, non-governmental organization established in 1991, whose aim is to document, rehabilitate and restore the architectural heritage of Palestine. 3

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international partners. It aimed to protect the authenticity and integrity of the historic core of Bethlehem in accordance with international standards, meet the protection criteria required to include the historic centre of Bethlehem in the UNESCO World Heritage List, and to ensure the development of the city with the common interest of the community in mind. The main focus of the centre is the conservation of built heritage and cultural landscapes (Juha & Atrash, 2011, pp. 26–27). Sites are identified by the centre’s Rehabilitation Unit, which selects candidates with the potential to contribute to promoting cultural heritage as a tool for development. Through rehabilitation projects over the years, the CCHP has been able to adapt more than 45 historic buildings in different towns and villages for reuse by local community organizations, as well as implement 11 urban rehabilitation projects, all of which have been accompanied by community participation and public awareness campaigns. One of the best examples of these rehabilitation projects is the Anatreh Quarter (Nasser, 2005) in the Old City of Bethlehem, where an urban and architectural study about the history of the quarter was conducted alongside rehabilitation work. Community participation and generating a sense of ownership and responsibility in preserving the cultural heritage was viewed as important as the rehabilitation effort itself. Therefore, the CCHP encouraged community participation in different stages of the project implementation by holding public meetings with local community representatives (project selection phase, see Fig.  11.3), organizing an open information day for the local community (design phase), carrying out a variety of activities, such as the

Fig. 11.3 Consultation meeting with representatives of the local community, Bethlehem. (Photograph courtesy of the Centre for Cultural Heritage Preservation)

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identification of unemployed labourers in the area of the site (implementation phase), and finally, ensuring continued involvement with the community (post-­ restoration phase) (Juha & Atrash, 2011, pp. 54–55). The CCHP was also involved in preparing two nomination files (Juha & Atrash, 2011, pp. 28–31) for the World Heritage Committee, namely ‘Birthplace of Jesus: Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem’ (inscribed 2012), and ‘Palestine: Land of Olives and Vines – The Cultural Landscape of Southern Jerusalem, Battir’ (inscribed 2014). During the preparation of the two files, a series of community outreach activities was carried out, including a promotion campaign, an open day and community workshops. Following the inscription of Bethlehem to the World Heritage List, it was mandatory (according to the World Heritage Operational Guidelines) to prepare a management plan of the historic centre and its buffer zone. To that end, the ‘Heritage for Development: Investing in People for the Rehabilitation and Management of the Historic City Centre’ programme, funded by the European Commission, was initiated. The ‘Conservation Plan for the Historic Centre of Bethlehem’ (Atrash, 2014) was also implemented by the CCHP under the direction of arch. Nada Atrash. The plan ensures the adoption of mechanisms to meet the needs and expectations of the community and at the same time support the historic city status. The local community played two essential roles during the work on the plan, first in identifying the cultural heritage resources in the town, and second in shaping the vision for the conservation and management of these resources and the role they could play in the sustainable development of the town. The local community was defined as professionals and organizations working in the town (e.g. architects, conservators, travel agents and tour operators), in addition to the inhabitants of the historic centre and its users. In this example, various activities were carried out by the project partners to ensure the comprehensive participation of the local community (ibid.). These included information days and workshops, site visits, voluntary work, publications and pioneer projects. To date, the centre has conducted around 1010 activities and succeeded in reaching out to more than 38,400 individuals, thereby promoting a change in public awareness of the value of cultural heritage and the need for it to be protected. Furthermore, different tools were used to introduce students to cultural heritage through, for example, creative competitions (Juha & Atrash, 2011, pp. 56–60). In the community mapping project, hundreds of school children participated in mapping the heritage of their community, expressing their views on, and insight into this heritage through drawing, writing and photography. Other examples of CCHP work demonstrate additional important dimensions in community engagement. With its participation in the EU-funded Euromed Heritage Programme, Mediterranean Voices,6 family histories, memories of places and events, folklore, rituals and customs, daily practices, documents, and photographs were recorded and collected in a major ethnographic investigation of oral history within the  Bethlehem was the subject of a series of neighbourhood-based studies, conducted between 2002 and 2006 as part of a major research project and partnership initiative between 13 institutions across the Mediterranean basin and the London Metropolitan University, UK. 6

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Mediterranean context. In an attempt to reverse the customary emphasis on monumental heritage, awareness was raised of intangible heritage that shapes the meaning and character of urban quarters by disseminating the material via the web and through interactive modes of communication. A significant factor contributing to the success of the experiences described here was the role of the project partners in analysing the contributions of the various groups, and working on integrating their input as an essential part of a collective endeavour. Community awareness is viewed as a vital component of the integrated strategy for the sustainable development of cultural heritage resources in the Bethlehem area (Juha & Atrash, 2011, p. 56). It is also central to the long-term work of the HRC in Hebron (see below), transforming the old urban core from a ‘ghost area’ into a ‘living city’ (Abu Hammad, 2017).

11.3.2 Conservation of the Old City of Hebron Hebron is one of the prime urban centres in southern Palestine. Located ca. 32 km south of Jerusalem, it is one of the oldest cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for over 5000  years. The historic centre, hosting the Ibrahimi Mosque and burial place of the Prophet Ibrahim, Isaac and Jacob and their wives, is one of the best-preserved examples of medieval cities in the world. The Old City of Hebron was the thriving economic centre of the city, but following the Israeli occupation in 1967, it was progressively abandoned due to the Israeli authorities’ measures imposed on the city and its inhabitants. These included the Israeli settlement campaign inside the city and the restriction of movement of its residents, together with daily curfews, roadblocks, closures and collective punishments. Consequently, the Old City suffered from increasing economic deterioration, driving most families and shopkeepers out to more secure neighbourhoods. The historic centre fell into a state of disrepair, becoming home to the most socially deprived sections of the population (Qawasme, 2006, p.  159), and by 1995, approximately 9500 Palestinian residents had left, with less than 400 remaining. The Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC) was established as a semi-­ governmental body by presidential decree from former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1996 to rehabilitate the Old City of Hebron, with objectives encompassing the re-population of the abandoned city centre, the preservation of cultural heritage, local economic development, the engagement of the population and the provision of affordable housing. To this end, the Hebron Old City Rehabilitation Programme set out to restore and reuse the historic buildings in Hebron’s Old City for housing purposes (Fig. 11.4), combining these transformations to the architectural fabric with improvements to public spaces, urban infrastructure and services, social and legal assistance and measures to stimulate job creation and develop the local economy (Qawasme, 2006, p. 159).

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Fig. 11.4  Rehabilitated Houses in the Old City of Hebron. (Photograph © Hamdan Taha)

The main thrust of the rehabilitation programme was to address the urgent housing needs of the most marginalised in Hebron, seeking to reduce existing structural inequities, but also tackling those inequalities prevalent in employment through initiatives that targeted specific groups, including vocational training for women, activities for disabled persons and income-generating activities for refugees. By 2015, more than 1000 housing units had been renovated and are now inhabited by ca. 6000 people. Large residential properties originally built to accommodate extended families have been converted into smaller apartments to adapt to current cultural and household requirements. Residents have been employed in the building works, using locally-produced materials wherever possible (World Habitat, 2017). In addition to housing, it was essential to provide much-needed public facilities, services and parks within the Old City, all of which have had positive effects in terms of raising cultural and environmental awareness. Infrastructure upgrades to the Old City have seen improvements to the water and electricity network, sanitation, pavements (with handrails) and streets (with street lighting), and efforts to

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green the city with tree planting. Public spaces, formerly used as dumping grounds, have been reclaimed. Social assistance, education and healthcare is provided to low-­ income families free of charge and a community centre, children’s playgrounds and public gardens have been established (World Habitat, 2017). A focus on wider social and economic issues was viewed as a key factor to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the programme (Qawasme, 2006), and an enhanced role for residents in the revitalisation process was ensured through the implementation of several awareness programmes and activities. Economic development, crucial to the reduction of poverty and unemployment in the Old City, has been stimulated through reviving local economic activity and job-creation. Shops have been restored, various activities have been organized to encourage tourism, and a vocational training school was established in 2009  in partnership with the Spanish government. The programme promotes the use of labour-intensive methods to create sustainable employment opportunities, provide specialised training on traditional methods of conservation and increase the income level of the community. Alongside these socio-economic concerns, and those of housing, infrastructure and services noted earlier, human rights form a final pillar of the programme’s remit, aimed at protecting Old City residents from human rights violations and ‘creating an environment of accountability that will contribute to the safety of the community and prevent further depopulation’ (World Habitat, 2017). Despite work being conducted under the difficult conditions of military occupation, the programme has managed to combine heritage preservation with job creation and the provision of affordable housing for low-income families. A range of social development initiatives facilitating greater community co-operation have been established (community centre, outreach activities, school trips to the Old City, activities for young people), and awareness-raising activities and the work of the human rights unit encourage residents to take a more active role in society. Ultimately, citizens are the ones playing the most important role in the preservation and revitalization process, and the involvement of the local community is essential to guarantee its sustainability.

11.4 Community Engagement in Museums The first archaeological museum in Palestine, known as the Müze-I Hümayun, or Imperial Museum was established in Jerusalem in 1901, one of the first four provincial museums in the Ottoman Empire (Laurent & Taşkömür, 2013, p.  6). The museum, housed in the el-Ma’muniyya School, was a joint venture by the Ottoman authorities and archaeologists from the British Palestine Exploration Fund, but prepared under the auspices of the Mufti and Commissar of Maarif (Education) in Jerusalem (Manaa, 2008, p. 127) with Sevket el-Khalidi as its first director. This collection furnished the core of the Palestine Museum of Antiquities, established by the Department of Antiquities of the British Mandate Civil Administration following the British occupation of Palestine in World War I. The museum was then housed

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in ‘Way House’ and inaugurated on 31 October 1921 (ibid, pp. 30–32). Also during the British Mandate, the first non-governmental museum was established in Jerusalem in 1923 by the Higher Islamic Council (Taha, 2001). It contains a collection of archaeological material and several unique Islamic manuscripts. It was not until over a decade later, however, in 1938 that the Palestine Archaeological Museum in East Jerusalem, known as ‘Rockefeller Museum’, opened. It exhibits thousands of archaeological artefacts relating to the history of Palestine from the first appearance of humankind until the early eighteenth century (Ilife 1938/1939). However, the museum has been under Israeli control since 1967, making it difficult for the vast majority of Palestinians, including the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to easily access its collections (Taha, 2001). The Palestinian hope is to reclaim this museum, making it available to all visitors and to reactivate its community role. These large institutions notwithstanding, the story of Palestine’s museums is firmly located in its communities. The Nakbah of 1948, associated (as noted earlier) with the disposition and displacement of Palestinians, and the daily suppression of Israeli colonial settler policies after 1967 in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, invoked an archival impulse which spread among the Palestinians to preserve their memories (Doumani, 2009; Taha, 2019). In such a complex Palestinian context, community organizations, cultural centres and individuals have been at the forefront of museum development. After the Israeli occupation in 1967, a series of ethnographic museums were established by local groups (Al-Matahef, 2014), including the museum of Dar et-Tifl in Jerusalem, the Bethlehem Folklore museum and the Folklore museum in al-Bireh. It is remarkable to note that most of the ethnographic museums were initiated by women, such as the Dar et-Tifel el-Arabi, created by Hind el-Husseini in conjunction with her social efforts to accommodate the orphan children of the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948. There is also the Beituna et-Talhami ethnographic museum in Bethlehem, which was established by the Arab Women’s Union in Bethlehem and the museum of al-Bireh Charitable Society established by Samiha Khalil in association with the Centre of Palestinian Studies and its journal, Al-Turath wal-Mujtama. This trend has continued more recently with the establishment of other small folklore museums and small exhibits, such as the Ishaq Hroub7 collection in Solomon’s Pools Castle, the Palestinian Heritage Centre in Bethlehem, founded by Maha Saca in 1990, and the Widad Kawar collection8 started in the 1960s.

 Ishaq Hroub, collector/curator of the collection housed in the seventeenth century Ottoman fortress, started to document social life in Palestinian villages in 1985. Over subsequent decades he also collected quotidian artefacts related to that life, from Ottoman period marriage contracts and headdresses, to home utensils, farming equipment and the paraphernalia of the prevalent professions. 8  From an early gift of two nineteenth century thobs (traditional costumes), and holidays to her mother’s village in the Ramallah area in the 1940s, Widad Kawar was drawn to the costume and embroidery of Palestinian women. After the 1967 war, and aware of the potential loss of genuine examples, she started collecting purposefully across each geographical area in Palestine, eventually amassing a collection of more than 2000 costumes and weavings. 7

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Fig. 11.5  Opening day of Al Bad Museum in Bethlehem. The Minister of Tourism and Antiquities and community members visiting the exhibits. (Photograph © Hamdan Taha)

Several historic buildings have been restored to house ethnographic and archaeological museums as well as other types of cultural centres, such as Al Bad Museum (Fig. 11.5) in the eighteenth century Giacaman House, Bethlehem. This contains a traditional olive oil press dating from ca. 1790 and is central to the display of items that illustrate the history of oil production in Palestine and in the Bethlehem region, particularly. Renovation work was also carried out by the Palestinian Department of Antiquities (in co-operation with the Municipality of al-Bireh, the Rozana Association for Cultural Heritage and other community organizations) to the Khan al-Bireh Museum in the city of al-Bireh near Ramallah, which was originally a Crusader fort, but later used in the Ottoman period as a caravanserai on the main Jerusalem-Nablus road. Other site museums established in co-­operation with local community organizations include the Dura museum, Qaser el-Basha in Gaza and Hisham’s Palace Museum, with more projects ongoing in different localities (see Taha, 2009). Further examples of renovated historical buildings include the

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Tulkarem Museum, built for the Ottoman governor of the area, Qaem Maqam, and later a communication station (Dar el Barq wal-Hatif), as well as the Ramallah Museum, located in the beautifully renovated El Zarou family house in the old centre of Ramallah. The house dates from 1838 and today houses a modest archaeological collection of the area. A series of modern museums have also been established in the last few years by governmental and non-governmental organizations in Palestine (Taha, 2009; Al-Matahef, 2014). These are the Mahmoud Darwish Museum in Ramallah, the Russian Museum in Jericho, and the Yasser Arafat Museum in Ramallah. The Ministry is also involved in a series of museum projects, most importantly the Riwaya Museum in Bethlehem, in co-operation with the Municipality of Bethlehem and other community partners, the Coin Museum, in cooperation with the Coins Authority in Palestine, the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability in Bethlehem, and the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit. There are ongoing plans to establish museums in the historic cities of Nablus, Hebron, Jenin, and Gaza and as well as site museums in different localities. However, despite this period of relative growth in the museum sector, it is acknowledged that of the considerable number of collections in the Palestinian areas,9 many are still far from being classified as museums. Those that are – both public and private – have inherited a serious shortage of qualified personnel for the conservation and maintenance of their collections, and they lack comprehensive inventories (Boylan, 1997). There is an urgent need to introduce new technologies for management, conservation, display and presentation of the exhibitions, and special emphases should be laid on educational programmes, especially for young people and schools. Recognising that museums are a significant factor for cultural and socio-economic development, and broadening their social purpose and reach should also be prioritised going forward. As these discussions indicate, a new community awareness of the value and importance of museums has gained momentum, but this needs further professional guidance. It is recognised that cultural heritage plays a great role in the process of nation building, since it represents the history and identity of the people and a territory. Museums, as knowledge-based, socio-political institutions, are protagonists in this process (see Aronsson & Elgenius, 2015; Knell et al., 2011), and in promoting and enhancing the value and significance of this heritage. The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities is working to build the museum sector in Palestine, despite the difficult circumstances imposed by the occupation, but its development demands a joint effort of all institutions working in the field of cultural heritage.

 Museum collections in the Palestinian areas are recorded in the Directory of Museums prepared by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (2009) and the Palestinian Museum (Al-Matahef, 2014). 9

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11.5 Community Engagement in World Heritage The World Heritage project in Palestine is an exemplary illustration of community engagement. Following the events of April 2002  in Palestine, especially the prolonged siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the destruction of significant historic buildings in the old core of the city of Nablus during the Israeli incursions, the World Heritage Committee, at its 26th session in Budapest (June 2002), expressed its concern over possible further destruction and damage to Palestinian heritage. On that occasion, the Committee emphasised the exceptional universal value of Palestinian heritage, encouraging the relevant authorities to take appropriate measures for its protection, and taking the decision to provide financial support for the implementation of this task (Taha, 2009, p. 6). Three key actions were identified as a priority: • Establishing an inventory of the cultural and natural heritage. • Evaluating the state of conservation and ensuring protection measures. • Building capacity within the responsible Palestinian institutions in view of the future implementation of the World Heritage Convention. In October 2002, a UNESCO mission visited Palestine to evaluate the general status of cultural heritage in the Territories. The mission met with officials from the Palestinian Authority and various stakeholders from local institutions, and visited some of the most significant heritage sites. Subsequently, a work plan was discussed, delineating possible modalities for the implementation of the World Heritage Committee’s decision in Palestine, with specific focus on the preparation of an inventory of cultural and natural heritage sites, an assessment of the state of conservation of selected sites, and training activities to introduce Palestinian experts to the objectives and procedures of the World Heritage Convention (Taha, 2009, pp. 6–7). In order to establish the first Inventory of Cultural and Natural Heritage Sites of Potential Outstanding Universal Value in Palestine, a series of consultative meetings took place at national and local levels with experts and co-ordinators in order to identify a shortlist of proposed sites. Twenty sites were chosen out of more than 60 proposed ones. Of these, 17 were cultural and three were natural heritage sites reflecting the diversity of Palestine, all meeting the criteria and requirements for inscription on the World Heritage List (Taha, 2009). The sites include historic cities (Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus), major archaeological locations (Tell es-Sultan, Qumran, Sebastia, Mount Gerzim, Anthedon, and Tell Um Amer), cultural and religious routes, natural (Wadi Gaza, Umm er-Rihan) and cultural (Palestine, Land of Olives; El-Bariyah) landscapes, as well as potential trans-boundary sites (the Dead Sea). It is important to note that although ‘The Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls’ was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1981 (Taha, 2009), prior to 2011, Palestine was not recognized by UNESCO as a state party with all the associated rights and privileges. However, on 31 January 2011, UNESCO voted to recognise Palestine as a member state. This recognition came after decades of having observer

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status in UNESCO, where Palestine was denied access to the World Conventions, including the World Heritage Convention of 1972, and had no right to field candidates or vote in the executive committees or general conferences (Taha, 2012). The Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage in co-operation with other stakeholders prepared and submitted a series of nomination files for some sites on the list, including Bethlehem, Battir, and Hebron. To promote the importance of Palestinian heritage, the Department organized seven 1-day consultative workshops for awareness-raising in different Palestinian localities, mainly targeting representatives of local community governmental and non-governmental bodies, cultural organizations and other relevant decision-makers at the community level. The overarching aim of these workshops was to raise public awareness of the World Heritage Convention and to engage local communities in the debate, drawing their attention to the planning and protection measures required to safeguard the outstanding universal value of the selected sites. In the same spirit, in order to strengthen the engagement of the local community, and to broaden the awareness of the importance of cultural and natural heritage sites in Palestine, the Department produced a series of publications for those sites included in the inventory. The main premise here is that people should know that the inscription of a heritage site is not just a prestigious act, but implies a clear commitment from the side of the formal bodies and local community to protect the site in accordance with international standards, including constraints on unplanned development and interventions which may affect the inscribed site’s integrity and authenticity. The nomination process of one of the cities on the list, Bethlehem, is illustrative of the plurality of participation and purposive local agency across Palestine’s World Heritage project. Bethlehem is acknowledged worldwide as the birthplace of Jesus Christ and is holy to Christians and Muslims. The Church of the Nativity was built by Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, to commemorate the event. The church, first dedicated in 339 A.D., was built on top of the cave where Jesus was born. In early 2010 work began on the preparation of the nomination file for ‘Birthplace of Jesus: Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem’. It was prepared by a team of Palestinian experts from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, CCHP, the UNESCO office in Ramallah, and other individual experts. The preparation of the file was carried out in full co-ordination with the local community in Bethlehem, the Municipality of Bethlehem, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church through the custody of the Holy Land, the Armenian Church, and the Presidential Committee for the Restoration of the Church of Bethlehem (Taha, 2012). The nomination file for Bethlehem was submitted to the World Heritage Centre on 26 January 2012 and approved by the World Heritage Committee in its 38th session, held in St Petersburg in June 2012. The inscription of the site represents a major step toward the recognition of the outstanding universal value of the site and the recognition of the cultural rights of the Palestinian people (Taha, 2012). The Battir World Heritage nomination file, ratified in June 2014, was prepared and submitted by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in consultation with CCHP, national and international experts and the full support of the local

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Fig. 11.6  World Heritage Site of Battir, Cultural Landscape. (Photograph © Hamdan Taha)

community of the village of Battir (Fig. 11.6). A special committee was created to communicate with local organizations, the municipality, schools and individuals to create a strategy of involvement in the preparation of the file and to devise a sustainable, community involvement plan post-nomination (Taha & Atrash, 2014). Today, community involvement in Battir remains the major factor in the efficient management of the World Heritage Site and the plethora of cultural activities that regularly occur in Battir. Following Battir, in June 2017, the old city of Hebron was inscribed in the World Heritage List after a long process of preparation of the nomination file by the Municipality of Hebron, Hebron Rehabilitation Committee and a series of community-based organizations in the city. Other examples of active community engagement concern the preservation of intangible Palestinian heritage, as illustrated in the preparation of the file for the Palestinian hikaye (or story), a form of narrative expression practiced by women in Palestinian communities10 (UNESCO Unite4Heritage Campaign). A series of governmental and non-governmental organizations and storytellers were involved in preparing the dossier, including the Arab Women’s Union in Bethlehem, the Society of Insha al-Usra in al-Bireh, the Popular Dance Centre, the Qattan Foundation, the  This storytelling form comprises fictitious tales, narrated in the Palestinian dialects of fallahi (rural) and madani (urban), that have evolved over centuries and provide a societal critique of the Arab Middle East from the women’s perspective. 10

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Welfare Association, the Popular Art Centre, the Dar et-Tifil Museum as well as experts from Palestinian Universities. Palestinian hikaye were inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.

