 |
||||||
 |
||||||
|
Iraq's Disappearing Heritage: Costs Aren't Only Financial When researchers think about Federal agencies, their concern usually focuses on research policy. But Anthropology's Elizabeth Stone and her colleagues have also started paying attention to war aims and foreign relations. The Archaeological Institute of America urged the Department of Defense to consider historic sites in Iraq when planning U.S. military strategy for the Iraq War, and Prof. Stone has been among the archaeologists drawing international attention to the situation. She has been interviewed by national and international media several times this spring and summer on the impact of the Iraq war on the remains of the ancient Mesopotamian "cradle of civilization." As CNN reported on the looting of the Iraqi National Museum shortly after the cessation of large-scale hostilities, Prof. Stone looked beyond the rare and highly valuable nature of the items that were stolen to their implications for the future unity of post-Saddam Iraq. She also noted later in The New York Times, "If I were thinking of how to bring together the disparate ethnic and religious groups in Iraq today, ancient Mesopotamia would be the model I'd use. It had a culture that ranged across many regions from the south to the north, but they all used the same writing system and worshiped the same gods. They even had democratic institutions, in term of assemblies and councils. If you want to create a democratic, unified Iraq, that's the [symbolism] you want, and you've lost it." Prof. Stone has visited Iraq since the ceasefire and was a member of the National Geographic Society's expedition to assess the damage last May, reported in the current (October) issue of National Geographic Magazine.
Prof. Stone's fieldwork uses a mixture of classic and new techniques including remote sensing, geographic information systems, survey, and excavation. Her studies of the organization of a number of well documented urban societies suggest that city-states differ radically from territorial states in both interpersonal relations and the nature and organization of their cities.
|
||||||
 |
||||||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
|