Project

HERITAGE AND THE ANTHROPOCENE

Over the past seven decades, human activity has exploded across the globe like never before. Cities sprawl outward, swallowing ancient sites. Industrial agriculture plows through millennia-old settlements. And now, climate change is accelerating natural disasters that threaten heritage sites worldwide.

The numbers are staggering. Despite international treaties, national laws, and growing awareness, thousands of archaeological sites and cultural landscapes have suffered irreversible damage or complete destruction. From the submerging of the ancient Egyptian sites by the Aswan dam, to the slow erosion of coastal archaeological sites due to rising sea levels, we're witnessing a cultural catastrophe unfold in real time.

We're now facing a global heritage emergency. The pace of destruction has accelerated beyond anything previous generations experienced, and here's the crucial insight: the patterns of heritage destruction mirror the defining trends of the Anthropocene.

As humanity's footprint on Earth has grown exponentially since the 1950s, what scientists call the "Great Acceleration", so too has the destruction of our cultural heritage. The same forces reshaping our planet are systematically erasing the physical traces of our past.

The same economic systems, population pressures, and environmental changes that define the Anthropocene are actively dismantling the cultural record of how humans lived before this unprecedented era began.

Urban sprawl, driven by explosive population growth and economic development, consumes natural landscapes and bulldozes through ancient settlements, medieval town centers, and archaeological site. Megacities like Mashhad, Cairo, and Mexico City expand over historical sites, creating an impossible tension between modern needs and heritage.

Climate change is turning heritage sites into climate refugees. Coastal archaeological site from the US to Sotheast Asia are disappearing beneath rising waters, while increasing extreme weather events batter monuments from Easter Island to Venice. The same carbon emissions driving global warming are also increasing acid rain, eroding stone monuments and sculptures.

Resource extraction and industrial agriculture, hallmarks of our resource-hungry civilization, strip away cultural landscapes around heritage sites. Mining operations tunnel beneath ancient structures, while industrial farming techniques level archaeological mounds and historical field systems that survived for centuries.

WHY ANOTHER WEBSITE ON ENDANGERED HERITAGE?

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of websites, platforms, and online initiatives dedicated to documenting our disappearing past. These digital caretakers emerged from universities, museums, NGOs, and passionate individuals who refused to watch history vanish in silence. From crowd-sourced monitoring systems to satellite-based early warning networks, digital technology is being weaponised for preservation.

Most of these initiatives share a common mission: saving what's still in danger and bringing the unknown to light. They race against time to document vulnerable sites before they are lost, creating virtual museums of places most people will never visit. They mobilise communities, governments, and international organisations around the urgent need for protection.

But here is where the story takes a different turn. The Lost Heritage Atlas (LHA) initiative documents the places, objects or traditions we have already partially or completely lost forever.

The LHA catalogs the archaeological sites, monuments, landscapes, as well as intangible practices that have been partially or totally erased by the Anthropogenic forces we've described: the bulldozers of urban development, the rising waters of climate change, the explosives of conflict, and the machinery of industrial progress. From ancient tells flattened for shopping malls to underwater cities claimed by dam construction, the LHA creates an archive of what the so-called human epoch has cost us.

It's a sobering reminder that for every site we successfully protect, dozens more slip away unnoticed. The LHA attempts to transform invisible losses into visible testimony, ensuring that even in destruction, these places continue to tell their stories. Because sometimes, bearing witness to what we have lost is the first step toward preventing future losses.

The LHA project draws on almost 10 years of scientific research focusing on the impact of dams, farming, urban sprawl, looting, and road construction in different countries, including Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Syria and Turkey. This has resulted in a number of scientific and popular papers, which can be accessed below:

Zaina, F. in press. The many (dangerous) facets of water. Understanding hydro-hazards to cultural heritage. Journal of Cultural Heritage Crime

Zaina, F. 2025. Atlante del passato perduto. Come l’Antropocene sta distruggendo il patrimonio culturale dell’umanità, BUR Saggi Rizzoli, Milano.