11.6 Summary Public engagement through community involvement and participation is needed, not because it is a politically correct way to practice archaeology and heritage work, but because it is the only way to ensure the inclusion of local communities closest to a particular heritage. Through this inclusion, we can affirm the ethical multi-­ vocality of interpretations and the preservation, protection and sustainable use of the archaeological, cultural and natural heritage of Palestine. The Palestinian experience in heritage work is linked to their difficult and challenging socio-political history and their inner drive and motivation to preserve their heritage from loss and appropriation. Community engagement is promoted as an integral part of any archaeological project. The example of Tell Balata provides a successful roadmap that could easily be implemented at other sites, and community engagement in historic centres ensures the full participation of the residents directly affected by those conservation projects, an involvement integral to their success. Museums in Palestine, also tethered to a context of on-going structural, direct and cultural violences (Butler, 2010), are truly loci of resistance and resilience. Beverly Butler (ibid.) supports a bottom-up approach to museum work in Palestine and advocates for an active and engaged local involvement in the establishment of what she calls alternative11 museums. Since 1995 we have witnessed a steady, determined move towards public engagement in museum work and a diversity of museums that address the needs and desires of local Palestinians, especially archival museums. Today, Palestinian archaeology and heritage are viewed differently, not as a tool of occupation, but as a way to document and share stories that reflect local and national narratives, recounted to the world by local communities. For the authors and their fellow heritage specialists in Palestine, a community-based approach to archaeology, heritage and museums will have a great impact on their discipline and practice, altering the way fieldwork is undertaken, the kind of questions asked and the approaches taken in answering these questions. As specialists in the field we owe it to the Palestinians, as well as to our broader understanding of human history, to involve the communities where we work in exploring with them the interpretation of the past.

 Butler’s (2010, p. 115) ‘modified, or “alternative” heritage model is ethnographic in approach, hinging on ‘the “consultation process” as an “actor-network” concerned with the inclusion of alternative “voices” and their capacity to modify, reject, subvert, contest and ultimately re-appropriate such models for a more relevant and resonant… museological engagement.’ 11

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Dedication  This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Nada Atrash, an architect and cultural heritage expert. She was involved in co-ordinating and developing various multi-national projects, including the Bethlehem Area Conservation and Management Plan (2008–2010), and Heritage for Development (2012–2014). She was the file preparer of nomination documents to inscribe Birthplace of Jesus: Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem (2011), and Palestine: Land of Olives and Vines – Cultural Landscape of Southern Jerusalem, Battir (2013) on the World Heritage List. She was the author of many articles on cultural heritage and conservation. Nada passed away on the 25 October 2016 at the age of 40.

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Taha, H. (2019). Palestinian historical narrative. In I. Hjlem, H. Taha, I. Pappe, & T. Thompson (Eds.), The new critical approach to the history of Palestine, Palestine history and heritage 1 (pp. 21–42). Routledge. Taha, H. & Atrash, N. (2014). Palestine, Land of Olives and Vines, Cultural Landscape of Southern Jerusalem, Battir: Story of Inscription on the World Heritage List. https://www.academia. edu/31064907/Palestine_Land_of_Olives_and_Vines_Cultural_Landscape_of_Southern_ Jerusalem_Battir_Story_of_Inscription_on_the_World_Heritage_List. Accessed 1 Jul 2020. Taha, H., & van der Kooij, G. (2007). The water tunnel system at Khirbet Bal’ama, Khirbet Bal’ama archaeological project, report of the 1996–2000 excavations and surveys. Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. Taha, H. & van der Kooij, G. (Foreword) (2011). Stories about Tell Balata. Project supervised by M. van den Dries and S. van der Linde. Ramallah: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. Taha, H., & van der Kooij, G. (Eds.). (2014a). Tell Balata, changing landscape, Publications of the Tell Balata Archaeological Park Project. Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage. Taha, H., & van der Kooij, G. (Eds.). (2014b). Teacher’s handbook for archaeological heritage in Palestine, Publications of the Tell Balata Archaeological Park Project. Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage. Taha, H., & van der Kooij, G. (Eds.). (2014c). Tell Balata Archaeological Park Guidebook, Publications of the Tell Balata Archaeological Park Project. Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage. Thiersch, H., & Hölscher, G. (1904). Reise durch Phönizien und Palästina. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin, 23, 1–52. Toombs, L., & Wright, G. E. (1961). The third campaign at Balatah (Shechem). Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR), 161, 11–54. Toombs, L., & Wright, G. E. (1963). The fourth campaign at Balatah (Shechem). Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR), 169, 1–60. van den Dries, M.  H., & van der Linde, S.  J. (2014). Community involvement. In H.  Taha & G. van der Kooij (Eds.), Tell Balata, changing landscape, Publications of the Tell Balata Archaeological Park Project (pp. 132–141). Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage. van den Dries, M. H., van der Kooij, H. L., & van der Linde, S. J. (2014). Education. In H. Taha & G. van der Kooij (Eds.), Tell Balata, changing landscape, Publications of the Tell Balata Archaeological Park Project (pp. 141–149). Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage. van der Linde, S. J. & van den Dries, M. H. (2010). Promotion, awareness and education proposal tell Balata (unpublished advisory report Tell Balata Archaeological Park Project). Leiden. Watkins, J.  K., Pyburn, A., & Cressey, P. (2000). Community relations: What the practicing archaeologist needs to know to work effectively with local and/or descendant communities. In S. J. Bender & G. S. Smith (Eds.), Teaching archaeology in the twenty-first century (pp. 73–81). Society for American Archaeology. Welter, G. (1932). Stand der Ausgrabungen in Sichem. Archäologischer Anzeiger, Beiblatt zum Jahrbuch des Archäologischen Instituts III/IV, Jahrbuch 47, column 289–314, Berlin. World Habitat (2017). World Habitat Awards. Hebron Old City Rehabilitation Programme [webpage]. https://www.world-­habitat.org/world-­habitat-­awards/winners-­and-­finalists/hebron-­old-­ city-­rehabilitation-­programme/#award-­content. Accessed 3 May 2020. Wright, G.  E. (1956). The first campaign at Tell Balatah (Shechem). Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR), 144, 9–20. Wright, G. E. (1965). Shechem: The biography of a Biblical city. Gerald Duckworth and Co. Wright G. R. H. (2002). Shechem III: The Stratigraphy and Architecture of Shechem/Tell Balatah, vol. 2, The Illustrations. American Schools of Overseas Research.

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Hamdan Taha is Vice President for Academic Affairs at Al-Istiqlal University, Palestine. A former Deputy Minister for Heritage in the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, he served as Director General of the newly established Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage between 1994 and 2012. He has directed a series of research and salvage excavations in Palestine, publishing extensively as author and co-author on inter alia Qabatiya, the Khirbet Bal’ama Water Tunnel, Tell es-Sultan, Hisham’s Palace, Sycamore Tree (Jericho), Beitin and Tell Balata. He acted as National Coordinator of the World Heritage File in Palestine from 2002 to 2014, and currently is Coordinator of the Palestine History and Heritage Project, for which he has recently co-authored an introductory volume, New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine.  

Iman Saca is Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology and Chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, Saint Xavier University, Chicago, USA. She is also Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at the University. Her work focuses on the archaeology of the Near East, heritage education and preservation, oral history and local communities’ involvement in heritage education, preservation, promotion and protection. She was involved in the successful nomination to the UNESCO World Heritage List of the Al-Zubarah Archaeological Site, Qatar, and in the nomination of the Village of Battir, Palestine. As well as presenting regularly at national and international conferences, she has been engaged in numerous excavations, curated an exhibit at the Oriental Institute–University of Chicago and published widely, including a book on the art of Palestinian embroidery.  

Chapter 12

Renegotiating Landscapes Through Digital Imagery: Heritage Destruction in Syria and Iraq Nicole D. Payntar

12.1 Introduction The twenty-first century has become a critical moment for the destruction of archaeological heritage landscapes. Armed conflicts have increasingly become more ‘social’ in nature as internet photo communities have expanded and media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. are utilized as flash-points for the dissemination of wartime propaganda and imagery. During the recent conflicts in Syria (2012-present) and Iraq (2011-present), the destruction of archaeological heritage sites dominated global media reports as imagery was periodically released online by Da’esh (also known as the Islamic State or ISIS). Western media coverage of heritage destruction largely focused on sites under the brand of UNESCO World Heritage despite damage to thousands of other locally and regionally significant archaeological sites. The physical destruction of heritage sites in Syria and Iraq (and the dissemination of this imagery) was methodically employed by Da’esh as a powerful tool in the production and renegotiation of place, memory, and identities across various social scales and landscapes. UNESCO heritage sites became a popular target for Da’esh’s iconoclasm not only because of their local, national and global significance but also due to their perceived status as microcosms of Western control (Harmansah, 2015; Smith, 2015). This chapter analyzes select images of heritage destruction from the UNESCO affiliated sites of Palmyra (Syria), Hatra (Iraq), Nimrud (Iraq), and Nineveh (Iraq) from 2015–2016. An exploratory analysis of heritage imagery and the influence of this imagery on archaeological landscapes is presented here. The goals are three-­ fold: to understand the intersection of heritage imagery and landscape renegotiation; to analyze the visual weaponization of heritage sites through destruction and memory cues; and to assess the influence of image production on perceived N. D. Payntar (*) Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_12

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messaging and heritage place-making globally. It is not the intention of the author in this chapter to assume, or speak for, the physical and abstract experiences that occur at the local level, which greatly contribute to the production of cultural heritage and which cannot be fully understood from an outsider’s perspective. Instead, the purpose here is to draw attention to one component within the larger cycle of landscape renegotiation across Syrian and Iraqi heritage landscapes through the interplay of Western heritage discourse and Da’esh’s active iconoclasm. Located in Western Asia and sharing a modern border, the Syrian Arab Republic and The Republic of Iraq have a rich archaeological history of cultural intersections and empires. This includes the Akkadian Empire (2335–2124 BC), Assyrian Empire (2500–609 BC), Hittite Empire (1600–1179 BC), and Parthian Empire (247 BC– AD 224), amongst others. Several sites from these periods are now considered World Heritage (WH). In an effort to preserve examples of outstanding cultural value and historic significance, the concept of universal heritage was adopted by the 1972 UNESCO Convention, and the subsequent foundation of the World Heritage List in 1978. To be selected for the WH List, a site must meet one of ten criteria including: being a representative work of human genius; a unique testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization either past or present; or an outstanding architectural, technological ensemble, or landscape from a significant period in human history (World Heritage Centre n.d.).1 Iraq ratified the Convention in 1974, while Syria became a party to the Convention in 1975. Currently, all of Syria’s WH Sites, and half of Iraq’s WH Sites, have been added to UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger due to ongoing destruction and damage caused by the Syrian Civil War, Da’esh’s iconoclasm, and other State party interference (Table 12.1). Table 12.1  List of current UNESCO World Heritage Designations for Syria and Iraq as of August 2019 UNESCO Designation World heritage site

Tentative list

Syria Aleppoa, Bosraa, Damascusa, ancient villages of northern Syriaa, Crac de chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El dina, Palmyraa Noréas de Hama, Ugarit, Ebla, dura Europos, Apamée, qasr al-Hayr ach-Charqi, Maaloula, Tartus, Raqqa, L’ile d’Arward, Mari

Iraq Ashura, Babylon, Erbil, Erbil citadel, Hatraa, Samarraa

Nimrud, Nineveh, fortress of Al-Ukhaidar, Wasit, Thikifl, Wadi Al-Salam cemetery in Najaf, Amedy, Baghdad Rusafa, Bestansur, Nippur, Old City of Mosul

World Heritage Center (n.d.) a Denotes site is on the List of World Heritage in Danger as of August 2019 Sites in bold are the focus of this study

 UNESCO has expanded its definition of WH to include cultural landscapes focusing on the ‘interaction between humankind and the natural environment’, sustainable land-use, and ‘a specific spiritual relation to nature’ (World Heritage Centre, n.d.). This definition is not directly relevant to the conceptualization of landscapes discussed in this chapter as Palmyra, Hatra, Nimrud, and Nineveh are not inscribed as such. 1

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The case studies presented here highlight two differential approaches to cultural heritage within the ongoing armed conflicts in Syria and Iraq. The first approach exemplifies a discourse of universal heritage led by UNESCO. This model fosters a ‘freeze-frame’ approach (Strange & Whitney, 2003) and presentation of heritage landscapes in these countries, espousing a static snapshot that is considered the essential depiction of a site in all of its manifestations. This freeze-frame model risks homogenizing and romanticizing heritage sites and limits the intercultural variability of experiences and perceived meanings associated with place-making and landscapes over time. The second approach is one of elimination advocated by Da’esh through the destruction of heritage sites at various scales. Each approach denotes a singular perspective that acts as a territorial marker of power and control. Both approaches inflict ideologies – albeit in radically different ways – constraining place-making abilities and renegotiating perceived meanings on the landscape. These two conflicting ideologies simultaneously work for and against each other via media-distributed images of heritage sites to form a meta-narrative cycle of landscape renegotiation. This cycle is considered the tandem interaction of physical destruction paired with semiotic elements of exchange between the discourse of universal heritage and the iconoclasm of Da’esh. Images of heritage sites (and their destruction) mark, or remark, territorial control based on the acceptance or rejection of specific layers (abstract and physical) within the landscape. The U.S. Department of State estimated supporters of Da’esh posted roughly 90,000 messages a day on various media platforms (Keller, 2015; Smith et al., 2016), and that 88% of Da’esh’s media was visual (i.e. imagery and video) (Zelin, 2015). This imagery can be classified as ‘alternative photography’ which attempts to create iconic, violent, images of war and ‘incorporate photography into the social and political memory’ (Ritchin, 2014, p. 42). Such imagery relies on a cognitive set of attributes capable of doing memory work in addition to knowledge of place-making on the landscape. Cross-culturally, the visuality of ‘before’ and ‘after’ images associated with heritage sites also works within processes of landscape renegotiation and meta-narrative cycles. Da’esh’s weaponization of heritage imagery and the physical destruction of heritage sites have the ability to shift heritage hierarchies, power dynamics, and intangible meanings on the landscape. By comparing visually similar images of destruction produced by Da’esh at UNESCO affiliated sites in Syria and Iraq, the emergence of two visual patterns is suggested: ‘reflexive’ imagery and ‘non-reflexive’ imagery (defined in the following section). A case is also made that the destruction of heritage sites by Da’esh renegotiates heritage landscapes by targeting multiple audiences through the production of non-normative heritage ruination. The theoretical approach to the imagery analysis used by the author is discussed first, before providing a brief overview of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, as well as a timeline of site destruction relevant to sites within the study. Analysis and results are then presented, followed by a conclusion with a summary of the findings.

