{"id":6207,"date":"2020-07-12T19:49:38","date_gmt":"2020-07-12T17:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/syriansforheritage.org\/?p=6207"},"modified":"2024-08-19T13:49:28","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T11:49:28","slug":"%d8%aa%d9%88%d8%ab%d9%8a%d9%82-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ad%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%87%d9%86%d8%a9-%d9%84%d9%84%d9%85%d8%aa%d9%86%d8%b2%d9%87%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%ab%d8%b1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/syriansforheritage.org\/?p=6207","title":{"rendered":"Documenting the Current State of the Archaeological Parks Registered on the World Heritage List Park No. \/6\/ – Mount A\u02bbl\u0101 Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Ammar Kannawi<\/span><\/h4>\n

The Ancient Villages in the\u00a0Limestone Massif, also known as \u201cthe Dead Cities\u201d are a group of archaeological sites located in the North-Western Syria. These archeological ancient villages were most distinguished by the preserved architectural and urban complexes which formed agricultural countryside villages dating back to the Roman and Byzantine periods.<\/p>\n

The exceptional importance of these villages comes from that they gradually got abandoned in the 8th century A.D to become a semi-empty limestone mass from housing for several following centuries and thus preserved their old form without the presence of fundamental changes in the buildings plans, shapes and features. Perhaps the construction technique and the quality of the used stone helped to preserve this good condition in addition to the desertion process.<\/p>\n

These villages extend over a wide area in Northwestern Syria, between the Turkish borders in the North and the city of Apamea in the South, with a length of approximately 100 km and a width of 20 km. They are distributed over a group of plateaus and mountains; Mount Simeon, Mount \u1e24alaqa, Mount B\u0101r\u012bsh\u0101, Mount A\u02bbl\u0101, Mount Duwaili, Mount Al-Wastani and Mount Z\u0101wiya. The number of ancient villages discovered in these mountains is more than 700 villages which differ in terms of the level of conservation. Some of them still maintain their old plans and the facades of their buildings are still preserved on the level of several floors.<\/p>\n

We aim in this report to shed the light on the current state of the archaeological villages located within three of the archaeological parks registered on the World Heritage List, which are parks no. \/4-5-6\/. This work is to continue what we started before when we documented the archaeological park of Mount Al-Wastani, park no. \/8\/ which ended in 2019, and a scientific report documenting the state of the park was published on the Syrians for Heritage association\u2019s website – SIMAT.<\/p>\n

In this report, we will highlight the current state of archaeological sites during the years of conflict and will monitor the changes and damages that occurred during recent years from the beginning of the conflict until the first half of year 2020. Our researches and studies will be based on taking field tours, visiting the archaeological sites and documenting damages through photography and recording the testimonies of the local community to know all the variables and the causes behind them.<\/p>\n

This report presents a detailed visualization of the current state of the archaeological park in Mount A\u02bbl\u0101 in order to have a full documentation of this park and its villages and a clear vision for their general safety conditions. At later stage, we aim to provide a general documentation for the current state of the archaeological villages located within the archaeological parks in Mount Z\u0101wiya \/Parks no. 5-6\/ in two separate reports. We will mainly depend on the field tours and photographic documentation that we carried out until the end of 2019 in addition to some of the documentation work that we carried out at the beginning of 2020. We won\u2019t be able to obtain new data or take any tour anymore because of the security risks and the lack of safety conditions in visiting these sites that became military and engagement\/clash areas and starting from the beginning of 2020, civil parties\/actors are prohibited to organize tours or to take photographs.<\/p>\n

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Documenting the Archaeological Park in the Mount A\u02bbl\u0101 project has been executed under the scientific supervision of Dr. Abdalrazzaq Moaz and was funded by the Gerda Hankel Foundation – Germany.<\/span><\/p>\n