New OA resource: Syrian Heritage Archive Project

Until now, a general register for Syrian cultural heritage has been lacking. Several Syrian and international initiatives are working together on a compilation of the abundant research data collected over the past decades within the framework of archaeological and art-historical projects, with the content made accessible for research via a national Syrian Heritage register.

In 2013, the Museum of Islamic Art (National Museums in Berlin) and the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) started the “Project for the Establishment of a Digital Heritage Register for Syria”/“Projekt zur Erstellung digitaler Kulturgüterregister für Syrien”. This original name was soon replaced by a shorter English version: “Syrian Heritage Archive Project”, commonly abbreviated as SyrHer or SHAP. From the very beginning, the project was funded by the Cultural Preservation Program maintained by the German Foreign Office.

This website is the responsibility of the subteam of the Museum of Islamic Art.

A detailed documentation of Syria’s cultural heritage provides a basis for recording damage and destruction from the war and for possible future reconstruction measures. The awareness of a common cultural heritage may become an important component for national reconciliation processes in the future.

Website: https://project.syrian-heritage.org/en/. 

Conflict Urbanism Aleppo

Conflict Urbanism Aleppo

Conflict Urbanism: Aleppo is a project in two stages.

First, we have built an open-source, interactive, data-rich map of the city of Aleppo, at the neighborhood scale. Users can navigate the city, with the aid of high resolution satellite imagery from before and during the current civil war, and explore geo-located data about cultural sites and urban damage. We will add data as it becomes available; currently we are grateful for datasets from from Human Rights Watch, the United Nations Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT), and the Humanitarian Information Unit (HIU) at the U.S. Department of State.

Second, the map is a platform into which additional data of all sorts can be integrated. It is an invitation to students and invited collaborators to record and narrate urban damage in Aleppo — at the cultural, infrastructural, or neighborhood scale — and to present that research in case studies which will be added to the website over time.

We invite ideas and propositions, and hope to build on the data that we have compiled here to develop further research on and engagement with the situation in Aleppo. It is a call for inquiry and a call to action.

Since 2012, the people of Aleppo — one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world — have been exposed to catastrophic violence. Many thousands have been injured, died, or fled. Our project focuses on their city and what has been done to it and what might happen to it in the future.

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