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12.2 Theoretical Underpinnings for Imagery Analysis Archaeological theory concerned with place-making and landscape studies (Anschuetz et al., 2001; Casey, 1996; David & Thomas, 2008; Lowenthal, 1986; Lozny, 2006; Penning-Roswell, 1986; Rodman, 1992) provides a framework to discuss the renegotiation of heritage landscapes in conflict when paired with studies of visuality (Davis, 2004; Jakle, 1987; Rose, 2012; Sand, 2012; Sturken & Cartwright, 2009). Landscapes are a collection of places as well as places themselves (Casey, 2016). Multiple times and places can also occur within the same landscape – we see this through stratigraphic site deposition as well as within contemporary built environments that retain non-contemporary architectural ruins. The layering of the built-­ environment influences place-making across landscapes and contributes to the presence of different perceived realities and experiences at various social scales (local, regional, global). Although the built environment acts as a physical form of tangible heritage, it is also endowed with intangible values, which explain why some places carry symbolic meaning while others do not (Sørenson & Viejo-Rose, 2015). Place-making relies on the cognitive recognition and ascription (or rejection) of cultural values, creating a collective and individual knowledge and awareness of place. Here, ‘value’ refers to objects, things, or ideas that are positively received and evaluated hierarchically (Appleton, 2014; Horlings, 2015). The valuation of heritage sites (eg. local vs. global, i.e. UNESCO), in part generates heritage hierarchies across landscapes. In these instances, some sites are imbued with a higher status for protection and are considered ‘more valuable’ than others. The value attributed to heritage sites – either for destruction or protection – depends on accepted heritage discourses, power dynamics, and the visuality of place. Visuality refers to ‘the visual experience that is contingent on culture’ (Sand, 2012, p.  89), including how vision is culturally and historically constructed. Individuals and groups learn to ‘see’ landscapes differently and project different meanings back on to landscapes. Differences in place-meanings are also attributed to those external to place. For example, tourists, migrants, and outside researchers may add new layers of perception and meaning to an already occupied landscape (e.g. ‘World Heritage’). During armed conflict, geopolitics and warfare make place-­ making constrained and traumatic. This negatively impacts local life-ways that produce heritage and maintain its accessibility. Landscapes may therefore be seen as assertions of power and are influenced and distorted by political and ‘social relations inherent in the landscapes that we view’ (Penning-Roswell, 1986, p.  115). Visuality therefore incorporates ‘how we see, how we are able, allowed, or made to see, and how we see this seeing and the unseeing therein’ (Rose, 2012, p. 2). Similar to the encoding process associated with landscapes, individuals and social groups will also interpret images in different ways (Rose, 2012). This is expanded upon through audiencing, whereby individuals viewing an image are influenced to distinguish and perceive meaning based on their own culturally constructed social, political, economic, religious, or lived experiences (Rose, 2012). Therefore, ‘one does not see the world, one sees an image of the world’ (Davis,

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2004, p. 9). This concept echoes the idea of multiple perceived realities, meanings, and experiences associated with landscapes and place-making. Because landscape perceptions are culturally acquired, images of landscape change are an effective way to project new meanings back on to the landscape through semiotic exchange and reflexivity. Reflexive images are able to reference context as well as other texts, images, and collective memories (Sturken & Cartwright, 2009), to reorient landscapes, power dynamics and place-meanings. Non-reflexive images do not reference external content but can similarly destabilize power dynamics and place-meanings. Non-reflexive imagery also has the potential to become iconic and a foundational baseline for future reflexive imagery compositions. In this sense, images of heritage sites curated by UNESCO and images produced by Da’esh are not unfiltered lenses of ‘seeing’, instead they inscribe different socio-political constraints and perceptions on the landscape. Visuality is therefore an important framework when analyzing archaeological heritage landscapes generated through imagery. Recent scholarship concerned with the destruction of archaeological heritage landscapes in Syria and Iraq has focused on monitoring site destruction and looting, preservation, international responses, and post-conflict heritage policies (Al Quntar et al., 2015; Bauer, 2015; Cardoso & Brites, 2019; Cunliffe et al., 2016; Danti et al., 2017; Danti, 2015; Meskell, 2015; Munawar, 2017; Stone, 2015). Few scholars have analyzed Da’esh’s use of imagery on social media and the destruction of heritage sites (Clapperton et  al., 2017; Cunliffe & Curini, 2018; Fahmy, 2020; Harmansah, 2015; Smith et al., 2016). This chapter builds upon the work of previous scholars by integrating theoretical concepts from landscape archaeology and studies of visuality to analyze the intersection of heritage destruction, imagery and landscape renegotiation. The research presented here offers an exploratory means of addressing the visuality of heritage destruction and landscape renegotiation in Syria and Iraq as well as the weaponization of heritage through memory cues.

12.3 Conflict Overview and Timeline of Relevant Site Destruction The ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq are rooted in a spatially and temporally complex geo-political web. Fragmentation of political power began in Iraq in 2003 and Syria in 2011, increasing the power of peripheral groups as public confidence in State authorities waned (Mabon & Royle, 2016). These shifting power dynamics would eventually lead to the socio-political creation of Da’esh. Known as the Islamic State, ISIS or ISIL, Da’esh is an extremist militant group whose origins can be traced to al-Qaeda in Iraq (Gulmohamad, 2014; Hill, 2016). The group would come to control roughly 88,000 km2 (34,000 mi2) of territory in Syria and Iraq at the height of their power in 2015 (BBC, 2019). The following section briefly outlines the conflicts in Syria and Iraq (see Harris, 2018; for a complete overview, see Mabon & Royle, 2016) and a timeline of relevant site destruction.

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Following the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, the reorganization of Iraqi society looked to suppress Baathism – the ideology of Saddam Hussein (Mabon & Royle, 2016). Amidst this reordering, Iraq’s Shi’a party was given authority over the country’s majority Sunni population for the first time in Iraq’s history (ibid.). Tensions between the two groups increased sectarian violence between Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish communities. Coupled with a growing economic crisis and increased rates of unemployment, these tensions escalated into widespread unrest in 2011 following the withdrawal of US troops (Gulmohamad, 2014; Mabon & Royle, 2016). Forming from the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq during this period, Da’esh capitalized on the country’s unstable socio-economic conditions to assert itself within the political landscape by actively recruiting members and appropriating territory. Da’esh’s seizure of Mosul in 2014 and the declaration of a new Islamic State by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, brought urgent calls for military intervention and countermeasures to combat further expansion across the region (Isakhan & Meskell, 2019; Harris, 2018; Mabon & Royal 2016). Da’esh’s expansion in Iraq coincided with the large-scale destruction of thousands of heritage sites, including the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hatra on April 5, 2015 and the UNESCO affiliated sites of Nimrud on March 5, 2015 and the Moshqi gates of Nineveh in April 2016. The destruction of these three sites was deliberately staged, recorded, and disseminated by Da’esh. Subsequently, many of the still-frames from these videos and the imagery generated by Da’esh, was reproduced and circulated by Western media outlets to accompany global headlines. As reported by The Guardian, the destruction of Hatra was captured on a seven-minute video released online by Da’esh (Shaheen, 2015). The video portrayed an aerial view of the site’s destruction via drone, and identified several ‘idols’ located across the UNESCO World Heritage Site. In accordance with the video’s message, Hatra’s sculptures were ‘smashed to pieces or mutilated with the use of various tools such as sledgehammers and drills’ (Harmansah, 2015, p. 173) (Fig. 12.1). Although Da’esh’s origins are linked to Iraq, the group’s controlled territory eventually expanded across the Syrian border (Gulmohamad, 2014). Following the events of the Arab Spring in North Africa, Syria’s popular uprising to overthrow the government of Bashar al Assad began in March 2011  in the provincial town of Daraa (Harris, 2018; Leenders, 2013). However, ‘armed conflict... was not officially declared until June 2012’ (Cunliffe et al., 2016, p. 2). During this period, the situation in Syria became increasingly volatile, resulting in widespread civil war. The conflict was further complicated when the northern part of the country fell to Da’esh in 2013. This prompted ‘global military intervention in September 2014 under the leadership of the United States, to be followed by Russian military intervention allegedly for the same purpose’ soon after (Lababidi & Qassar, 2016, p. 346). By June 20, 2013, all six of Syria’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites were added to the List of World Heritage in Danger. Despite several high profile international meetings to mitigate damage to Syria’s cultural heritage (see Al Quntar & Daniels,

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Fig. 12.1  Still frames of Da’esh’s destruction of Hatra, Iraq captured from video (a & c) (Associated Press). A still of a soldier destroying the Nergal gate at Nineveh (b) from video (Associated Press). Still of militants destroying a frieze at Nimrud (d) from video (see also Jones, 2015). Boxes denote visual similarities between the photos added by the author

2016; Cunliffe et al., 2016; Lababidi & Qassar, 2016), destruction and looting continued to occur. In May 2015, Da’esh took over the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Palmyra, destroying the Temple of Baal-Shamin on August 24, 2015. The following week, the Temple of Bel was also destroyed. Several other prominent structures within Palmyra, including the Arch of Triumph, the Tower of Elahbel and the Tower of Iamblichus, were also destroyed. Additionally, Palmyra was subjected to widespread looting and mining by Da’esh and a video was later released showing extensive damage to the site’s museum. These events prompted international condemnation and widespread media coverage. Palmyra would not be liberated until the arrival of Russian-backed Syrian forces on March 27, 2016 (Munawar, 2017). Here, Palmyra is considered a landscape because the individual elements that form the whole of the site can be interpreted as places themselves (see Casey, 2016). These places were destroyed in various strategic ways by Da’esh depending on the target audience. For example, the destruction of the Temple of Bel and Baal-Shamin were both featured in Da’esh’s Dabiq magazine (in English) in order to target the West. The image of Baal-Shamin (Fig. 12.2) and subsequent images of the Temple of Bel (Figs. 12.3 and 12.4) were also heavily circulated by Western media outlets. As for the destruction of Palmyra’s towers and tombs, no reports or circulated imagery was released. The destruction was not discovered until a satellite imagery analysis was conducted months later suggesting a more local (or national) impact.

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Fig. 12.2  Retouched images of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (center). (Photograph by George R. Caron, United States Department of Energy, and Charles Levy, United States Department of Energy, 1945). A cropped still frame of the explosion of the Temple of Baal-­ Shamin, Palmyra, Syria (right) released by Da’esh (see also BBC, 2015). Boxes denote points of visual similarity across images added by the author

Fig. 12.3  Image of the archway of the Temple of Bel, Syria (left) released by Da’esh (see also Stanton, 2015) and a torri gate in Nagasaki, Japan captured by photographer Yosuke Yamahata on August 10, 1945 (right photograph courtesy of Shogo Yamahata) both unintentionally survive destruction. Boxes denote points of visual similarity across images added by the author

12.4 Heritage Landscapes and Digital Imagery By deliberately targeting UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Da’esh has generated greater publicity through ‘well-choreographed spectacles’ of destruction (Harmansah, 2015, p. 170). These acts are simultaneously directed toward global spectators and local populations (Jenkins, 1974; Weimann, 2008) through multiple forms of semiotic exchange as landscapes are inherently layered with multiple meanings. The focus of this chapter is to draw attention to one part of the larger complex cycle of landscape renegotiation during armed conflict. The cyclical component chosen for discussion highlights the renegotiation of heritage landscapes – both real and perceived – at UNESCO affiliated sites in Syria and Iraq. This includes the relationship between non-local readings of local landscapes via staged imagery, Da’esh’s acts of heritage destruction, and the meta-narrative cycle of semiotic

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Fig. 12.4  The Temple of Bel at Palmyra photographed on April 10, 2013 (above) prior to its destruction by Da’esh (Judith McKenzie, Manar al-Athar Photo Archive). Below, the remaining archway of the Temple of Bel imaged on March 15, 2017 (DGAM, Syria)

exchange that occurs between these two heritage discourses. Images of destructive events occurring at the archaeological heritage sites of Palmyra, Nimrud, Nineveh, and Hatra were selected based on their UNESCO affiliations, targeted destruction by Da’esh, and the regularity of image redistribution across various media platforms. First the way imagery contributed to the meta-narrative cycle of landscape renegotiation in Syria and Iraq is discussed. Then, an analysis is made of images of Palmyra’s destruction (particularly the destruction of the Temple of Baal-Shamin

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and the Temple of Bel (Figs.  12.2 and 12.3) and the associated memories of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan that these images cue through visual patterning. Finally, landscape renegotiation in Iraq is addressed through an analysis of non-reflexive images from Nineveh, Nimrud, and Hatra in order to draw attention to Da’esh’s different strategies of imagery production and messaging across landscapes.

12.4.1 Meta-Narrative Cycles of Landscape Renegotiation Within the narrative cycle of media-distributed still-frames and images of heritage destruction are three temporal markers of landscape renegotiation: ‘before’, ‘during’, and ‘after’. The ‘before’ image is meant to represent the expected heritage landscape in its ‘authentic’, idealized form. The ‘frozen’ context and ascribed place-­ meanings of the ‘before’ image are amplified in a side-by-side comparison with the ‘after’ image (Fig. 12.4; see also Worley, 2016). The ‘during’ image is marked as the moment of destruction and transition. Finally, the initial product of landscape renegotiation is visualized by the ‘after’ image. In terms of armed conflict and the meta-narrative cycle of landscape renegotiation all three phases play an important role in the reactions and messages they relay and elicit. These visual phases simultaneously benefit both Western heritage discourse and the ideology of Da’esh, creating a recurring cycle of landscape renegotiation. Within Iraq and Syria, the abbreviated cycle that ensued followed a regular pattern: the physical destruction of heritage by Da’esh; distribution of videos and images of destruction across media platforms by Da’esh; Western media redistribution of images of heritage destruction; shock and calls to action by non-local, Western stakeholders. As part of this narrative cycle, several factors have contributed to Western media outlets’ selective reporting of Syrian heritage destruction. First, the idea that ‘universal heritage belongs to all mankind’ promoted by UNESCO has generated significant global interest in UNESCO World Heritage since 1978. It has also created distant international stakeholders who have no physical attachment and little knowledge of local heritage landscapes. Second, there is a perceived hierarchical value associated with UNESCO World Heritage (discussed above). Third, the UNESCO affiliation is recognized by a large population of Western audiences. Western media attention and reporting therefore adheres to a punctuated time equilibrium. Within the cadence of conflict certain events are imbued with more significance than others, based on cognitively recognized, culturally socialized, perceptions and values. For example, Palmyra’s status as a WH Site resulted in global condemnation of its destruction and spurred the creation of the Blue Helmets, a joint initiative led by UNESCO in partnership with Italy (Lababidi & Qassar, 2016). In contrast, Western reactions to the destruction of the Sufi shrine of Sheikh Eissa Abdelqader al-Rifaiy in Busaira, Syria (2013) were nearly non-existent. A search conducted using Google’s News Tab on February 10, 2017, yielded a single result for the destruction of the Sufi shrine as compared to over 131,000 News results for

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the destruction of Palmyra. While extreme, this example portrays the unequal value of heritage sites on the landscape. It also emphasizes the way in which Western media perpetuates the meta-narrative of landscape renegotiation by promoting the discourse of ‘universal heritage’. As media outlets reported and redistributed photographs produced by Da’esh, the before and after images of Syrian and Iraqi heritage destruction drew extreme ‘shock’ from Western spectators due to the values and expectations imposed on the site by non-local stakeholders and communities. The use of before and after images by Western media draws audience attention to the extent of heritage destruction and relays a sense of urgency. While unintentional, Da’esh’s iconoclasm also reinforces the discourse of ‘universal heritage’ by increasing Western support of Syrian and Iraqi WH Sites and driving post-conflict initiatives meant to champion the revival of this heritage based on previously defined landscapes and place-meanings. Future reconstruction initiatives and the imposed discourses of non-local stakeholders on local heritage landscapes must be exercised with caution and may ultimately harm local communities and place-making that occurs as part of the reconciliation and healing process post-conflict. For Da’esh the destruction of sites like Palmyra (and other UNESCO affiliated sites in Syria and Iraq) showcased their power over Western adversaries and aided in the recruitment of local and foreign fighters (Cunliffe & Curini, 2018; Smith, 2015). The reaction of Western audiences to the destruction of Syrian and Iraqi heritage landscapes fed into Da’esh’s perceived success. The continuity of heritage images and videos generated between 2015–2016 portrayed the group as victorious in their territorial expansion and acquisition of prominent heritage sites. The product of Da’esh’s control of UNESCO sites in Syria and Iraq resulted in the staged ruination of the built environment. The photographs and still frames distributed by Da’esh not only alluded to the potential for a new type of place-making to occur – one that would represent the Islamic State (Munawar, 2017)  – but also forcibly renegotiated power dynamics on the landscape. Imagery of Da’esh’s iconoclasm also found success in its exploitation of reflexive elements that cued Western memory, adding further complexity to the cycle of landscape renegotiation.

12.4.2 Reflexive Patterning and Memory Cues in Syria Identified within imagery of Palmyra’s destruction were two high-impact photographs that exhibit reflexive composition. Da’esh’s use of ‘reflexive’ imagery creates a focused visualization for non-local audiences through imposed filters of semiotic exchange. This allows the target audience to ‘read’ the landscape that is presented despite the methods of production and performative acts employed to create it. Because people believe they are ‘reading’ and perceiving the same thing, the message of the photograph seems universal (Barthes, 2007; Rose, 2012). Cultural interpretations of the image become the foundation from which a landscape is perceived as spectators ‘read’ the semiotic elements that were produced in its creation. Images of heritage destruction produced and distributed by Da’esh can be replicated

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without loss of quality much easier than spoken language as they move further from their origin. In this sense, images of Palmyra’s destruction had a higher communicative impact on non-local audiences than reported speech. This in part allows local landscapes to be renegotiated by distant stakeholders through channels of semiotic exchange and perceived messaging. As part of a larger narrative cycle, the reflexive methods of composition utilized by Da’esh become significant when analyzing select images of Palymra’s destruction. Reflexive imagery plays to Western cognition and memory of past destructive events and displays Da’esh’s power as well as a sense of ‘otherness’. Paired with the stylistic elements of ‘alternative photography’, images of Palmyra’s destruction visually pattern and contextually link Palmyra to the iconic photographs of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan by the United States in August 1945 (Figs. 12.2 and 12.3). Iconic images are those that have acquired a symbolic significance within public memory and are recognized instantaneously (Hariman & Lucaites, 2003). These images provide a quick means of ‘apprehending something and a compact form for memorizing it’ (Sontag, 2002, p.  87). The iconicity and visuality of images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s destruction provide a point of analysis for the visual patterns that cue memory and ascribe an added layer of socialized meaning to Palmyra’s landscape. Today, Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial/ A-Bomb Dome (Genbaku Dome) is considered to be ‘a universal monument for all mankind, symbolizing the hope for perpetual peace’ (see Utaka, 2008, p. 39) and was inscribed to the WH List in 1996. Following the targeted destruction of Hiroshima’s civilian landscape during World War II, local acts of place-making greatly contributed to new understandings and perceptions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s landscapes. As part of the post-­ conflict period of reconciliation and landscape renegotiation, Hiroshima came to be understood as a place of resilience both locally, nationally, and globally. Prior to Hiroshima’s inscription, the U.S. had greatly opposed the Dome’s nomination due to ‘the way the US wished to have the world see its role in World War II’ (Deacon & Beazley, 2007, p. 8). At the time, the U.S. administration and veteran’s groups feared the nomination would portray the U.S. as war criminals and inflame domestic politics (Deacon & Beazley, 2007). While the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s destruction belong to a landscape that is geographically and temporally removed from the primary locations of this study, they are relevant to the cultural perceptions and meanings that are cued in the adjacent images of Palmyra. The centrality of the mushroom cloud in the still-frame of the Temple of Baal-Shamin (Fig. 12.2) and the ruined archway of the Temple of Bel (Fig. 12.3) are external cues for Western audiences and invoke the iconicity of images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Da’esh’s images of Palmyra replicate the power, fear, and anger attributed to memories of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by invoking visual similarities within their imagery. The cognitive recognition of these visual cues attempts to shift power dynamics on the landscape and project Da’esh’s strength and authority globally. The perceived message is a reversal of power – with the United States responsible for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the images of Palmyra’s demolition reverse this power dynamic to show Da’esh’s power over one of their perceived adversaries (the United States).

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The remains of the archway at the Temple of Bel and torri2 gate at Nagasaki were unintentional. However, the composition of both photographs deliberately draw the viewers eye and emphasizes the surrounding ruination. While many still-frames and images of Palmyra’s destruction exist, the fact that Western media largely redistributed these two particular images (Figs. 12.2 and 12.3) speaks to the memory work and recognition that such images cue. By creating images of destruction that present forms of reflexive patterning through cognition and memory work, Da’esh’s staged destruction of Palmyra perpetuates the visual weaponization of heritage landscapes. Paired with symbolism and distributive strategies, Da’esh mobilizes its socio-political ideology to reach and influence a much larger audience. The ease and speed by which social media distributes these images is as valuable to Da’esh as the images themselves. The redistribution of such images ‘appear and reappear in various contexts and places, and these places, cue particular ways of spectating, mediating the visual effects of those images’ (Rose, 2012, p. 32). By showcasing heritage destruction, both Da’esh and Western media outlets enable a new form of psychological warfare (Smith et al., 2016; Weimann, 2008).