Younis Khan, M., Zaina, F., Mohammed, S. Tapete, D., 2025. Natural hazards and cultural heritage: Lessons from Archaeological Sites using Copernicus Satellite Data Post-2022 Pakistan Floods. In S. Stellacci and S. Aydin (eds.) Endangered heritage sites. Enhanced representations for informed solutions, Springer, Berlin, 63-88. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-91949-7_4

Banduini, P., and Zaina, F. 2023. Historical irrigation landscape systems: introducing conservation, management and reuse experiences and studies in rural and urban contexts, Conservation and Management of Archeological Sites 25, 1-8. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13505033.2023.2293351

Marchetti, N. and Zaina, F. 2023. Flooded Heritage. The Impact of Dams on Archaeological Sites. In E. Cunliffe, A. Gonzalez Zarandona and M. Saldin (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Heritage Destruction, London, Routledge, 147-158. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003131069-13/flooded-heritage-nicol%C3%B2-marchetti-federico-zaina

Cuca, B., Tapete, D. and Zaina, F. 2023. Monitoring of damages to cultural heritage across Europe using satellite earth observation: assessment of indexed and grey literature. Remote Sensing 15(15), 3748. https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/15/15/3748

Younis Khan, M., Zaina, F., Mohammed, S. Tapete, D., 2023. Integrating Copernicus Satellite Products and Ground-Truthing for Documenting and Monitoring the Impact of the 2022 Extreme Floods in Pakistan on Cultural Heritage, Remote Sensing 15(10), 2518. https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/15/10/2518

Zaina, F., Branduini, P. and Zavvari, F. 2022. Applying ICOMOS-IFLA Principles for the Conservation, Management and Reuse of an Historical Hydraulic Systems. The No-Ras Qanat in North-western Iran, Heritage 5, 1-26. https://www.mdpi.com/2571-9408/5/4/163

Younis Khan, M., Zaina, F., Abedin, Z., Shahina, T., Jahangir, K. 2022. Evaluation of risks to UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Taxila, Pakistan using ground-based and satellite remote sensing techniques. Journal of Cultural Heritage 55, 195-209. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1296207422000 644

Zaina, F. and Cuca, B. 2022. Damage to Archaeological Heritage Recorded, Documented and Monitored using Geospatial Technologies: An Assessment of Indexed Literature. In 2022 IEEE International Mediterranean and Middle-East Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium 7-9 March 2022. IEEE, 110-113. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Damages-to-Archaeological-Heritage-Recorded%2C-and-An-Zaina-Cuca/4970ad6da674a10c41790c042284f6dc4b75a829

Zaina, F. and Tapete, D. 2022. Satellite-Based Methodology for Purposes of Rescue Archaeology of Cultural Heritage Threatened by Dam Construction, Remote Sensing, 14, 1-28. https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/14/4/1009

Zaina, F. and Nabati Mazloumi, Y. 2021. A Multi-temporal Satellite-based Risk Analysis of Archaeological Sites in the Qazvin Region (Iran), Archaeological Prospection 28, 1-17. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/fu ll/10.1002/arp.1818

Branduini, P., Zaina, F. Zavvari, F., Nabati Mazloumi, Y. 2021. Qanats as an Endangered Traditional Hydraulic Heritage. An Integrated Methodology for Documenting, Restoring and Reusing an Ancient Iranian Qanat. In Proceedings of the Joint International Event 9th ARQUEOLÓGICA 2.0 & 3rd GEORES, Valencia (Spain). 26–28 April 2021, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, 142-158. https://ocs.editorial.upv.es/i ndex.php/arqueologica20/arqueologica9/paper/view/12102

Marchetti, N., Bitelli, G., Franci, F. and Zaina, F. 2020. Archaeology and Dams in South-eastern Turkey: Post-Flooding Damage Assessment and Safeguarding Strategies on Cultural Heritage, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 33.1, 29-54. https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/18291

Zaina, F. 2019. A Risk Assessment for Cultural Heritage in Southern Iraq: Framing Drivers, Threats and Actions Affecting Archaeological Sites, Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 21, 184-206. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13505033.2019.1662653

Marchetti, N., Curci, A., Gatto, M.C., Nicolini, S., Mühl, S. and Zaina, F. 2019. A Multi-scalar Approach for Assessing the Impact of Dams on the Cultural Heritage in the Middle East and Northern Africa, Journal of Cultural Heritage 37, 17-28. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1296207418305569

Marchetti, N., Al-Hussainy, A., Valeri, M., and Zaina, F. 2018 Assessing Endangered Cultural Heritage in Central Iraq. Methods and Perspectives of the QADIS Survey Project, Sumer LXIV, 11-34. https://cris.unibo.it/handle/11585/684868

Marchetti, N. and Zaina, F. 2018 Documenting Submerged Cultural Heritage. Dams and Archaeology in South-eastern Turkey. In M. Kinzel, M.B. Thuesen and I. Thuesen (eds.), Culture and Conflict. Understanding Threats to Heritage, Copenhagen, Orbis, 28-35. https://www.orientlab.net/orientdams/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/02/2574-Orbis-konflikt-kultur-magasin-KOR1-MARCHETTI-ZAINA.pdf

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