DAMS ALONG THE SYRIAN EUPHRATES
Dams are a controversial and contested tool for economic development. Although these massive infrastructures provide immediate economic benefits, in the medium and long-term their destructive impact on the environment and cultural heritage is pervasive and irreversible. The majority of monuments, archaeological sites and cultural landscapes impacted by dams are lost forever.
Concerns about the substantial damages that dams caused worldwide to the cultural heritage and the insufficient commitment of archaeologists, heritage expert and authorities have raised. The papers below provide an introduction to the impact of dams on cultural heritage along the Syrian Euphrates river built between the 1960s and 2000s.
Cunliffe, E. L., De Gruchy, M. W., & Stammitti, E. 2012. How to Build a Dam and Save Cultural Heritage. International Journal of Heritage in the Digital Era, 1, 221-226.
Cunliffe, E. L., De Gruchy, M. W., & Stammitti, E. 2012. Dam(ned) archaeology. International Water Power 64, 62-65.
N. Marchetti, A. Curci, M. Gatto, S. Nicolini, S. Muhl and F. Zaina 2019. A Multiscalar Approach for Assessing the Impact of Dams on the Cultural Heritage in the Middle East and North Africa, Journal of Cult. Her. 37, 17-28.
Zaina, F. and Tapete, D. 2022. Documenting and monitoring the impact of dams to cultural heritage from space. Tuning satellite data collection to meet rescue archaeology needs, Remote Sensing, 14, 1-28.