12.4.3 Imagery and Renegotiating Heritage Landscapes in Iraq Photographs of heritage destruction produced from 2015–2016 at the sites of Hatra, Nineveh, and Nimrud, Iraq, were identified as a second point of analysis (Fig. 12.1). The angle of the camera, which is considered a feature of every image (Larsen et al., 2004), was noticeably replicated in these photographs and still-frames. Along with the staging of the camera during image production, a clear visual pattern was distinguished: concealed body positions, actionable movements, sculptural elements, and the use of tools. Members of Da’esh filmed during these four destructive acts were concealed from the direct view of the camera and audience. All bodies remained in an active position through the use of sledgehammers and drills – possibly as a show of force  – against what Da’esh considers to be ‘idolatrous monuments’ (Danti, 2015; Harmansah, 2015). The deliberate destruction of monuments by Da’esh and the redistribution of these images by non-local media outlets, alludes to the non-­ normative ruination of the landscape. The angles chosen to depict ruination, the position of the body – particularly the hidden face – and the use of tools within the still frames to capture motion or action, are purposely staged for the camera. Performative acts of heritage destruction at Hatra, Nineveh, and Nimrud, show a coordinated presentation and continuity among images produced by Da’esh across Iraq’s heritage landscape, adding to the images’ salience. The replication of visual  A torri is a traditional Japanese gate often found at the ingress or inside a Shinto shrine, representing the transition from the mundane to the sacred. The torri at the entrance to the Sannō Shrine in Nagasaki, about 800 meters’ south-east of the atomic bomb hypocenter, is noted for its single, surviving support column (Fig. 12.3). 2

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patterning in the four frames also index similar patterns found within Da’esh’s beheading videos of Western hostages who were killed on camera by hidden men. Images of destruction at Hatra, Nimrud, and Nineveh highlight the moment prior to select erasure and are the transition point between the previously real (and perceived) landscape and the product of new place-making. The damage occurring at these three Iraqi sites while deliberate, was not to the same scale as the destruction of Palmyra. The overall majority of Hatra, Nimrud, and Nineveh’s built environments remained intact. The physical destruction of monuments at these sites and the imagery derived from it, suggest a different strategy. Unlike the images of heritage destruction at Palmyra, images of destruction at Hatra, Nineveh, and Nimrud do not have identifiable reflexive patterns to cue memory work. However, they do represent one part of a larger, symbolic whole associated with imagery of heritage destruction and landscape renegotiation. The four images analyzed signify the ‘during’ phase of heritage destruction (Fig. 12.1). The destruction of these three sites can be perceived as a local form of subjugation and recruitment (Smith, 2015). However, Hatra, Nimrud, and Nineveh were also targets of Da’esh’s iconoclasm due to their UNESCO status. The redistribution of images by Western media and the reactions that these images provoked indicate site significance on a global scale. The reproduction of stills by Western outlets may also add a new layer of meaning to the current meta-narrative cycle. Within photojournalism, ‘the hunt for more dramatic… images drives the photographic enterprise, and is part of the normality of a culture in which shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and source of value’ (Sontag, 2002, p. 87). The ‘shock’ value of images of Iraqi heritage destruction and their UNESCO affiliations, may make them economically valuable to Western media outlets as they align with Western photojournalism’s wartime aesthetic of high drama and emotional impact. While the images of Palmyra’s destruction also offer photojournalistic ‘shock’ value, the reflexive composition and visuality of Palmyra’s destruction offers an additional motive for the continuous redistribution of these images by Western media outlets. Significantly, the images from Hatra, Nimrud, and Nineveh may form a foundational base within the genre of reflexive imagery to cue memory in future instances of heritage destruction through the cognitive recognition of socialized meanings and symbols.

12.5 Conclusion Visual images of cultural heritage destruction by Da’esh look to shift power relations and renegotiate heritage landscapes at various scales in Syria and Iraq. As part of the current meta-narrative cycle, the visuality of heritage destruction affects global perceptions of local landscapes by contradicting Western expectations of place. The before, during, and after imagery of Da’esh’s iconoclasm simultaneously reinforces and dismantles UNESCO’s model of ‘universal heritage’ depending on who is spectating and how the images are ‘read’. Da’esh’s images of Palmyra are a powerful form of cross-linguistic communication that do not require knowledge of

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the host language due to the visual patterning of reflexive elements that cue memories of past iconicity associated with bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The reflexivity of images of the Temple of Baal-Shamin and the Temple of Bel add an additional layer of meaning within the photograph’s composition and the physical landscape. While armed conflict across landscapes affects the built environment in highly visible ways, it also affects the intangible meanings, memories and identities attributed to larger contexts of place, both locally and globally (Sørenson & Viejo-Rose, 2015). Because tangible and intangible heritage is inextricably linked  – creating cycles of landscape production and renegotiation  – the damage to heritage landscapes is twofold. The success of imagery produced and distributed by Da’esh at the global scale is dependent on the visuality of the image created, Western redistribution, and the reactions and interpretations of those spectating. The images also have a targeted message at the local and regional levels based on elements of semiotic exchange. ‘Seeing’ landscapes through a designated cultural lens (Tuan, 2001), like those produced by Da’esh (or advocated by UNESCO), impose a reordering of the Iraqi and Syrian landscapes to fit the values of the communities and individuals spectating. The targeted destruction of UNESCO heritage in Syria and Iraq and the weaponization of this imagery functions as a way to deconstruct place-meanings and power dynamics by forcing landscape renegotiation. Eradicating select parts of the built environment that simultaneously occupy multiple times and places, act to erase competing perceptions, experiences, ideologies, and identities on heritage landscapes. Image sharing and media accessibility have increased the visibility of heritage sites worldwide by connecting global communities and cultures in previously unprecedented ways. This virtual interconnectivity and engagement has simultaneously fueled the interest of ‘distant stakeholders’ (i.e. regional or global communities) in  local heritage (e.g. WH Sites) and amplified the ‘virality’ of heritage landscapes through widespread media dissemination. The latter has significant implications for future conflicts and the weaponization of cultural heritage via destruction and large-scale community photo sharing at the local, regional, and international scale. The goal of this chapter has been to draw attention to one part of the larger cycle of landscape renegotiation during armed conflict. By integrating discussions of visuality and landscape theory into heritage discourses and post-­ conflict initiatives, we can achieve a broader understanding of evolving heritage vulnerabilities, place-meanings, experiences, and perceptions. Acknowledgments  I wish to extend my appreciation and gratitude to Emma Cunliffe for her advice and invaluable feedback on the revised draft of this chapter, as well as to R. Alan Covey and Elizabeth L. Keating for providing vital commentary and feedback on earlier versions of this chapter. I would also like to thank Alison Damick (this volume) for the helpful comments she provided for my conference paper, ‘The Weaponization of “Canonical” Imagery: An Analysis of Cultural Heritage Destruction, Performative Action, and Shifting Landscapes in Syria and Iraq’, presented at WAC 8–Kyoto, from which this chapter was adapted and expanded. Finally, I would like to thank the editors of this volume, Arwa Badran, Shatha Abu-Khafajah, and Sarah Elliott for their continued support and counsel throughout this process.

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12  Renegotiating Landscapes Through Digital Imagery: Heritage Destruction in Syria… 277 Hill, C. V. (2016). Killing a culture: The intentional destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq and Syria under international law. Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, 45, 191–220. Horlings, L.  G. (2015). Values in place; a value-oriented approach toward sustainable place-­ shaping. Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2, 257–274. Isakhan, B., & Meskell, L. (2019). UNESCO’s project to ‘revive the Spirit of Mosul’: Iraqi and Syrian opinion on heritage reconstruction after the Islamic state. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 25(11), 1189–1204. Jakle, J. A. (1987). The visual elements of landscape. University of Massachusetts Press. Jenkins, B. M. (1974, June 24). ‘International terrorism: A new kind of warfare’. Statement submitted to the subcommittee on the near east and South Asia, committee on foreign affairs, house of representatives, Congress of the United States. Jones, J., (2015, April 14). How ISIS reduced the Ancient World of Nimrud to Rubble. https:// www.thedailybeast.com/how-­isis-­reduced-­the-­ancient-­world-­of-­nimrud-­to-­rubble. Accessed 3 Sep 2019. Keller, A. (2015, September 29). Remarks. Documenting of ISIL’s antiquities trafficking: The looting and destruction of Iraq and Syrian cultural heritage: What we know and what can be done. United States Department of State. https://2009-­2017.state.gov/e/eb/rls/rm/2015/247610.htm. Accessed 28 May 2018. Lababidi, R., & Qassar, H. (2016). Did they really forget how to do it? Iraq, Syria and the international response to protect a shared heritage. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies, 4(4), 341–362. Larsen, V., Luna, D., & Peracchio, L. A. (2004). Points of view and pieces of time: A taxonomy of image attributes. Journal of Consumer Research, 31(1), 102–111. Leenders, R. (2013). Social movement theory and the onset of the popular uprising in Syria. Arab Studies Quarterly, 35(3), 273–289. Lowenthal, D. (1986). Introduction. In E.  Penning-Roswell & D.  Lowenthal (Eds.), Landscape meanings and values (pp. 1–3). Allen and Unwin. Lozny, L. R. (2006). Place, historical ecology and cultural landscape: New directions for culture resource management. In L. R. Lozny (Ed.), Landscape under pressure: Theory and practice of cultural heritage research and preservation (pp. 15–26). Springer. Mabon, S., & Royle, S. (2016). The origins of ISIS: The collapse of nations and revolution in the Middle East. I. B. Tauris & Company Limited. Meskell, L. (2015). Gridlock: UNESCO, global conflict and failed ambitions. World Archaeology, 47, 225–238. Munawar, N.  A. (2017). Reconstructing cultural heritage in conflict zones: Should Palmyra be rebuilt? EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, 2, 33–48. Penning-Roswell, E. C. (1986). Themes, speculations and an agenda for landscape research. In E. Penning-Roswell & D. Lowenthal (Eds.), Landscape meanings and values (pp. 114–128). Allen and Unwin. Ritchin, F. (2014). Of them, and us. Aperture, 214, 42–47. Rodman, M.  C. (1992). Empowering place: Multilocality and Multivocality. American Anthropologist, 94(3), 640–656. Rose, G. (2012). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials (3rd ed.). Sage Publications. Sand, A. (2012). Visuality. Studies in Iconography, 33, 89–95. Shaheen, K. (2015, April 5). ISIS Video Confirms Destruction of UNESCO World Heritage Site at Hatra. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/05/isis-­video-­confirms-­destruction-­at-­ unesco-­world-­heritage-­site-­on-­hatra. Accessed 28 May 2018. Smith, C. (2015). Social media and the destruction of world heritage sites as global propaganda. In A. Castillo (Ed.), Proceedings of II international conference on best practices in world heritage: People and communities. Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

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Smith, C., Burke, H., de Leiuen, C., & Jackson, G. (2016). The Islamic State’s symbolic war: Da’esh’s socially mediated terrorism as a threat to cultural heritage. Journal of Social Archaeology, 16(2), 1–26. Sontag, S. (2002). Looking at war: Photography’s view of devastation and death. The New Yorker, 82–98. Sørenson, M.  L. S., & Viejo-Rose, D. (2015). Introduction: The impact of conflict on cultural heritage: A biographical lens. In M. L. S. Sørenson & D. Viejo-Rose (Eds.), War and cultural heritage: Biographies of place (pp. 1–17). University of Cambridge Press. Stanton, J. (2015). ISIS show off their destruction of 2,000-year-old temple at Palmyra: Just single arch of ancient Temple of bel is left standing. The Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ news/article-­3229268/Pictured-­ISIS-­destruction-­2-­000-­year-­old-­temple-­Palmyra-­left-­just-­ one-­arch-­standing.html. Accessed 3 Sep 2019. Stone, E.  C. (2015). An update on the looting of archaeological sites in Iraq. Near Eastern Archaeology, 78(3), 178–186. Strange, I., & Whitney, D. (2003). The changing roles and purposes of heritage conservation in the UK. Planning, Practice & Research, 18(2–3), 219–229. Sturken, M., & Cartwright, L. (2009). Practices of looking: An introduction to visual culture. Oxford University Press. Tuan, Y. (2001). Space and place: The perspective of experience. University of Minnesota Press. Utaka, Y. (2008). The Hiroshima ‘peace memorial’: Transforming legacy, memories, and landscapes. In W.  Logan & K.  Reeves (Eds.), Places of pain and shame: Dealing with difficult heritage (pp. 34–49). Routledge. Weimann, G. (2008). The psychology of mass-mediated terrorism. American Behavioral Scientist, 52(1), 69–86. World Heritage Centre. (n.d.). UNESCO World Heritage Centre. whc.unesco.org. Accessed 23 Sep 2019. Worley, W. (2016, April 2). Palmyra: Photographer’s powerful before and after photos show city’s destruction at the hands of Isis. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-­ east/palmyra-­syria-­photos-­new-­palmyra-­photos-­show-­devastation-­of-­artefacts-­ruined-­by-­ isis-­a6964766.html. Accessed 3 Sep 2019. Zelin, A. Y. (2015). Picture or it Didn’t happen: A snapshot of the Islamic State’s official media output. Perspectives on Terrorism, 9(4), 85–97. Nicole D. Payntar is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. She received an MA in Archaeology from Durham University in 2012. Her research interests include machine learning and computer vision for archaeology, heritage tourism, landscape archaeology and land change science. She has previously served on the Antiquities Coalition’s Culture Under Threat Task Force and as the former Assistant Director of Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE).  

Part IV

Giving Children Keys to the Past

Chapter 13

‘I am Jarash’: An Educational Kit for Schoolchildren in Jordan Arwa Badran, Anna Paolini, and Nofa Nasser

13.1 Introduction In 2011, the UNESCO office in Amman initiated the project, Engaging Young People in their Cultural Heritage. The project aimed to introduce school children to the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of their country, making a sustainable long-term impact on their knowledge of their past, whilst improving their understanding of its value and the need for conservation. The project involved an initial exploration of the pre-existing heritage education for pupils in Jordan to inform the production of a new educational kit.1 This chapter provides an overview of the kit in terms of content, production, implementation and evaluation. The kit demonstrates a unique approach to introducing concepts to which pupils had limited exposure at school and beyond  – the nature of archaeology, interpreting the past, aspects of social, political, economic and religious life – through studying theatres, places of worship and pottery, and celebrating various cultural contributions to the history of Jarash. The strength of the kit lays in UNESCO’s vision, management at local level through the Jordan Friends of Archaeology and Heritage society, and production by a national team of experts aware of the Jordanian context. This was further supported by stakeholders’ consultation and evaluation. The result was a kit that is relevant to local needs, valuable in its archaeological content and thoughtful in its pedagogical approach. The authors seek to share a unique experience from Jordan  I am Jarash [in Arabic: Ana Jarash] (Badran et al., 2012).

1

A. Badran (*) Formerly of the Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham, UK e-mail: [email protected] A. Paolini UNESCO Caribbean office, Kingston, Jamaica N. Nasser Jordan Friends of Archaeology and Heritage, Amman, Jordan © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_13

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of a locally researched, produced and piloted educational resource, highlighting challenges, successes and areas to improve. It is hoped that by disseminating this story and the lessons learned, an important contribution can be made to the international body of research and practice in heritage education.

13.2 Why a Kit for Jordan? Public engagement with heritage in Jordan is weakened by a number of factors. The government’s top-down approach to the management of sites for tourists has led to the alienation of the local population from this heritage (Abu-Khafajah et al., 2015). The Department of Antiquities  of Jordan (DoA) resources have been, since its establishment in the 1920s, focused on the excavation, restoration and preservation of archaeological sites (Harding, 1967). The DoA dedicated fewer people, and less time and money to public awareness, and its provision has been highly specialist in terms of the level of knowledge required for engagement, with interpretation that could only be appreciated by the interested and the well-educated, whether in publications, on sites or in museums (Badran, 2018). Very little effort has been spent on the interpretation of sites and heritage for the public in general, and for children in particular. There have also been missed opportunities to engage children with this rich past in the Jordanian education system. The National Curriculum focuses on pasts related to Arabic, Islamic and Hashemite2 heritage, and presents other pasts as dead and relevant only in their iteration as scenic landscape ruins. The Jordanian community has always been perceived as a threat to heritage, and fencing sites became common practice against vandalism and looting (see Corbett & Ronza, this volume). The disconnect between the public and their heritage, and their lack of awareness of its importance, when coupled with poverty and unemployment, has led to the plundering of sites and selling artefacts for income (Bisheh, 2001). The DoA has taken bold steps to combat this, previously working directly with looters and antiquities dealers to purchase and document stolen artefacts for public benefit (Politis, 2002; Kersel, 2012), but more needs to be done. Ensuring the community’s position as an ally in the protection of heritage is vital, and pivotal to this is raising awareness at the roots – starting with schoolchildren. Using heritage as an educational resource is valuable for children’s learning about the past. Site visits are a chance to explore landscapes, structures, and even smells, sounds and colours, all of which provide a sense of scale and help trigger children’s curiosity (Pearson, 2001). Such an experience puts ‘the evidence of the past into context’ (ibid, p. 13). Objects in museums, on the other hand, provide evidence for enquiry-based learning about form, texture and construction, encouraging children to draw conclusions about how items were made and used (Durbin et al.,  The Hashemites are the ruling royal family of Jordan, regnant there since 1921, and previously sovereigns of Hejaz (1916–1925), Syria (1920) and Iraq (1921–1958). Jordan is now a unitary state under a constitutional monarchy, but the King retains wide executive and legislative powers from government and parliament. 2

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1990) and their context. They can also be used to create sensory experiences and stories, both of which are effective for children’s critical thinking and connecting with the past (Shaffer, 2015). Objects are important for engaging children in the study of the past itself, in the process of evaluating material evidence, to explain, interpret and construct narratives (Henson, 2004). The use of such physical environments to engage the mind in questioning and making inferences is attested by many scholars through time, from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, through mediaeval Islamic philosophers, such as Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina (known as Avicenna), to late modern and contemporary western educational theorists like John Dewey and Jean Piaget. Other scholars, in their objection to single state narratives, began calling for exposure to multiple resources or narratives to encourage children’s independent thinking and an appreciation of human diversity and contribution. This could be traced to the first half of the twentieth century in the writings of Grahame Clarke, as well as in the Arab region by the Egyptian scholar Taha Husayn and the Iraqi novelist Dhu al-Nun Ayyub.3

13.3 Exploring the Local Context To create a kit that serves local needs in content, pedagogy, curriculum links and target audience, the project started with an initial exploratory phase to understand the nature and extent of heritage education available to pupils in Jordan. It involved mapping the presentation of Jordan’s cultural heritage across the National Curriculum at the elementary level (grades 1–10), a process that involved the capture of data from 208 textbooks within 12 curricula,4 telephone interviews with teachers in 369 schools regarding the nature of their visits to heritage sites and museums in Jordan, and face-to-face interviews with staff in 29 museums regarding their educational provision to schools. Some of the data analysis is highlighted in this chapter to demonstrate its fundamental role in shaping and creating the kit. Mapping the presentation of cultural heritage in the curriculum revealed that most of the heritage referred to in the textbooks – nearly 93% – is tangible, in the form of

 The views expressed above are broadly supported by heritage specialists today (see Badran, 2018 for full discussion). 4  Curriculum delivery in Jordan is heavily controlled. School textbooks are produced by the Ministry of Education following its curriculum guidelines. The Ministry’s textbooks are taught in public and private schools in Jordan, although the latter has more freedom to select other material (mainly for English, Science and Mathematics), particularly with the introduction of the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), the International Baccalaureate (IB), and the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) into the Jordanian education system. Some textbooks, however, such as those on citizenship education and history, in which heritage topics mostly appear, are compulsory in all schools. Those exempt, are a few international private schools who follow mainly British and American curricula. 3

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Fig. 13.1  Relative proportion of references to heritage sites, museums and artefacts in the National Curriculum

Fig. 13.2  Degree to which TCH is included in the 12 mapped curricula textbooks in Jordan

either sites, objects or museums.5 It is used to support different topics according to each curriculum. Tangible cultural heritage (TCH) is introduced in the History Curriculum textbooks, for example, to support an historical narrative spanning the Adomites, Moabites and Ammonites, via the Nabataeans to the Umayyads and Abbasids in the Islamic period. TCH in the Citizenship Curriculum textbooks is introduced to serve narratives linking the Arabic, Islamic and Hashemite pasts, or

 Heritage is used here to refer to all remains from the past. Heritage in the Jordanian Law of Antiquities, however, is divided into two separate categories: turath (popular heritage), referring to ‘any man-made object that is inscribed, built, discovered or modified after 1750 A.D.’, and antiquities, referring to heritage pre-dating 1750 A.D. (DoA, 2004, article 7b: 6). 5

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showcasing heritage sites in Jordan as national property to be proud of. Here, as well as in the Geography Curriculum textbooks, the importance of TCH is highlighted as an economic resource within tourism. In the English Curriculum textbooks, names of sites and museums are repeatedly mentioned as part of language exercises, while in the Art Curriculum textbooks, TCH is used to highlight ancient art and decorative elements related to shape, light, colour and form. In the curriculum textbooks, heritage sites were referred to 344 times (64.3%), artefacts 117 times (22%) and museums 73 times (13.7%) (Fig.  13.1). The most mentioned heritage sites were Jarash (33 times), Petra (32 times), the Crusader castles (33 times), and the desert palaces (27 times).6 The Citizenship Curriculum textbooks have the largest number of references to TCH (24.3%), followed by Art Education (13%), Pre-vocational Education (13%), History (12.2%), and English (11.8%) (Fig. 13.2). The surprisingly low percentage for History can be accounted for by the fact that the subject is taught to the lower grades (1–5) under the Citizenship Curriculum; History in upper grades becomes a separate curriculum and is denser in TCH when compared to the other curricula and mapped across grades 6–10. The largest degree of reference to TCH by grade appears in grade 10 (18%), followed by grade 7 (17%) and grade 4 (11.4%) (Fig. 13.3).

