Newsletter 15

dam projects and rescue archaeology

Large-scale dam projects in the Near East have caused significant changes in ecosystems as well as massive undertakings in saving cultural heritage. Incidentally or not all the cultures along Mesopotamia and Egypt in the Near East created and have belonged to the so-called hydraulic civilizations in which irrigation technology needed the organization of societies leading to urbanism and civilization including writing systems. Those civilizations already built dams and tried to change the rivers’ power. It has been said that rivers are mother’s milk for civilizations.

The Birecik dam of the Euphrates in Turkey caused parts of the Hellenistic and Roman city of Zeugma to submerge. Photo: Minna Silver 2016.

One early example of building a dam in modern times is the Assuan dam project that caused the moving of the Abu Simbel temples from the Pharaonic period in Egypt with UNESCO and the help of several countries in the 1960s. The dam project included large-scale international archaeological excavation projects in Nubia as well. The temples had been a tourist attraction for centuries and documented by stereo photographs providing 3D visions already in the 19th century. Actual several ancient monuments and sites were documented along the Nile using stereo photography.

Rescue excavations associated with dam projects have since been taking place in the areas of the Euphrates and the Tigris in Mesopotamia. Syria had the famous Tabqa dam project in the Lake Assad area in the 1970s, the lake also named after the president like the Lake Nasser in Egypt. The international rescue excavations provided evidence of some of the early sedentary societies, domestication of animals and agricultural endeavours. Abu Huryera has brought evidence of cultivation of rye in 9000 BC. Bronze Age kingdoms were revealed in the neighbourhood as well.

Turkey has followed the way of Egypt and Syria. It has the sources of the large rivers of the Euphrates and the Tigris and has undertaken several dam projects to harness water power in recent decades. These have been foreseen as bringing environmental problems, such as desertification in the regions affected by the changes in the flow of the rivers. The construction of the Birecik dam (Fig. 1) on the Euphrates in Turkey in 2000 became the focus of an archaeological salvage project, when an ancient Hellenistic and Roman city of Zeugma with its fabulous mosaics was rescued from massive waters that were taking over the area. In Gaziantep a beautiful museum was built for frescoes and mosaics removed from Zeugma. The finds are resembling Pompeii and Herculaneum in their fine state of preservation.

The ancient ruined bridge and citadel of Hasankeyf on the cliffs currently in danger because of a new dam on the Tigris. Photo: Minna Silver 2014.

Other dam sites in Turkey include the Ilisu dam of the Tigris, this year being the opening year of the dam. The dam is associated with the cliff site of the Hasankeyf settlement and citadel in the Batman province in southeastern Turkey (Fig. 2) and is currently in danger when the water levels are rising and cliffs are collapsing. This endangered site has revealed human habitation from ca. 10, 000 BC, currently providing visibility to fabulous Roman, Byzantine and Medieval ruins with a bridge reaching over the river and thousands of human-made caves on the cliffs.

As far as archaeological endeavours are concerned, the sword that archaeologists are facing has two edges: on the one hand the excavations cannot save the sites which will be submerged in their locations, on the other hand, the projects that carry out rescue excavations may provide new scientific information of sites and cultures that otherwise could be left unidentified and undiscovered. Some areas have been archaeologically terrae incognitae, the unknown lands, before they became under archaeological salvage projects.

However, in some cases decisions that can destroy sites by mere ignorance need collective actions of heritage professionals to stop the deterioration or destruction that, for example, Hasankeyf is facing. Already parts of the cliffs have collapsed. The fact that a site needs to be saved in its original location is always the best choice – if we are changing structures to other sites, we are removing the original identity of a place, the memory attached to it and opportunity for future generations to study it with constantly improving archaeological methods. Even if is a step forward, it is a small comfort that the site of Hasankeyf castle has been laser-scanned, because its destruction would be a cultural catastrophe out of measure.

In the worst scenario, a dilemma remains for those professionals that are saving the heritage. We cannot let the human cultural memory to disintegrate completely and leave destroyed places undocumented because of political circumstances with which we do not agree.