Archaeology and Dams in Southeastern Turkey

Post-Flooding Damage Assessment and Safeguarding Strategies on Cultural Heritage

Authors

  • Nicolò Marchetti University of Bologna
  • Gabriele Bitelli University of Bologna
  • Francesca Franci University of Bologna
  • Federico Zaina University of Bologna

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jma.42345

Keywords:

archaeological sites, cultural heritage, dams, Landsat imagery, policies, Turkey

Abstract

The construction of dams is an ever-growing threat to cultural heritage, particularly in an age of climate change and narrowly focused development policies. In analyzing as a case study three major reservoirs in the Middle Euphrates river valley in southeastern Turkey (Atatürk, Birecik and Karkam??), we developed a Post-Flooding Damage Assessment (PFDA) to evaluate the impact of dams on archaeological sites. Our PFDA, consisting of an analysis of cross-correlations between multi-temporal Landsat imagery, geographical spatial datasets and archaeological data from surveys and excavations, provides an unprecedented detailed overview of the loss of especially significant cultural landscapes, and also highlights the limited accuracy of pre-flooding archaeological surveys and excavations. We conclude with recommendations for improving how rescue archaeological projects targeting endangered cultural landscapes are designed, with an immediately achievable target of better documenting cultural heritage threatened by dams.

Author Biographies

  • Nicolò Marchetti, University of Bologna
    Nicolò Marchetti is Professor of Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in the Department of History and Cultures (DiSCi), University of Bologna. He currently directs the excavations of Karkemish in Turkey and of Nineveh East in Iraq and has also directed excavations in Palestine and Turkey and the QADIS survey in Iraq. He has also coordinated several national and international research projects, including the EUfunded Archaia, HeAT, Waladu, Eduu and now Banuu projects.
  • Gabriele Bitelli, University of Bologna
    Gabriele Bitelli is Professor of Geomatics at the University of Bologna and responsible for the Surveying-Geomatics Area of the Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering (DICAM). He has been responsible scientifically for the EU-funded research projects SubCoast and EnergyCity and the national Italian research project Geomatics Data Acquisition and Management for Landscape and Built Heritage in a European Perspective (GAMEHer). His research interests include geomatics applied to cultural heritage and environmental change detection.
  • Francesca Franci, University of Bologna
    Francesca Franci is Research Fellow in the Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering (DICAM) at the University of Bologna. Her research interests include satellite image processing for flood risk mitigation and damage assessment, multi-criteria GIS-based analysis of geospatial data and change detection procedures for land monitoring at large scales. Her research activities are also concerned with the use of data derived from interferometric analyses for the monitoring of subsidence phenomena and slope instability.
  • Federico Zaina, University of Bologna
    Federico Zaina is Research Fellow in the Department of History and Cultures (DiSCi) at the University of Bologna. He has participated in archaeological excavation projects in Syria, Turkey and Iraq. He has been a member of international research projects including the EU-funded projects JPI CH HeAT, Waladu, Eduu and now Banuu. His research interests include Iron Age Syro-Anatolian material culture, Bronze Age landscapes of southern Mesopotamia and cultural heritage at risk.

References

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Published

2020-10-01

Issue

Vol. 33 No. 1 (2020)

Section

Articles

License

© Equinox Publishing Ltd.

For information regarding our Open Access policy, click here.

How to Cite

Marchetti, N., Bitelli, G., Franci, F., & Zaina, F. (2020). Archaeology and Dams in Southeastern Turkey: Post-Flooding Damage Assessment and Safeguarding Strategies on Cultural Heritage. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 33(1), 29-54. https://doi.org/10.1558/jma.42345