Fig. 13.3  Level of reference to TCH by grade for the 12 mapped curricula textbooks in Jordan

 These statistics are for heritage sites, museums and artefacts introduced as topics in textbooks, but not their repetition in the text. For example, the word ‘Petra’ could appear several times on one page, however, it was only counted when it appeared afresh as a topic, which could be anything from a word, a sentence, a paragraph or even a whole lesson. 6

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The mapping of TCH in the National Curriculum, and the data gathered, were critical to the kit design in the following ways: • The data collected revealed that TCH, to various degrees, appears in all 12 curricula textbooks and all 10 elementary level grades. This proved positive to the research team as it meant that there were many cross-curricular links to be created in the kit. The data also revealed that some curricula textbooks, particularly those which are compulsory (e.g. Citizenship, History), have more content on TCH than others. A decision was therefore made that while the kit would include cross-curricular links, it should still target the Citizenship and the History curricula. • Although the amount of TCH in the Citizenship and the History curricula textbooks might differ across the grades, if grouped with the rest of the curricula textbooks, the amount of TCH is densest in higher grades. This was found to be vital as it shed light on pupils’ exposure to TCH over a 10-year period of compulsory education and indicated how the kit could be introduced to best serve pupils’ needs. Introducing the kit at grade 10, where TCH is densest, seemed to be too late into their education, and at the same time, younger pupils at primary level did not have enough in the curriculum on TCH. Grade 7 was therefore seen as a good compromise. Added to that, the schools’ survey revealed that older pupils are more likely to go on fieldtrips (1–3 times a year), than younger pupils. Hence, the practical element of the kit was more likely to be delivered on site with grade 7 pupils rather than the younger ones. A decision was also made to target parts of the kit at grade 6, aiming to gently introduce some of the concepts a year early. • The investigation confirmed that the focus on certain pasts and excluding others occurs not only in the Citizenship Curriculum textbooks, but across the whole National Curriculum. There is more content when TCH relates to Arabic, Islamic, and Hashemite pasts or the modern history of Jordan. TCH related to other pasts, such as the Greeks and the Romans, is presented in a basic, descriptive and brief manner, highlighted mainly as a present-day location in Jordan and a national property. This TCH is presented to pupils as deserted, dead and distant through images and descriptions of empty ruined structures detached from its past peoples. With the absence of heritage experts among the authors’ committees of these textbooks, the value of this heritage is poorly communicated (Badran, 2011). Petra, for example, is mentioned seven times in the curriculum as one of the seven modern wonders of the world, but not once as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Moreover, basic concepts related to heritage and the past are ignored, such as defining archaeology, the need for heritage preservation and proper excavation of sites. There is no explanation on how the past is constructed based on evidence. Therefore, the research team decided that the kit must expand on topics in the curriculum textbooks. To bring pupils closer to the past, the kit would need to bring the past to life, to look at food, water, medicine, clothes, currency, transportation, games, art and writing. Moreover, pupils would need to be introduced to some basic vocabulary related to archaeology, heritage protection, history and museums, and be engaged in the process of interpreting the past.

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• The kit needed to focus on one site to ensure depth and breadth in content suitable for curriculum delivery. This proved extremely important for teachers who needed guidance and support as part of the kit, as they are neither trained in TCH, nor have on-site experts to lead activities and answer pupils’ questions. The site selected was Jarash, a Greco-Roman city founded by Alexander the Great, located 36 km north of Amman. Not only was Jarash the most mentioned site in the national curriculum textbooks, but also the most visited by schools annually (e.g. around 52% in comparison to 33% of annual school visits to Petra). The schools’ survey was extremely important in revealing these percentages and helped make informed decisions regarding site selection. • The kit was designed to support curricula delivery, in particular to accompany the compulsory school visits. With no on-site experts to lead educational activities for school children in Jordan, its use was left to the teachers. This absence of on-site educational provision notwithstanding, site museums were still seen as an opportunity in this project to support teachers during their visits. Subsequently, their educational potential was investigated, revealing useful information about the archaeological museum in Jarash. Established in the mid-1980s, the museum had many advantages that would benefit the kit, including its location in the heart of the ancient city, its collections linked to the history of the site, its staff of museum professionals with experience running activities for school children, and a display room space that could be used for school sessions. • Taken together, the data facilitated the linkage of the kit with objects from the Jarash Archaeological Museum.

13.4 UNESCO and FoAH: International and Local Collaboration A year later, following the results of the initial exploratory phase, a second phase of the project was launched by UNESCO, which involved the kit design and production, to be developed by the Jordan Friends of Archaeology and Heritage (FoAH) society. This local and international shared-management approach also engaged other stakeholders from within the heritage and education sectors in debate, reflection, critique and guidance on the project direction. This collaborative effort was vital – it meant that the project research and decision-making process was legitimised by multiple voices and perceptions, and as a result, created a bottom-top approach to its management (e.g. Smith, 2018). UNESCO has had a longstanding interest in, and made a significant contribution to enhancing children’s education about the past through formal schooling. It has worked on various fronts for the past two decades towards producing educational resources on the international, regional and local level. The educational kit World Heritage in Young Hands, for example, was launched in 1994 by the Associated Schools Project Network (ASPnet) and the World Heritage Centre. The project aims to encourage young people to become involved in the protection of natural and

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cultural heritage (Chowne, 2007). A major part of this project was the introduction of a multilingual educational kit to member schools of ASPnet in 1999, and holding teachers’ workshops to provide guidance into their use. The Arabic version of the kit was revised and upgraded by the UNESCO office in Amman in 2008/2009, and capacity building for its use was provided in several schools in Jordan with the support of the Jordanian Ministry of Education (MoE) and through the ASP network (UNESCO, 2010). On a regional scale, UNESCO, in collaboration with the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), published Introducing Young People to Heritage Site Management and Protection: A Practical Guide for Secondary School Teachers in the Arab Region (2006). The aim of this publication is to provide guidance for teachers in the Arab world regarding the use of heritage sites in their teaching practice. In particular, it aims at exposing secondary school students to the principles of management and conservation of built and archaeological heritage. The kit also introduces scientific methods of conservation and provides inputs for practical activities. This kit was piloted in Petra with students and professors from the region. UNESCO was provided with good feedback by the students, with suggestions to extend its use to other parts of the region. For this project, UNESCO worked with a local partner, the  Jordan Friends of Archaeology and Heritage Society (FoAH), a voluntary, non-profit private business association that has been undertaking public heritage awareness in Jordan for over 60 years. FoAH’s mission is to actively protect and preserve Jordan’s archaeological and heritage assets and value, and instil a strong sense of ownership thereon among the citizens of Jordan by raising public awareness, concern, and an appreciation of the importance of their country’s archaeological assets, culture and heritage. FoAH carries out its mission by hosting lectures about the archaeology and heritage of Jordan, with the latest findings and excavations in both Arabic and English presented by professors and experts in the field. FoAH also organises field trips for its members and their guests to archaeological and heritage sites and the latest excavations taking place in Jordan. Furthermore, the Society arranges international trips to countries with particularly significant cultural heritage. Archaeological awareness in children is one the main objectives of FoAH, with school visits to talk to children about archaeology, and multi-faceted collaborative work with the Ahliyyah School for Girls Archaeological Club in Amman. As a result, school club members have opportunities to participate in excavation and restoration work, visit museums and heritage sites, hold exhibitions, and represent the club in major events (see Goussous & Badran this volume). FoAH is promulgating the idea of archaeology clubs in other schools in Jordan in co-operation with the Sustainable Cultural Heritage Through Engagement of Local Communities Project (USAID SCHEP). Six schools agreed to participate in the project, and teachers were assigned, trained and appointed as coordinators between the two parties. The archaeology clubs have had a positive impact on pupils, instilling an enhanced knowledge of their history and heritage, a heightened respect for local cultural difference, and a recognition of personal skills and passion for drawing archaeological sites, photography, conservation, restoration, and ancient writing. Significantly, too, the clubs have generated an

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increased awareness of employment opportunities related to heritage, archaeology, and tourism. The FoAH’s future goals are to initiate archaeological clubs in both public and private sector schools across Jordan, particularly in those adjacent to archaeological and heritage sites, and work on their sustainability within the education sector. The UNESCO-FoAH initiative is a positive contribution to the growing efforts towards heritage education for schoolchildren in Jordan. For example,  Petra National Trust (PNT), which was established in 1989 to preserve and protect the heritage of Petra, has been carrying out ‘Education, Outreach and Awareness’ (EOA) programmes for young people in the villages surrounding Petra over the past decade. Some of these include a ‘Training of Trainers’ scheme, enabling school teachers to play a key role in implementing heritage education initiatives for young people on Junior and Youth Ranger programmes. These programmes have thematically designed activities about the history of Petra, its past and present communities, biodiversity, and tourism to instill a sense of identity, pride and commitment to protecting Petra (PNT, 2020). Another example is the Umm el-Jimal project (UJP), which has concentrated since 2007 ‘on site documentation, preservation and presentation with community archaeology as the overriding goal’ (see de Vries, this volume). The UJP’s research outcomes on the heritage of the area were used to develop an on-line Education Manual in English and Arabic, free for teachers and students to download. The community-led, not-for-profit company, Sela for Training and Protection of Heritage (see Corbett & Ronza this volume), established in 2015, has also proven successful. Work by Sela includes community heritage projects and organising activities for school-age children, one of the most popular of the latter being summer clubs aimed at creatively involving children with heritage. Children experience heritage-themed, hands-on activities (pottery mending, mosaic making, archaeological digging etc.) but they also prepare a theatrical performance about the history of the archaeological site in their villages (Maria Elena Ronza, pers. comm., 29 April 2020).

13.5 The Kit Production The Engaging Young People in their Heritage project kit, I am Jarash, included a teachers’ guidebook (which has all the text and guidelines of how to communicate the lesson concepts and implement the activities) and a pupils’ activity book (comprising worksheets, pictures and short stories). The kit also included an introduction for teachers on its use, the historical background of Jarash, a bibliography, a timeline and a map showing major landmarks in the ancient city. Core content of the kit explores archaeology as a method of investigating the past, considering Greek and Roman theatres, and highlighting the collective contribution of the various civilisations that settled in Jarash and created its diverse and rich history. MoE curriculum links were added to each lesson, allowing teachers ample choice in linking the lesson to whichever curriculum and school grades they found most suitable. Each lesson is designed to be implemented in three stages: (1) a list of suggested questions

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is provided for teachers to use in an introductory class discussion, providing entry points to the main ideas of the pre-visit lesson, (2) a schedule of the site visit with activities, and (3) a post-visit classroom session to recapitulate on what has been learned and follow up with more activities. The kit was designed to engage pupils with their heritage and develop their critical thinking skills. Each lesson is intended to be taught through a set of questions that would trigger a discussion and end with conclusions or further discussions and unanswered questions. The aim is not solely for pupils to learn about Jarash, but also about improving the process by which this learning occurs – i.e. encouraging self-learning skills and developing interest, rather than spoon-feeding7 information. Activities also rely on pupils using cross-curriculum skills to learn the concepts presented in the lessons, such as drama, artwork, observation, gathering information, analysis, interpretation, solving puzzles, and writing skills. This kit also explains who archaeologists are, how they excavate and collect evidence and how the past is interpreted and understood (Fig. 13.4). The educational kit content and design took almost 3 months to complete. Led by the first author working with eight professionals in the fields of archaeology, museology, education, design and information technology, with each contributing to the kit according to his/her own area of expertise (Fig. 13.5).8 The kit production followed a rigorous process involving initial discussions, brainstorming meetings on content, research, text production, consulting archaeology and pedagogy professionals, proofreading, creating activities, adding curriculum links, designing the layout and regular reviews. A fieldtrip to Jarash was also organised for the team of experts to gather more information, take photographs and examine the setting where the kit activities are planned to be implemented (Fig. 13.6). An advisory committee was formed by the UNESCO Amman office and FoAH consisting of professionals representing various bodies and institutions in Jordan, namely the Department of Antiquities (DoA), the MoE, the National Committee for Education, Culture and Science (NATCOM), and school members of the UNESCO-­ Associated Schools Project (ASPnet). The purpose of this committee was to guide and validate the development of the kit and ensure that the deliverables conformed to the MoE’s agenda. During the kit production process, a teachers’ focus group was held to obtain various perspectives from those working at the heart of the educational process regarding a specific topic – the kit content and implementation (Fontana & Frey, 1994). The group interaction led to various discussions and at times differences of  Metaphorically, ‘spoon-feeding’ is understood to mean providing no opportunity to think or act for oneself. It can also refer to behavioural treatment that, when given, compromises self-development. Pedagogically, this hindrance can impede independent learning and deter creativity and innovativeness among learners. 8  Team members were: Mrs. Iman Owais (archaeologist, ex-curator of Jarash Museum and resident of the city), Mrs. Khawla Goussous (archaeologist and schoolteacher at the Ahliyyah School), Dr. Abdul-Kareem Jaradat (Citizenship Supervisor at the Ministry of Education), Miss Rasha Dababneh (Museum Education specialist, Children’s Museum), Dr. Muwaffaq Al-Zubi (Curriculum specialist), Miss Hanin Arnaout (artist and graphic designer), and Mr. Azzam Abu Hanieh (IT programmer). 7

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Fig. 13.4  Examples from I am Jarash Educational Kit (Images © UNESCO)

Fig. 13.5  The team of experts discussing kit content and working on its creation (Photograph © UNESCO)

opinion, which provided a more realistic picture of existing challenges and opportunities for using the kit to supplement the curriculum (Bryman, 2004). Seven teachers were selected to attend and represent public and private schools implementing the MoE curriculum in the north, middle and south of Jordan. This could

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Fig. 13.6 A team member visiting Jarash and gathering resources for the kit production (Photograph © UNESCO)

be considered a semi-representative sample, that is ‘a flavour’ of the relevant wider population (Mason, 2002, p.  126). The teachers were briefed with the aim and agenda of the meeting, and informed that it would be recorded to avoid any misrepresentation of their views (Bryman, 2004). The focus group was conducted in a semi-structured manner, with prepared sets of questions/topics prior to the meeting used as reference points to follow on kit-related issues. The outcome of the teachers’ focus group highlighted vital points to be considered in the kit. Teachers stressed maintaining the role of the teacher in the kit as educational-facilitator, rather than spoon-feeder of information to pupils, and that more activities were needed to allow interesting and engaging approaches to learning about the past, diverging from a traditional factual narrative followed by the curriculum. This meant that the teacher needed guidance in the kit for communicating the lesson’s ideas, carrying out the activities and achieving the learning outcomes. Hence, when the kit was produced, questions were placed at the end of each lesson, designed to be used by the teacher to create discussion in the classroom and encourage pupils to reach their own conclusions. Activities also accompanied each lesson for teachers to choose from and implement according to pupils’ needs and interests. Teachers, however, felt that the success of the kit also depended on the teachers’ interest and willingness to use it. Teachers suggested a means of involving pupils in effective learning about Jarash by doing some background research before the visit, and getting involved with group work activities. Both suggestions were considered in the kit. The kit introduction included guidelines for teachers on its use, with reference to the importance of preparing pupils for the visit by asking

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them to gather information on the site beforehand. Moreover, some of the kit lessons were accompanied by activities that required pupils to work in groups. Several obstacles were highlighted by teachers related to using the kit. For example, heritage topics are placed at the end of the Citizenship Curriculum textbook, making it difficult for teachers to organise fieldtrips within the limited time left at the end of the school year. Despite that, it seems that teachers do not always follow the order of lessons in the textbook and have, at times, given lessons related to heritage at the beginning of the school year. The amount of time dedicated to citizenship education per school year is only 14 classes of 45 minutes each. Thus, everything was done to ensure that teachers and pupils get the maximum benefit from the kit within these limitations. Eight lessons were produced containing rich archaeological and historical information that can be delivered in the classroom in less than 45  minutes, while activities associated with each lesson can be done during the school fieldtrip. Teachers also indicated that computers are not always available at schools, and when they are, the numbers are too few for pupils to make use of. Therefore, whilst computer usage is suggested in some areas of the kit, nothing relied upon computers solely to learn the lesson or perform the activities.

13.6 Piloting the Educational Kit Piloting the kit was necessary to give an insight into how the kit would be used by teachers and highlight areas for improvement. As noted earlier, there were six participating schools from the north, middle and south of Jordan, with a mixture of public and private, boys and girls schools. The total number of pupils was 60, in grades 6 and 7. Some children were older (grades 8–9), a decision to include them taken by their teachers, who wanted to help the kit piloting by increasing the number of participating pupils. This benefitted the kit as the older pupils engaged in the activities as much as the younger ones, which meant that the kit could be suitable for a wider age group. A full schedule was created, allocating lessons and activities for each school to implement. The piloting took 3 days to complete. Each day, two schools would pilot the kit, each escorted by two evaluators to observe and gather information. Classrooms were offered by Al-Huda School in Jarash for teachers to carry out the pre- and post-visit sessions with their pupils, with a visit in between to the ancient city (Fig. 13.7). The evaluators introduced themselves to pupils at the beginning of the day, explaining why they were present and the aim of the exercise.9 It was also emphasised to pupils and teachers that the evaluation was not intended to assess their competence, rather the quality of the kit itself. Teachers and pupils might have been conscious of how they behaved at the beginning while being observed, but they eventually relaxed once accustomed to the presence of the evaluators (Bryman, 2004).  The evaluation team included ex-students from the Hashemite University, Mrs Dima Khreishan and Miss Faten al-Habarneh, both of whom completed modules related to museums and children’s education under the supervision of the first author. 9

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Fig. 13.7  The piloting of the kit started with classroom lessons at Al-Huda School (Photograph © UNESCO)

13.7 Kit Evaluation Four sets of evaluations were used to assess the kit and are outlined here.

13.7.1 Observation of Teachers The observation of teachers aimed to see whether they were able to deliver the lessons according to the content and guidelines provided. Observational techniques were useful in providing first-hand interpretation and understanding of methods used in kit delivery (Adler & Adler, 1994). The observation was structured using three levels of grading (poor, good and excellent) according to an ‘observation schedule’ of nine criteria based on how the kit was designed to be delivered (Bryman, 2004). The intention was to see whether guidance provided in the kit was appropriate and easy-to-follow. Some of the most interesting results revealed that the majority of teachers were scored ‘excellent’ on encouraging pupils’ interaction and linking on-site activities with classroom lessons, as well as on the implementation of activities within time. Fewer teachers rated ‘good’ on topic coverage in the classroom, implementing

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activities according to steps suggested in the kit, and explaining to pupils the activity aims and steps. The reason for this was the lack of preparation for the activities before the visit, which perhaps was an element that needed to be stressed more clearly in the kit. Half of the teachers rated ‘poor’ on using pictures provided in the kit during the classroom lesson, which indicated that there might be a need to provide large images separately for teachers to show so that the whole class could see. Most teachers scored ‘good’ rather than ‘excellent’ on answering pupils’ enquiries. While they encouraged pupils’ discussions, they were reluctant to answer any questions on topics not covered in the kit. This could have been due to the lack of teachers’ knowledge of the history and archaeology of Jarash in general. This denoted a need for the kit to be rich in information and resources.

13.7.2 Observation of Pupils The observation of pupils followed two criteria, ‘on task’, when they were engaged in activities, discussions, listening and writing notes, and ‘off task’, when disengaged, standing away from the group, chatting and laughing with friends, and gazing away. Observation was not prompted, rather undertaken according to time sampling (Bryman, 2004). The aim was to monitor pupils’ behaviour on regular intervals to investigate the extent to which they were engaged throughout the kit implementation. Interactions were recorded throughout. There were three schools fully on task and three with variations in engagement: • The ‘Costume Activity’ was carried out by School A from Amman and School B from Jarash. School A had five pupils and they were all on task listening to the teacher, participating in discussions, doing the activity and searching for objects in the museum or trying on the Toga. School B had 17 pupils. They were on task at the beginning of the lesson, listening to the teacher and participating in discussions. However, the number started to drop gradually until there were 12 pupils off task towards the end of the pre-visit lesson. Pupils, however, were back on task during the museum visit as they were reading labels, taking pictures, trying the Toga on, and filling out worksheets (Fig. 13.8). • The ‘Greek Alphabet Activity’ was carried out by School C from Jarash with 15 pupils. They were mostly on task listening to the teacher, participating in discussions, engaged in activities that required them to write their names in Greek alphabets, and tour the theatre looking for inscriptions. Four out of 15 pupils were off task in the post-visit classroom lesson, as the teacher asked them to write their names in the Greek alphabet. • The ‘Masks Activity’ was carried out by School D from Jarash. There were six pupils who were mostly on task, listening to the teacher, moving around the site, experimenting with sound engineering in the theatre, participating in discussions, cutting masks, and reading museum labels (Fig. 13.9). Two out of the six were off task back in the classroom looking at pictures of the trip while the teacher was reviewing the lesson.

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Fig. 13.8  The ‘Costume Activity’, Jarash Museum (Photograph © UNESCO)

Fig. 13.9  The ‘Mask Activity’ at the Southern Theatre (Photograph © UNESCO)

• The ‘Tickets Activity’ was carried out by School E from Petra. There were eight pupils and they were all on task for the duration of the kit implementation, listening to the teacher, participating in discussions, experimenting with sound in the

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theatre, touring the museum looking for classical period pottery and theatre tickets, drawing or filling out worksheets. • The ‘Music Activity’ was carried out by school F from Petra. There were 10 pupils who were fully on task for the duration of the kit implementation, listening to the teacher, participating in discussions, looking for statues carved in the theatres, creating musical instruments and taking pictures. There are many reasons as to why pupils’ engagement varied. Pupils have different learning needs and styles to fulfil. The kit included a variety of approaches that depended on learning theories, such as the use of constructivism to ensure the kit information builds on prior knowledge and includes opportunities for physical and social interaction (Hein, 1996). However, learning is, by admission of many museum and heritage experts, complex, and research into how best to serve children’s learning needs is still ongoing (Andre et al., 2016). Teachers played an important role, too. For pupils who were more engaged, their teachers were better prepared, and had, as noticed by the evaluation team, closer relationships with their teachers. It was also noticed that pupils from outside Jarash were more engaged, including those who arrived from Petra after a long and tiring four-hour journey to participate. Was Jarash new to them, hence more exciting as opposed to schools from inside Jarash, who were too familiar with the site? Variations in the level of engagement could be linked to the difference between state-funded and private school’s educational pedagogy, the latter being better resourced with more freedom to use curricula textbooks aside from those produced by the MoE.  Nonetheless, the results could not be generalised as the sample of schools was too small. Irrespective of the variations highlighted above, the results show that most pupils were very engaged in the activities. Pupils’ attention dropped most in the classroom, particularly when they were asked to do writing tasks, but then again became fully engaged on the site or in the museum, which proves the importance of such visits to complement curriculum delivery. In light of these results, classroom sessions were reconsidered to make them more interactive through the use of visual aids.

13.7.3 Pupil’s Questionnaires Questionnaires were used to obtain pupils’ views on the kit lessons and activities and to get a glimpse into what they had learned and enjoyed by the end of their experience. It also allowed pupils to give their views in the absence of the ‘interviewer effect’ (Bryman, 2004). Questionnaire forms had three questions for pupils to answer. The first question asked pupils to rate their experience, while the second and third questions were open-ended, requiring pupils to indicate what they had learned and which parts of the kit implementation they liked or disliked (Frankfort-­ Nachmias & Nachmias, 1996). The questionnaire form was kept short and clear to avoid ‘respondent fatigue’ (Bryman, 2004, p. 133).

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Fig. 13.10 Percentages of pupils’ responses to five areas of satisfaction  regarding kit implementation

The first question required pupils to express satisfaction in five areas, comprising classroom lesson and discussion, on-site activity, better understanding through site visit, knowledge gained, and willingness to repeat the experience. The results revealed that pupils enjoyed the activities the most, as 85% of them strongly agreed that the activities were fun and useful. 83% of pupils strongly agreed that they would repeat a similar visit to other sites in Jordan. Around 78.3% of pupils strongly agreed that they gained better understating of the lessons after the site visit. And a roughly equal percentage of pupils of around 71.7% strongly agreed that they enjoyed the classroom lesson and gained more knowledge. The total percentage of pupils who strongly agreed or agreed on the five categories of the kit implementation reached as high as 95% (Fig. 13.10). The second question required pupils to write down three things that they learned from their experience. The majority of the responses fitted very well with the learning outcomes expected. Fifty-three of the responses were related to learning about the characteristics of Roman theatres and their uses, such as the different parts of the theatres, their capacity, the relationship between religious and political life and theatres, the performances that were held inside, and sound engineering. Responses related more specifically to the uniqueness of performing arts in Roman theatres reached 39, such as types of drama, actor’s costumes and their colour code, acting masks and musical instruments. In addition, 48 responses showed appreciation for the ambience of the theatre in terms of the kinds of performances that took place and the movement of sound within the theatre building, political debates, size of audience and the social hierarchy it represents, tickets that were bought to enter theatres, and circulation of the audience in and out of the theatre building. Finally, 41 responses showed appreciation for the archaeological heritage and the importance

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of its preservation. In fact, two responses reflected significant positive change of perspective of the past as a consequence of this experience: ‘This has changed my perceptions. Archaeology is not only stones, it is much more than that’, and, ‘Although the Romans lived in ancient times, they were civilised.’ The third question asked pupils what they liked and disliked about their experience. Their answers were categorised as follows: • Archaeological features. Pupils listed several major archaeological landmarks in Jarash that they liked, such as the Southern Theatre, the Northern Theatre, theatres in general, the colonnaded street, the forum, the temples, the museum, and the triumph arch. Some pupils mentioned specific things that they noticed and liked in theatres, such as the sound engineering, visitors’ circulation and architecture. • Archaeological objects. Pupils also referred to objects in the museum that they liked, such as theatre tickets, pottery, masks, mosaics, coins, jewellery, tools and seeing archaeological objects in the museum in general. • Activities. Pupils referred to the activities – making masks, seeing the tickets, trying on Roman costumes, cutting and sticking paper, and learning the Greek Alphabets – as interesting, fun and useful. • Classroom lesson. pupils indicated that they enjoyed the classroom lessons. There was particular reference to enjoying discussions and how useful the lesson was to give them food for thought before the visit. • Organisation of the day. Pupils appreciated the organised manner by which the kit was implemented. They were happy with the availability of transportation, food and water. • Everything. Some pupils indicated that they liked everything. Pupils also disliked some elements of the kit implementation, though gratifyingly none of which criticised the kit itself in terms of content, lesson delivery or activities. Pupils complained that the visit was too short. They wanted more time to do the activities and visit other parts of Jarash. Others indicated that there were not enough activities provided. There were some random comments expressed by pupils, some of which reflect their awareness of the importance of caring for the site. For instance, pupils felt upset seeing signs of deterioration of the site. Others were annoyed by acts of vandalism or irresponsible behaviour on the site or in the museum. The pupils’ questionnaire was vital in voicing their opinions about the visit. Their satisfaction rate was high, referring to many aspects they liked, such as features of the site, objects they saw in the museum, fun activities they did along the way, classroom discussions and even how well-organised their visit was. Most importantly, pupils’ comments about the things they learned were extraordinary. Not only did pupils refer to various theatre structures and their uses in the smallest details, but also to the ‘ambiance’ during theatre performances, people buying tickets to attend, and the political debates that took place in these spaces. Pupils were able to connect to Jarash at a different level, imagining it as a once living place with an assemblage of individuals – the architect, the engineer, the politician, the musician and the spectator.

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13.7.4 Teachers’ Interviews Teachers’ interviews were semi-structured, maintaining the researcher’s line of enquiry and covering the main topics of the research relating to how and why certain processes occurred (Yin, 2009). Teachers were asked about the successes and failures of kit implementation, with reference to lesson text, learning outcomes, questions, activities and appropriateness for age group. Teachers agreed that the information in the kit was organised, clear, easy, and appropriate for the age group, with questions being suitable and encouraging pupils’ critical thinking skills. They also indicated that the kit was very easy to implement and beneficial for pupils, as one teacher said, ‘Very easy, any teacher can do it. Everything was to hand’ (Teacher C, pers. comm., 17 July 2012). Teachers indicated that the activities were easy, clearly explained, comprehendible, appropriate for the age group, attractive and exciting, encouraging pupils to think critically and act independently; as one teacher explains, ‘Easy, exciting, its aims were achieved, pupils experimented with wearing the costumes and came up with conclusions without me interfering.’ (Teacher A, pers. comm., 18 July 2012). They also stressed that pupils were very happy because ‘they were left to be creative’ and ‘the topic was interesting’. Teacher B from Jarash, indicated that although they lived close to the site, this was the first time that they had experienced the site in such a manner. Teachers’ suggestions were to include arts and crafts activities, such as making models and drawing, and to include photographs or a film to enable pupils to enhance their understanding. Teachers were asked whether they would repeat the same experience for other sites if provided with a kit. Teachers strongly indicated that they would carry out more trips if such kits were available, recognising the benefits to them and their pupils’ learning: ‘It has to be effective. If it were the same as this kit, and adds to my knowledge and of pupils’ knowledge, then I would because it makes things easier.’ (Teacher E, pers. comm., 19 July 2012), and, ‘This was a very nice experience. [It] relies on pupils’ inferences rather than spoon-feeding, I wish you could do the same for other sites.’ (Teacher A, pers. comm., 18 July 2012). Teachers’ feedback confirmed that the kit was very easy to implement and beneficial for pupils. Activities were also attractive, fun and appropriate for pupils to do and encouraged their critical thinking skills. All teachers agreed that they would repeat the experience if such a kit was provided on other sites. The kit was modified according to their suggestions to include visual aids and more arts and crafts.

13.8 Concluding Remarks: Lessons Learned The kit, I am Jarash, proved to be beneficial and enjoyable for both pupils and teachers. Teachers’ views regarding the kit were positive, indicating that it was easy to use, appropriate for pupils’ age groups, and encouraged their critical thinking

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away from ‘learn by heart’ that is so common in curriculum delivery in Jordan. The information learned by pupils was rich, variable and fulfilled most of the learning outcomes expected for each lesson. In fact, some pupils expressed creative and imaginative concepts that reflected a deeper connection with the site as a living space, and others showed better awareness of the importance of heritage. The results also highlighted some aspects of the kit to improve. For example, teachers requested increasing the activities on arts and crafts suggested in the kit, and called for m ­ ore improved visual aids as a teaching resource in the classroom. These were all added to the kit, coupled with more historical information and resources to boost teacher’s confidence in answering pupil’s more challenging inquiries. The approach followed in producing the kit was carefully planned. The exploratory research carried out at the start of the project proved key to understanding the nature of heritage education children received, whether at their school or in a museum. Under the overall co-ordination of UNESCO, the kit was produced by a national team of experts, with backgrounds in heritage, museums, the national curriculum, children’s education, and design, all of whom were crucial to creating an educational resource to complement the curriculum. Each member joined the team from either the heritage or the education sector in Jordan, bringing experience from the field and an awareness of the local context and its demands. The data gathered, both quantitative and qualitative, helped shape the kit to ensure it served local needs in terms of content and delivery. The piloting of the kit proved vital, allowing greater understanding of how it might be used by teachers and pupils, as well as identifying its strengths and areas that required improvement. The kit was launched by UNESCO and the partners on the 12 February 2013, under the patronage of HRH Princess Sumaya Bint Al Hasan and attended by the Minister of Education and an audience from various bodies in the sector. The kit was then endorsed by the MoE. Eight years on, the kit is nowhere to be seen on the MoE website, and it remains unknown to teachers in Jordan.10 Despite the kit having been developed with the full backing and endorsement of the MoE, once the support of UNESCO for the training and pilot implementation had finished, there was no follow up. The tool was conceived as support to the curricula, but the onus ultimately fell on teachers to access the optional materials on the MoE website. Nevertheless, this experience has left the team with several questions that are perhaps relevant to other nations in the Arab region with similar sectors at a developing stage. How far do these initiatives need to stretch to sustain results? Was the MoE able to use its structure to distribute the kit and encourage teachers to use it, or is the concept of learning outside the classroom not an integral part of the curriculum? Can or should the project have been pursued with a third phase, working with the MoE on a strategic level, and would that have guaranteed the kit’s integration and  On the 30 April 2019, a meeting was held at the Jordan Museum for museum professional and teachers as part of Learning from Multicultural Amman: Engaging Jordan’s Youth AHRC /NewtonKhalidi funded project. The meeting was attended by 15 teachers from various schools in Jordan and a representative from the MoE. The first author, who chaired the meeting, asked the attendees to put their hands up if they knew the I am Jarash educational kit. No hands were raised. 10

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use in the education system? How do we reach a point where change is locally sustained? Jordan has become a leading educational reformer in the MENA region, although fundamental structural change is still needed to prepare its youth for employment (Kannan & Hanania, 2009). I am Jarash is one example of a resource that can equip future generations with the skills and knowledge necessary for personal growth, critical thinking, and the stimulation of curiosity towards a possible profession, as well as providing extra teaching support in a system that is ‘built on memorizing textbook facts instead of creative learning’ (Sultan & Soete, 2012, p. 322). There is no doubt of the benefit for learners of the use of such resources to complement and provide in-depth insight into topics taught in the national curriculum in Jordan. Nevertheless, more research on the application of the tool to a larger group of classes is necessary to assess results and provide the MoE with a viable strategy for its introduction as compulsory material to complement the curriculum. It is incumbent, however, on actors taking such strategies forward, to consider the multiple current challenges facing Jordan’s education system. Weak infrastructure, a limited budget, centralisation, and serving an ever-expanding population of children resulting from regional politics and the influx of refugees continue to push against and test the country’s educational offer. Acknowledgments  Nearly 150 individuals took part in various roles and at different stages over the course of the project. Due to the large size of the team, it is impossible to thank everyone individually, but we are most grateful to all involved for their dedication and impactful contribution.

References Abu-Khafajah, S., Al Rabady, R., & Rababeh, S. (2015). Urban heritage “Space” under neoliberal development: A Tale of a Jordanian Plaza. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21, 441–459. Adler, P. A., & Adler, P. (1994). Observational techniques science. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 377–392). Sage Publications. Andre, L., Durksen, T., & Monique, L. V. (2016). Museums as avenues of learning for children: A decade of research. Learning Environments Research, 20, 47–76. Badran, A. (2011). The excluded past in the Jordanian formal primary education: Introducing archaeology. In K. Okamura & A. Matsuda (Eds.), New perspectives in global public archaeology (pp. 197–216). Springer. Badran, A. (2018). Archaeology, museums and the public in Jordan: A 100 years of education. In A. Yasur-Landau, Y. M. Rowan, & E. H. Cline (Eds.), The social archaeology of the Levant: from prehistory to the present (pp. 613–633). Cambridge University Press. Badran, A., Goussous, K., Owais, E., Jaradat, A., Zoubi, M., & Dababneh, R. (2012). I am Jarash Educational Kit. UNESCO-Amman and the Jordan Friends of Archaeology and Heritage. Bisheh, G. (2001). One Damn Illicit excavation after another: The destruction of the archaeological heritage in Jordan. In N. Brodie, J. Doole, & A. C. Renfrew (Eds.), Trade in Illicit antiquities: The destruction of the world’s archaeological heritage (pp. 115–118). McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Bryman, A. (2004). Social research methods (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

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Chowne, A. (2007). Educational activities on prehistoric sites. In I. Hodder & L. Doughty (Eds.), Mediterranean prehistoric heritage: Training, education and management (pp.  77–94). McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. DoA. (2004). The law of antiquities number 21 of Year 1988 and its amendments. Jordan Press Foundation. Durbin, G., Morris, S., & Wilkinson, S. (1990). Learning from objects: A teacher’s guide. English Heritage. Fontana, A., & Frey, J. H. (1994). Interviewing: The art of science. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 361–376). Sage Publications. Frankfort-Nachmias, C., & Nachmias, D. (1996). Research methods in the social sciences. Arnold. Harding, L. (1967). The antiquities of Jordan. Lutterworth Press. Hein, G. (1996). Constructivist learning theory. In G. Durbin (Ed.), Developing museum exhibitions for lifelong learning (pp. 23–32). The Stationery Office. Henson, D. (2004). Archaeology in achools. In M. Corbishley, D. Henson, & P. G. Stone (Eds.), Education and the historic environment (pp. 23–32). Routledge. Kannan, T., & Hanania, M. (2009). The disconnect between education, job growth an employment in Jordan. In N. Dhillon & T. Yousef (Eds.), Generation in waiting: The unfulfilled promise of young people in the middle east. Brookings Institution Press. Kersel, M. (2012). The value of a looted object: Stakeholder perception in the antiquities trade. In R. Skeates, C. McDavid, & J. Carman (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of public archaeology (pp. 253–272). Oxford University Press. Mason, J. (2002). Qualitative researching (2nd ed.). Sage Publications. Pearson, V. (Ed.). (2001). Teaching the past: A practical guide for archaeologists. The Council for British Archaeology. PNT. (2020). Education Outreach & Awareness (EOA) [website]. http://petranationaltrust.org/ SubDefault.aspx?PageId=186 & MenuId=18. Accessed 10 Apr 2020. Politis, D. (2002). Dealing with the dealers and Tomb Robbers: The realities of archaeology of the Ghor es-safi in Jordan. In N. Brodie & K. Walker Tubb (Eds.), Illicit antiquities: The theft of culture and the extinction of archaeology (pp. 257–267). Routledge. Shaffer, S. E. (2015). Engaging young children in museums. Left Coast Press. Smith, R. (2018). Plurality and multivocality. In S. L. López Varela (Ed.), The encyclopedia of archaeological sciences (pp. 1–4). Wiley. Sultan, S. S., & Soete, L. (2012). Innovation for development: The case of Jorcan. Dirasat, 39(2), 321–327. UNESCO. (2010). World heritage in young hands. Arabic Version. UNESCO. UNESCO & ICCROM. (2006). Introducing young people to heritage site management and protection: A practical guide for secondary school teachers in the Arab region. UNESCO. Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (4th ed.). Sage Publications. Arwa Badran is an independent researcher and consultant on museums and heritage education. She trained as an archaeologist at the University of Jordan, working in the field across multiple sites, before gaining her MA and PhD from Newcastle University, degrees that focused on building connections between museums and the public and introducing museums to the Jordanian school curricula. Her subsequent work as a lecturer in Museum Studies at the Hashemite University in Jordan was instrumental in the development and establishment of the first BA degree in Cultural Heritage and Museology in the Middle East. More recently, she worked as a course tutor and codirector on the International Cultural Heritage Management MA programme at Durham University, and as a researcher on an AHRC-funded project on youth engagement in Jordan’s museums. She has worked as a consultant on many heritage education and community development projects and has been involved at a senior level with the World Archaeological Congress for over a decade.  

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Anna Paolini is UNESCO Director and Representative in the Caribbean. From 2013-2022 she was UNESCO Representative in the Arab States of the Gulf and Yemen, and Director of the UNESCO Doha Office. She was UNESCO Representative and Head of Office in Uzbekistan from 2007 to 2009 and later covered the same position in Jordan. She first joined UNESCO in the early 1990s, working as a culture specialist at their regional office in Amman, before moving to the organisation’s headquarters, where her responsibilities included movable heritage activities and the heritage in conflict response in the Arab region. Prior to this, she held a research associate role at the Institute of Architecture of Venice, worked in restoration in Italy and conducted research in urban rehabilitation in several Arab and African countries. She holds Master’s degrees both in Architecture and in Urban and Regional Planning for Developing Countries, a post-graduate degree in Development Cooperation, as well as a PhD in Urban and Territorial Engineering. Anna is a member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the Italian Association of Professional Architects, and author of several papers on different cultural heritage subjects.  

Nofa Nasser completed her BA at the University of Jordan and MA in Public Archaeology at the University of London, before starting her career as a field archaeologist. She joined the Jordan Tourism Board as an in-house archaeologist and subsequently undertook cultural tourism freelance work for Pacific Consultants International and the Siyaha Project with USAID. She taught tourism for 8 years at the Jordan Applied University College of Hospitality and Tourism Education. From 2011 to 2012, Nofa was Director of the Jordan Museum. She is currently President of the Jordan Friends of Archaeology and Heritage Society (a post held for four consecutive board cycles) and Managing Owner at Jordan Arts and Crafts Center, Artisana.  

Chapter 14

Who Wants to Be an Archaeologist? Khawla Goussous and Arwa Badran

14.1 Introduction I was actually studying English Literature as an undergraduate at the University of Jordan. A few weeks in, on my way to a lecture, I saw a group of students carrying ancient pottery jars. It caught my attention, so I asked what they were doing. They said they were archaeology students transporting artefacts they had discovered while excavating. I heard the word ‘discover’, and I was hooked. I thought this was unlike anything I had ever known. I wanted to do something out of the ordinary, I wanted to discover, too. One year in, I left the English Department and became an Archaeology student, and I absolutely loved it. In our third year, we began to learn excavation techniques in the field. I was uncovering and discovering layers, remains and artefacts. I was living the dream. I remember one day the late King Hussein [of Jordan] visited the excavation site and asked me to tell him about it (Fig. 14.1). He also asked why I liked what I did, and I explained that excavating is collecting information to understand the past - the earth becomes an open history book for Jordan. The king was there for our graduation too. I walked up to him to receive my first-class Honours award. He shook my hand and said, to the greatest excavator in the world! (Khawlah Goussous, pers. comm. May 27 2020)

This is one of many stories that Mrs. Goussous told me about her fascination with archaeology. When I returned to Jordan in 2010, having completed my studies on museums and children’s education, Mrs. Goussous was then in her 15th year of running the Archaeology Club she had established at the Ahliyyah School for Girls (ASG) in Amman. I was astonished that Mrs. Goussous was already implementing many of the theories on archaeology and education that I had been researching for years during my doctorate. We joined hands in doing public archaeology the way Moshenska (2017, p. 3) defines it as ‘practice and scholarship where archaeology

K. Goussous Jordan Friends of Archeology and Heritage, Amman, Jordan A. Badran (*) Formerly of the Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Badran et al. (eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region, One World Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07446-2_14

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Fig. 14.1  A group photograph taken in 1974, showing the University of Jordan Archaeology Department students standing with late King Hussein bin Talal on his visit to their excavation in Khilda, Amman. Mrs. Goussous is standing to his right. (Photograph © Khawla Goussous)

meets the world’. We also realised that what we were seeking – engaging pupils in archaeology – was in essence community archaeology, considered by Moshenska (2017) to be one of seven overlapping types of public archaeology that included amateur archaeology, popular archaeology and academic archaeology. Archaeology clubs as a concept can be found in many parts of the world, but the UK in particular  has a rich seam of activity spanning many decades. The Young Archaeologists’ Club (YAC), for example, has been running for almost 50 years. Established by the Council of British Archaeology (CBA) in 1972, it currently has a network of 70 local clubs across the UK, with over 3000 members (STEM, 2020). Some of the clubs are overseen by the CBA and run by over 500 volunteers (YAC, 2020), while others are affiliated and run by museums or heritage sites by paid staff and volunteers (Archaeology Scotland, 2020). They are aimed at children aged 8–16, engaging them in archaeological activities, such as visiting heritage sites, working with artefacts, taking part in excavations, participating in craft-based activities, and exploring different periods of human history. It also provides its members with a pass for free or discounted entry to hundreds of heritage sites in the UK (YAC, 2020). Some museums have established their own clubs, such as the Wiltshire Archaeology and Natural History Society (WANHS) club for children aged 7–14, based at the Wiltshire Museum; a history and archaeology club set up for children aged 8–16 at the Weston Museum, named The Rusty after the museum’s Iron Age dog skeleton (Robinson, 2018); and the Durham Archaeology Explorers (DAX)

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targeted at children aged 7–11, based at the Oriental Museum. Archaeology clubs in museums are similar in their approach and message. They usually run their activities once a month for a small fee, engaging children in archaeological enquiry by using collections or heritage sites to explore, and grow an appreciation for, the human past (e.g. Oriental Museum, 2020). Archaeology clubs, however, are less common in schools, with only a few examples visible, such as Stratford St. Mary Primary School Archaeology Club (see Stratford St. Mary Primary School, n.d.) and Scotter Primary School Archaeology Club (see Scotter Primary School, n.d.). While such clubs in UK schools are rather overshadowed by the nationwide success of the YAC and well-developed museum/heritage site club provision, in Jordan, there are no archaeology clubs in museums, yet one school – and one archaeologist schoolteacher  – have been trailblazers, establishing perhaps the longest running archaeology club at a school run by a teacher. The club’s significance as both an early example, and an ongoing vehicle for involving young people in archaeology cannot be overestimated, and this chapter will document its unique story.

14.2 Learning Through Archaeology The establishment of the ASG Archaeology Club is based on the concept that teaching archaeology to children is beneficial. Indeed, many archaeologists and heritage specialists have argued that teaching archaeology enhances pupils’ interest in, and understanding of, the past (e.g. Antoni et  al., 2004; Corbishley, 1983; Högberg, 2007; Smardz & Smith, 2000). Support for the use of archaeology to teach about the past has been, in fact, influenced significantly by progressive education theory. Archaeologists looked towards progressive views on education that emphasised the role of the learner in the educational process and supported active learning that encourages critical thinking. Such interest in education theory has seemingly developed to better understand how children learn and argues the potential benefit of archaeology in serving their needs (e.g. Stone, 1991; Johnson, 2000; Davis, 2005). Attention to the learner in education theory developed following the rejection of an earlier school of thought known as ‘behaviourism’, which placed emphasis on the teaching of subjects and ideas (Hein, 1996). The behaviourist model suggests that teaching the learner occurs by breaking down a body of knowledge into a hierarchy of skills and concepts, which lacks consideration for the ways individuals learn and has implications for the way information can be organised or taught (Falk & Deirking, 1992). The rejection of behaviourism grew as many educators began to accept that knowledge is socially constructed, and that learning begins inside the minds of learners. Over a century ago, John Dewey, ‘arguably America’s greatest philosopher’ (Hein, 2006, p. 181), called, in two of his published lectures, The School and Society (1899) and The Child and the Curriculum (1902), for a ‘new’ education – experimental, child-centred and aimed at social reform (Dworkin, 1959, pp.  33, 91). Dewey’s strong belief in the experimental method of education led him to establish

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an experimental school, founded on the concept of learning by doing. Dewey (1899) even criticised the arrangement of classrooms, arguing that it restricted pupils’ learning to passive listening, and left little space for learning by doing through working with material, constructing and enquiring. Dewey (ibid., p. 65) believed that by engaging pupils and getting them to question and experience first- hand, they could attain ‘more training and attention, power of interpretation, drawing inferences, acute observation and continuous reflection’ He also believed that children have naturally active minds and have an instinct for investigating the world around them (1899). With the provision of examples, he was able to articulate how such opportunities could be directed and used on a wider scale to achieve valuable results (ibid.). One example concerned children learning about changes in the human race by experiencing environmental surroundings, such as caves, hills, and imagining agriculture. Another example involved expanding a lesson about ‘primitive’ communities into one about the minerals used in weapon-making, teaching children Iron Age smelting processes by engaging them in experiments with smelting and working their way to reach the required result. Dewey (1897, p.79) believed that history had an educative value in reflecting phases of social life and growth, and that ‘when taken simply as history it is thrown into the distant past and becomes dead and inert.’ In fact, he (ibid.) held that performing the above types of activities made children conscious of their social heritage. Many commentators would agree with Dewey today. Archaeology has great potential to capture pupils’ interest and engage them in an enquiry-based learning process concerned with the interpretation of the past (MacDonald, 2014). It can equip children with complex thinking skills, such as ‘locating and gathering information from a variety of resources…, developing a sense of time and chronology…, analyzing and evaluating reasoning used in written materials and oral arguments, and synthesizing and applying knowledge gained’ (Metcalf, 2002, pp. 172–173). Indeed, interesting research undertaken by Dahiya (1994) systematically tested ‘the argument that students have better judgement and critical awareness because they have studied the past through archaeology, as opposed to the more usual document-­ based study of the past’ (Stone, 1994, p. 16). Dahiya (1994) used archaeology with one group of pupils as an experimental method of teaching using charts, pictures in textbooks, models and replicas, visits to heritage sites and visits to museums to study material culture. She also used a traditional method of teaching about the past with another group of pupils using narration and verbal explanation, blackboard, reading from textbooks, and referring to historical maps and charts. The results of Dahiya’s (1994) study showed that there is a significant difference in the performance between the two groups of pupils, with learners retaining more information and enjoying their work (Stone, 1994) through the active method using archaeology. The benefits of archaeology in education has mainly been argued among ‘western’ scholars, with contemporary debate in the Arab region generally lacking. There are, however, a few interesting studies within which researchers from Jordan, Egypt and Libya have argued that pupils’ thinking and understanding of the past would be enhanced if it occurred through archaeological resources, as opposed to memorising the ‘facts’ in traditional classroom education (Sarkaz, 1977; Al-Burai, 1984; Abu

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Amma, 1988; Malas, 1997; Al-Qaoud, 2003). They indicated that learning through archaeological material could enhance pupils understanding of the past, foster their feeling of belonging to humanity, capture their interest, and engage them in an enquiry-based education (gathering information, reasoning, synthesizing) that develops their creative and critical thinking. Some of these researchers tested whether learning with archaeological resources (sites and museums) would enhance pupils’ understanding and creative thinking in comparison to traditional classroom methods using blackboard and textbooks (e.g. Sarkaz, 1977; Al-Burai, 1984; Abu Amma, 1988; Al-Qaoud, 2003). Similar to Dahiya’s (1994) comparative research noted above, Al-Qaoud (2003) compared learning outcome and creative thinking between two groups of 13-year-old pupils. The first group visited a museum to study archaeological material relevant to their classroom lesson. The visit involved learning about objects on display, information gathering, comparison exercises and discussions, as well as participation in pottery making and colouring. The other group was taught in the classroom, using traditional methods of narration, blackboard, reading from textbooks and using photographs (ibid.). The study revealed that those who learned through the museum were more interested in learning and achieved higher results in comparison with the group taught in the classroom. The literature on progressive education theory, and that of its pedagogic scion located in learning through archaeology, reverberates through the ideas and practice of the co-author, Jordanian schoolteacher, Mrs. Goussous. In the following first-­ hand account, Mrs. Goussous outlines her intentions behind the establishment of the ASG Archaeology Club and the running of its activities.

14.3 The ASG Archaeology Club Concept: Mrs. Goussous’ Account The idea of teaching archaeology to school children came to my mind first when I was an undergraduate student, visiting archaeological sites as part of our degree requirement. I used to observe school children running through the site and no one around to tell them about the place they were visiting. Fast-forward a few decades, and archaeological education is still largely absent on archaeological sites in Jordan, and school fieldtrips are still missing an educational purpose (Badran, 2014, 2018). According to the former General Director of the Department of Antiquities (DoA), Munther Jamhawi, protecting Jordan’s 100,000 archaeological sites is a challenge, which is made even harder due to a multiplicity of factors, such as urban expansion, unemployment, vandalism, illicit trade and lack of public awareness (Rawashdeh, 2017). Lack of public archaeological awareness is inevitably linked to other underlying issues, such as excluding pasts in the curriculum and paying attention to tourism by government bodies while ignoring local communities. These issues are perhaps related to what Corbett (2014, p. 168) suggested, that Jordan has found it difficult ‘to reconcile history and archaeology in its national narrative’.

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My interest in public archaeology grew during my career. Since I took my first job as an Antiquities Inspector at the DoA in 1975, and then later as Head of the Documentation Department, I published several books about archaeological landmarks in Jordan for the general public (Goussous, 1990, 1993, 1994).1 Over the course of two decades, my colleagues and I visited schools on a weekly basis to give lectures and slide presentations to pupils. On one of our visits, I met Mrs. Haifa Najjar, the headmistress of the Ahliyyah School for Girls (ASG) and Bishop’s School for Boys, and Miss Rana Sha’ban, Principal of the Primary Section, who later invited me to join their school team to teach archaeology.2 This was a long-­ awaited opportunity to work with children, and I took it wholeheartedly. I was answering so many questions posed by my pupils about archaeology, which made me realise even more how little they knew about it and how important it was to get them engaged. There was certainly very little in their curriculum textbooks to help. This was the only thing I wanted to do. It became my passion. The ASG Archaeology Club was established in 1996 with a mission to develop pupils’ appreciation and love of Jordan’s heritage. The club was created as a platform for the schoolgirls, aged 8–11, to undertake many activities that would involve them in archaeology. They would be given opportunities to explore, innovate, and experience the value of these places that are part of their identity and heritage. It was the first archaeology club in the country, and currently the only one of its kind in Jordan. The main objectives of the club are to: • Facilitate children’s discovery of the diversity and richness of past civilizations. • Encourage children to love their home country and appreciate the value of its heritage. • Demonstrate the potential of teachers to take an active role in facilitating learning through archaeology. • Make museums, archaeological sites, and field trips the most important source of learning. Each year, we had an average of 25 members who usually joined at grade 4 and stayed until they moved on to secondary school at the end of year 6. The membership was kept flexible, welcoming any late joiners and giving members the freedom to leave if they wished. The club’s activities were carried out fortnightly and included visiting archaeological sites and museums, becoming curators for a day, participating in excavations and archaeological surveys, practicing conservation and restoration skills, pottery drawing and reading, interviewing archaeologists and visitors, taking part in events related to heritage in Jordan (e.g. the International Museum day and the International Tourism Day, see Figs. 14.2 and 14.3). We were even the very first group to visit and participate in the Baptism Site excavations when it was first discovered by the River Jordan. I used educational resources, such ‫ وزارة ال�سياحة و آالاثر‬،‫ أالردن‬،)١٩٩٠( ،”‫عرص الهكسوس يف أالردن وفلسطني‬″٠،‫خوةل‬،‫قسوس‬ ٠‫ وزارة ال�سياحة و أالاثر‬،‫الاردن‬، )١٩٩٣(،”‫”الكرك جوهرة الصحراء‬٠‫خوةل‬،‫قسوس‬ ‫أ‬ ٠‫ وزارة ال�سياحة و أالاثر‬،‫الردن‬،)١٩٩٤( ،”‫ “جوهرة السالم و�أرضحة الصحابة أالجالء يف وجدان � آل هامش‬.‫خوةل‬،‫قسوس‬ 2  Mrs. Najjar is currently a Senator at the Upper House of the Jordanian Parliament  See:

1

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Fig. 14.2  Participating in fieldwork and excavations. (Photograph © Khawla Goussous)

Fig. 14.3  Workshop on pottery restoration at the Ahliyyah School for Girls (ASG). (Photograph © Khawla Goussous)

as I am Jerash (see Badran et al., this volume) for guidance on visiting archaeological sites and museums, and engaging the club members in some of the activities. It was important to ensure that the activities ended with a finished product that the members had participated in creating, such as producing leaflets, drawings and videos about the places they visited, creating exhibitions, enacting drama, and presenting their work to parents. Some of the club members had the opportunity to travel to other countries and learn about world heritage, as found, for example, in Tunisia, and the cities of Istanbul, Aleppo and Cairo. Some of the overseas visits involved presenting at international conferences:

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• A paper on ASG Archaeology Club presented in 2005 at the World Heritage Education Forum at the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, University of Newcastle, UK. • A paper on The History of Jordan at the Coping with Cultural Diversity in School and out of School Conference, organised within the framework of the Pestalozzi Programme, a Council of Europe training and capacity-building programme for education professionals in cooperation with the Academy of Donaueschingen/ Anna Lindh in Germany. • A paper on Virtual Museum for Educational Purposes at the Museum with No Frontiers event, held in Cairo in 2007 to demonstrate how the archaeology club members used the ‘Discover Islamic Art’ website to study the role of women in Nabataean society. In 2013, I presented a paper with my co-author of this chapter at the Seventh World Archaeological Congress, held at the Dead Sea, Jordan. The paper, Who Wants to be an Archaeologist?, was about the Archaeology Club concept and activities, and helped us to frame our ideas and eventually write this piece about the club. I also published a book containing terminologies in archaeology for schools to benefit from, since the curriculum failed to include any (Goussous, 2000).3 The ASG Archaeology Club field visits were the most exciting. It was an opportunity to do something out of the norm by leaving the classroom to a different and more engaging environment. The moment we arrived with our school bus at any location, the girls would start pulling out their notebooks, pens and cameras

Fig. 14.4  The usual arrival on the school bus. (Photograph © Khawla Goussous)  See: ٠‫ وزارة ال�سياحة و آالاثر‬،‫ أالردن‬،)٢٠٠٠( ،”‫” مفاهمي ومصطلحات يف العلوم الاجامتعية‬٠‫خوةل‬،‫قسوس‬

3

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(Fig. 14.4). They got busy with documenting the site by taking photos, measuring, drawing pictures, and writing notes. A museum visit gave them more context – a continuation to the story that started on the site. It was their chance to get closer to the people who lived in the past, see what they made and used, and to get a better sense of historical periods and the chronology of events. The club’s main goal was to enhance the young generation’s sense of belonging to, and love for, the history and heritage of their country. Equally, it aimed to engage the young archaeologists in the process of discovery and interpretation of the past. I did this by involving them in investigating archaeological evidence, using skills of observation, documentation, inquiry and critical thinking. The young archaeologists always told me that they loved the fact that they were not lectured, and instead, given all the time in the world to look around the site, to think, to question and to discuss their ideas. I wanted them to use all their senses to fully experience their surroundings, but also to collect and assess information independently. For example, on our visit to the World Heritage site of Qusayr Amra, an Umayyad bath in the western Jordanian desert, they walked around with me looking at the 3-vaulted structure, the dome and the fresco covering its walls inside. In the process, we had endless discussions involving many ‘whys and hows’ posed by me and them. They also got the chance to sit down, observe the building and draw it (Figs. 14.5 and 14.6). It was important for those young archaeologists to connect with past communities, to think of past people as human beings just like themselves, and even relate to them as their ancestors. We had many conversations about past social life – who those people were, how they dressed, what they ate and drank, and what they did for work (ancient professions). We discussed how structures were built, their designs and usage, and the meanings behind some of the decorative elements. It was vital to appreciate ancient technologies and innovation and be proud of what humanity has achieved. Cross-curricular links were also made during our visits. We discussed the environment when we were walking through the landscape passing trees that grow around the site. Mathematics became our subject when we discussed columns, vaults and dimensions. Our visit turned into an art lesson as the club members sat down and started drawing a gate or a statue. At times, they would pretend to be tour guides, trying out different expressions and vocabulary as they stood and spoke to their classmates. A few years in, I started teaching the history curriculum at the school. In addition to our usual archaeology club museum visits, I also started giving my history classes in museums, surrounded by hundreds of wonderful objects. Pupils were full of awe, wonder, enthusiasm and many, many questions. I related my experience to that of Peter Stone, who I and some of the club members got the chance to meet in person back in 2005 at Newcastle University. When he was a history teacher himself, he used archaeology to turn a potentially long boring lesson into an engaging one. Stone (2004, p. 1) explained ‘when I took a piece of Anglo-Scandinavian pottery into class I had pottery in one hand and the children in the other. “Is it really that old?” “Did some fella really make it?” “Did they really eat out of it?” History – the past – has become real, tangible, and for those pupils a seed had been sown [original emphasis].’

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Figs. 14.5 and 14.6  Field trip to Qusair Amra World Heritage Site, and a drawing by one of the club members. (Photograph © Khawla Goussous)

14.4 The ASG Archaeology Club: Making a Difference In 2009, the first author published the volume, Our Antiquities: Inheritance and Identity, dedicating a section for the young members of the ASG Archaeology Club to express themselves and say why their cultural heritage was important to them

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(Goussous, 2009).4 We have selected a few statements that give voice to the club members’ appreciation for their heritage, showing deep understanding of its importance as both a record of the past and a defining element of their identity in the present and the future. Their words reflect the responsibility they have taken upon themselves to protect their heritage for the benefit of future generations: Antiquities are the voices of the past. We are responsible for safeguarding our heritage, so let us protect it for future generations. We read stratigraphy like reading chapters in a history book. Vandalism distorts our image and steals part of our memories. If we lost the key to our past, how do we know who we are today. Pottery shards are my friends who lead me through a maze in time. (ibid., p. 40)

The ASG Archaeology Club was clearly making a positive impact on children’s relationship with archaeology. Nonetheless, the authors still wanted to know more about how this impact was taking place. A decision was made to ask them the same set of questions when they first joined the club, and later at the end of the school year, after having engaged in club activities over a period of 9 months. This deliberate comparison of perceptions and understandings expressed by the club members before and after exposure allowed us to identify change of attitudes towards archaeology over an extended period. The questions were: 1 . Why did you join the archaeology club? 2. Who is an archaeologist? 3. What tools does an archaeologist use? 4. Is the museum important and why? Where do museum objects come from? 5. How do archaeological finds, such as seeds, for example, help us to know about the lives of past people?5 6. What does the following mean? Excavation, survey, mosaics, pottery. 7. What do you expect to learn from the archaeology club? The first and the last questions were irrelevant 9 months into their club membership. They were, therefore, modified in the second round. The first question was changed to, ‘Are you satisfied/dissatisfied that you joined the club? Why?’ The answers to this question demonstrated whether the club served the girls’ interests and motivations. The seventh question was changed to, ‘What have you learned from the archaeology club?’ The answers to this question provided useful insights into whether the club members’ expectations were met. A total of nine new joiners participated in the study, each answered the above seven questions in writing twice, with 9  months separating their responses (Fig. 14.7). The sample size provided new and richer understanding of the impact of the club on the new joiners’ perceptions and attitudes towards archaeology, and kept  See: ٠‫ دار زهران للنرش والتوزيع‬،‫ أالردن‬،)٢٠٠٩( ،”‫”�آاثران إالرث والهوية‬٠‫خوةل‬،‫قسوس‬  The introduction of ‘seeds’ as an example was deliberate to diversify the concept of archaeological finds beyond pottery, and challenge the new members to think of how such finds could be useful to understanding the past. 4 5

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Fig. 14.7  The ASG Archaeology Club new joiners filling questionnaire forms on their first day. (Photograph © Khawla Goussous)

the focus on a ‘deep, case-oriented analysis’ of the qualitative data (Sandelowski, 1995, p. 183). The club’s new joiners’ answers were organised into two columns to compare what each one wrote at the start and then at the end. The answers were analysed, coded and organised under four main themes: deepening of understanding, correcting of misconceptions, drawing inferences, and meeting expectations. A selection of questions and answers are presented below to explain each of those themes.

14.4.1 Deepening Understanding The comparison of answers given by the club’s new joiners to the fourth and fifth questions revealed a deeper understanding of what museums are for and what archaeological finds can reveal about the past. Below are two examples. The first demonstrates how member A’s understanding of the purpose of museums and the source of objects in their collections shifted from object storage/received from archaeologists, to enjoyable places of learning/the source of archaeological objects are excavations rather than the archaeologists as individuals, detached from this work: Museums are for storing archaeological objects received from archaeologists. (Member A, the first day) It is a learning resource, like a classroom but more enjoyable, which collects archaeological objects from excavations…”. (Member A, 9 months later)

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The next two examples reveal that ancient food was understood by some club members in the context of growing and consumption. Their understating later developed into more complex concepts related to ancient diets and the shift in food sources for humans from hunting and gathering to farming: We learn about what they grew. (Member C, the first day) We learn about ancient diets. (Member C, 9 months later) We learn about their food. (Member B, the first day) We realize that hunter-gatherers moved to farming. (Member B, 9 months later)

14.4.2 Correcting Misconceptions Answers to the second question were most interesting in revealing some of the misconceptions that the new members had when they first joined the club, and how these misconceptions were altered over the subsequent 9 months. Those misconceptions coalesced around who an archaeologist is, with understandings ranging from someone who looks for gold, and someone who helps farmers dig in the ground, and that an archaeologist is a foreign person: Someone looking for gold. (Member H, the first day) Studying stratigraphy and digging in a scientific way, and studying and documenting finds. (Member H, 9 months later) He is a foreign person. (Member C, the first day) Anyone who studies archaeology and works on excavations with foreign teams. (Member C, 9 months later) An archaeologist helps farmers dig the ground. (Member F, the first day) An archaeologist is different from a farmer. The archaeologist studies stratigraphy and people who live in each period, and takes finds to the museum for studying. (Member F, 9 months later)

The authors, having worked for many years in field excavations in Jordan, can conclude from their own experience that there is indeed a common misconception among the public that archaeologists look for – and find – gold. In fact, the country has had a long tradition of treasure hunting and looting, with people driven by ‘gold fever’ to raid tombs and excavation sites following rumours of buried gold, jewels and coin-filled jars (Booth & Taylor, 2014; see also de Vries, this volume on the myth of ‘Turkish gold’). What archaeological artefacts can tell us about the past is in this context devalued. The members of the ASG Archaeology Club participate in excavations, which could have altered the new joiners’ answer 9 months later, as they became aware of the scientific process of excavation (involving stratigraphy and documentation), as opposed to a random treasure-hunting exercise. It is also worth disentangling assumptions connecting archaeology with foreigners. It is true that foreign expeditions have played a key role in carrying out archaeological work in Jordan for over a century. As early as the 1920s, organised excavation took place in several locations, most famously in Petra, uncovering temples, churches, shops and houses (Parr, 1990). Archaeological institutes from across the

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world and foreign institutes based in Amman, such as the American Center of Research (ACOR), Institut Français du Proche-Orient (IFPO) and the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), still lead major excavation work across Jordan. Thus, member C’s notion of the archaeologist being a foreign person on her first day at ASG is not surprising. However, in her response 9 months later, while ‘foreign’ still appeared in the answer, it was with reference to archaeological teams; she was clear that an archaeologist could be ‘anyone’ who studies the discipline. The regular trips provided the club members with many opportunities to meet archaeologists working in the field, foreign and local, and consequently could have contributed to altering her perception. Finally, the link made between farmers digging in fields and excavations shows a lack of awareness of what excavations mean and the knowledge and skills archaeologists require to carry them out, which is far from simply digging in the ground. Nine months later, this perception had changed. Member F still referred to farmers, but only to make the differentiation from archaeologists who study stratigraphy and ensure the finds are safe in a museum.

14.4.3 Drawing Inferences Several answers by the new joiners demonstrate progression from general knowledge-­seeking to analytical thinking and drawing inferences based on assessing archaeological evidence. The quotes below show that while some club members thought they would be learning about what people ate, they eventually identified agriculture as evidence for settlement, and the many types of seed as an indicator that agriculture became an important profession. This could well be a result of engaging the club members in observing, documenting, analysing and questioning, all of which were activities intended to engage them in the process of assessing evidence and interpreting the past, as in the examples below: We learn about the food of our ancestors. (Member D, the first day) Agriculture is evidence for settlement …seeds are healthy for ancient people… they knew what to eat. (Member D, 9 months later) We learn about the types of agriculture. (Member E, the first day) They [people in the past] were independent in securing their own food. (Member E, 9 months later) What they [people in the past] ate. (Member I, the first day) There are a lot of types of seeds, then agriculture was the main profession at that time. (Member I, 9 months later)

What is also interesting about the examples above is how the new joiners related to past peoples. Past communities were referred to as ‘our ancestors’, and as people with professions, admired and respected for being independent in selecting their food and adapting the environment to serve their needs. One could argue that the

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club members were beginning to see past peoples as active actors in the process of social change, following a post-processual approach to archaeology (Hodder, 1984).

14.4.4 Interests and Motivations  It was important to ask the new joiners why they had started with the club in the first place, and whether they were satisfied with the experience 9 months later. The intention was to investigate whether the club was successful in serving children’s interest and motivations: I have always loved discovery since I was little. (Member A, the first day) I enjoyed myself and at the same time I discovered and learned. (Member A, 9 months later) To meet other nationalities and tell them about the history of my country. (Member E, the first day) I met foreign tourists and we exchanged ideas. (Member E, 9 months later) My teachers encouraged me because I love doing research on archaeology. (Member C, the first day) I developed my researching skills. (Member C, 9 months later)

The answers of each member were consistent in terms of the motivation for joining the club and what has been achieved after 9 months. This consistency demonstrates that motivation defines how the members experienced the club and what they took away in alignment with their personal goals. Member C, for example, joined the club because she loved researching archaeology, and how at the end she had developed her research skills. These results also show that the club was able to match the identity-related needs and desires of its members, a process crucial to enriching their learning, maintaining their involvement, and even encouraging other school children to join (Falk, 2006).6 The ASG Archaeology Club has been running for 25 years, which has made it possible to trace how its young members engaged in archaeology as they grew up and pursued various life and career choices. While some pursued heritage-related degrees in higher education and worked in the sector, others continued to have a close relationship with archaeology, by either linking their degree assignments to an archaeological topic or even continuing to visit sites and learn from archaeology. Dima, for example, who joined the club back in 1998, did an undergraduate degree in Architecture Engineering and then worked in the Heritage Department of the Greater Amman Municipality on the architectural and heritage identity of the city. Sireen studied Industrial Engineering as an undergraduate student. Her graduation project involved conducting a feasibility study on creating a sustainable hotel project at the sixteenth century Ottoman Qatranah Fort, taking into account various environmental, social and historical elements. When Sireen was a member of the club at only 10 years old, they visited Qatranah Fort and participated in a day of  Falk (2006) provides a full discussion on motivation and identity in relation to visitors’ experience in museums. 6

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re-­enactment, which involved dressing-up and making traditional food, all inspired by the Haj route that passed through the historical site. Nadin’s undergraduate degree in the Arts was conferred after the submission of her dissertation on the aesthetic elements of Khirbet edh-Dharih, a Nabataean sanctuary and village on the main caravan road from Petra. Jina, who astonishingly wrote a book entitled The Archaeology of Jordan when she was an 11-year-old member of the club, studied art and drama as an undergraduate degree, yet still with a growing passion for travelling and visiting heritage in Jordan and abroad. These wonderful examples, and many more, are a testimony to the success of the ASG Archaeology Club in making a difference to the lives and outlooks of so many individuals. One cannot but feel proud of the many young archaeologists who grew up to become passionate guardians of the past.

14.5 What Does the Future Hold? The ASG Archaeology Club continues its mission to engage children in archaeological enquiry, as well as build on a culture of dialogue between the club members themselves and their multi-cultural past. In addition, it will encourage more activities based on using resources outside the classroom, employing online material and visiting museums and archaeological sites. The club is also looking forward to reinforcing collaboration with professionals in this field and building partnerships with similar initiatives in the Arab region and internationally. Sharing the ASG Archaeology Club experience with other schools is another vital aspect to develop and follow through in the coming years. In 2016, the first author began working with the Friends of Archaeology and Heritage Society (FoAH) in Amman, funded by USAID’s Sustainable Cultural Heritage through Engagement of Local Communities Project (SCHEP), on establishing archaeology clubs in six more schools, based on interest expressed by their principles. The beginnings of establishing archaeology clubs in these schools involved visits and meetings with the teachers who would be running them. It also involved sharing the ASG Archaeology Club’s aim, vision and mechanics of how the activities were planned and implemented. The teachers then selected pupils to join the club memberships. Several visits were arranged to the headquarters of the FoAH to attend lectures and participate in workshops about pottery and mosaic restoration. An exhibition was also set up at the FoAH to display archaeology-related arts and crafts produced by club members in all six schools. More recently, club members participated in excavating a test trench in Tall el-Hammam. At this site, the focus was on engaging the children in what excavations are, what an archaeologist does, where information about the past is, and how we uncover it. Sustaining archaeology clubs at schools is, however, challenging. It requires training for teachers on how to use archaeological resources in education. Those with a background or interest in archaeology are more likely to persevere with running an archaeology club at their school for longer periods of time. Personal commitment, coupled with support from the school administration and a regular source

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of funding, are other factors that play a key role in sustaining their operation. The education sector, namely government bodies responsible for ensuring quality education in schools, also needs to recognise the benefit of extra-curricular activities and support the use of learning resources outside the classroom. Lastly, but by no means of lesser significance, teachers running school archaeology clubs need guidance and access to knowledge from archaeologists and other museum and heritage professionals. At present, public archaeology is neither taught as a module, nor as a degree in its own right in Jordanian higher education. This gap in training archaeologists on how to engage the public in archaeology exists on a global level, although the lacuna has been identified elsewhere and stopgaps instituted outside formal educational provision (e.g. the educational charity, the Council for British Archaeology) (see Thomas, 2017, p.28). Until the situation changes, and more archaeologists are equipped by the end of their formal education with community archaeology training, the onus falls on them to learn from practical experience and disseminate examples of good practice and successful engagement. The ASG Archaeology Club in Jordan is such an example.

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Smardz, K., & Smith, S. J. (Eds.). (2000). The archaeology education handbook: Sharing the past with kids. AltaMira Press. STEM. (2020). Your archaeologists’ club. https://www.stem.org.uk/resources/collection/3165/ young-­archaeologists-­club. Accessed 25 May 2020. Stone, P. G. (1991). Teaching the past, with special reference to prehistory, in English primary education. Unpublished PhD thesis. Southampton: University of Southampton. Stone, P. G. (1994). Introduction: A framework for discussion. In P. G. Stone & B. L. Molyneaux (Eds.), The presented past, heritage, museums and education (pp. 14–28). Routledge. Stone, P.  G. (2004). Introduction: Education and the historic environment into the twenty-first century. In D. Henson, P. G. Stone, & M. Corbishley (Eds.), Education and the historic environment (pp. 1–10). Routledge. Stratford St. Mary Primary School. (n.d.). Archaeology club [school website]. https://stratfordstmaryprimary.co.uk/archaeology-­club/. Accessed 12 June 2020. Thomas, S. (2017). Community archaeology. In G.  Moshenska (Ed.), Key concepts in public archaeology (pp. 14–30). UCL Press. Young Archaeologists’ Club. (2020). About. https://www.yac-­uk.org/about. Accessed 25 May 2020. Khawla Goussous obtained her BA in Archaeology from the University of Jordan in 1975. Since 1998, she has led the Archaeological Club in the Ahhliyyah School for Girls, raising awareness of heritage and archaeology amongst young people. She was an inspector of antiquities in the Department of Antiquities (DoA) from 1975 to 1982, and subsequently Director of the Registration Center for Sites and Monuments. Following her tenure there, she worked for many years as a Social Studies teacher in the Ahhliyyah School for Girls. She has presented several papers at archaeology-related conferences and published several books, the latest being Antiquities: Heritage and Identity (2009). She has also worked widely in an editorial capacity, from the DoA’s Archaeological Annual, and the monthly sightseeing magazine, Places and Events, to Ministry of Education collaborative works for seventh-grade pupils, including Civilization of the Ancient World, and Teacher’s Guide to the History Curriculum.  

Arwa Badran is an independent researcher and consultant on museums and heritage education. She trained as an archaeologist at the University of Jordan, working in the field across multiple sites, before gaining her MA and PhD from Newcastle University, degrees that focused on building connections between museums and the public and introducing museums to the Jordanian school curricula. Her subsequent work as a lecturer in Museum Studies at the Hashemite University in Jordan was instrumental in the development and establishment of the first BA degree in Cultural Heritage and Museology in the Middle East. More recently, she worked as a course tutor and codirector on the International Cultural Heritage Management MA programme at Durham University, and as a researcher on an AHRC-funded project on youth engagement in Jordan’s museums. She has worked as a consultant on many heritage education and community development projects and has been involved at a senior level with the World Archaeological Congress for over a decade.