Classification and Quantification Procedures

Establishing diachronic changes in site conditions required a visual assessment of each site in the earliest possible imagery set, which, it is presumed, would demonstrate less site destruction/development than imagery taken several decades later. The CORONA imagery set was taken on June 8 1970 and forms the baseline of site condition assessment against which the Google Earth data set from approximately 40 years later was compared.

Each polygon representing a site boundary was buffered outward by 100m to produce a closed polygonal ring around each site. This was done to better assess not only the condition of the tell sites themselves, but the surrounding area which may or may not have undergone differential development. Typically, tell sites represent nucleated settlements with an outlying region of cultivation or other agricultural activity, therefore an assessment of site condition change properly subsumes at least a sample of this outer region.

Four classes of development were used to quantify changes in landscape cover on each site, and within the 100m buffer surrounding the site:

1. Unaltered – Refers to land surface on the site itself or within the 100m buffer that appears unused by any of the means above, but is not covered by vegetation. Identification of this class in CORONA is based on no visible cultivation or structures. In terms of quantification, this class cannot increase over time. It can only decrease or remain static.
    
2. Vegetation – Restricted to almost exclusively tree cover. This does not include orchards. Regions classed as Vegetation were identified in CORONA by patches of very dark pixel values with irregular edges. They are frequently along lower edges of tells and along water courses.
    
3. Agricultural – Land that is under cultivation, including crop field systems, orchards, vineyards, artificial ponds. Agricultural land appears in CORONA as large rectilinear tracts, uniform pixel values of varying ranges, systematic ordered tree rows.
    
4. Developed – Refers to land that bears modern housing, industry, mining, excavation, infrastructure, cemeteries, and other anthropogenic structures or activities (such as warfare), etc. This class was identified in CORONA as high pixel value clusters in rectilinear configurations.
    

Each site and buffer was divided into these classes, and digitized in ArcGIS, first in the 1970 CORONA imagery. Classification polygons were tabulated in ArcGIS along with a calculation for area (in hectares) and exported to an Excel spreadsheet. Once all results for the 1970 classification were gathered, the process was repeated for the 2010 Google Earth imagery. Classification polygons from the 1970’s landscape status were overlaid and edited / replaced to reflect changes in each site environment over the intervening 40 years. Since there is an order of magnitude difference between site sizes in the sample, all values were converted to percentages for this study (A -43). The amount of change in each class was calculated for each site, buffer, and site and buffer combined. Z-scores were calculated on the percent change in combined site and buffers for each classification.

Appendix A presents the totals and percentages of each land classification for each site; summary statistics for all 82 sites are included on page A-43. Appendix B presents the digital images used in the analysis. Each archaeological site is shown in four satellite images: 1) CORONA (1970) with land classification; 2) Landsat TM (1997-2003); 3) ASTER (2001); and Google Earth (collected in 2012) with land classification.

Major Sources of Adverse Impact on Archaeological Sites in Lebanon

The general results presented below must be contextualized with a discussion of significant sources of impact on specific archaeological sites in the sample group. The impacts include disturbances, where an impact is already observed on a site or in its buffer, and threats, where an impact is likely to occur on the site or its buffer. Serious disturbances or threats observed on sites or in their vicinities include those related to agriculture and different forms of development. The most significant impact from agriculture is plowing, with its demonstrated ability to destroy archaeological features and disturb artifact distributions. Observed disturbances and/or threats from development include activities related to mining (fertilizer extraction) and quarrying, archaeological excavation, warfare, and construction of housing and infrastructure. In some cases, especially warfare, we infer impacts from an examination of landscape features that are either on a site or its buffer, or in its vicinity (but outside the site buffer) in concert with documented military activity in the region.

The Impact of Agriculture on Cultural Heritage and Archaeological Sites

Agricultural activity (including pastoralism) adversely affects archaeological sites in a variety of ways. Pesticides, trampling, plowing and fertilizer extraction (a form of mining, which will be discussed later) are among the most damaging.

Modern farming practices can leave residues of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the soils, which contaminate archaeological deposits, even when these are not directly applied to a site, but essentially are derived from atmospheric distillation. “These global distillation processes appears to be most pronounced for organochlorine compounds, frequently used as pesticides, and are of intermediate volatility (Simonich and Hites 1995:1851). The direct consequence is that some organochlorides or their metabolites may be present in archaeological sites well removed from the point of use of the chemical compound (Thorne, Waldbauer and Nickens (1997: 42).

Trampling damage to archaeological sites in the Near East is a result of long-term use of a site for pasturage by ovicaprids. It affects surface deposits, breaking potsherds into smaller pieces, and causing edge damage to lithic specimens that make detailed analysis more difficult. For example, at two Early Bronze Age sites in west-central Jordan Savage and Rollefson (2001: 229-230) found that, “Traffic by sheep, goats, humans, and (in the past century) vehicles are al1 possible agents of alterations to the edges of flakes and blades that may not have been modified intentionally by the flintknapper. Thin edges, especially, might take on the appearance of ‘tools’ even though they were possibly discarded on the spot as being useless, and the small size of many of the pieces indicates an improbable status as a tool. Nevertheless, persistent traffic can very easily produce results that are difficult to distinguish from actual use-wear and real retouch, and this is particularly the case for retouched flakes and blades, utilized pieces, notches and denticulates, and even scrapers and truncations.”

These two sources of impact are not assessed in our sites, since their analysis requires sample collection on the ground. Impacts that occur on a larger scale, such as agricultural expansion and plowing are macro-level processes, which can be seen from satellite imagery. We will concentrate on these forms of Agricultural impact to our site sample.

Plowing a site creates a variety of adverse impacts, from widening and displacing the surface scatter, to mixing artifacts in the plow zone. In a series of experiments conducted over six years in the Acconia area of southern Italy, Ammerman (1985: 33) concluded that “…the site surface operates in effect as a sampling process with respect to material circulating in the plow-zone” and that “…local factors at a site, such as slope, can affect patterns of lateral displacement.” His work has been confirmed in experiments at the Ladybridge Farm site in England:

The results of this experiment have clearly demonstrated that material buried beneath the plough soil is being actively disturbed by the agricultural practices currently being followed at the Ladybridge Farm site, and that archaeological features are in themselves being truncated. This agricultural activity is part of the normal agricultural regime carried out year after year. More importantly this experiment has recorded the disturbance and displacement of Neolithic pottery from an in situ pit feature on the site. It has confirmed the observations made in the evaluation of Ladybridge Farm in 2004.

The experiment has also shown that the processes of displacement and truncation are far more complex than the authors had originally thought. Different levels of truncation were observed which were relative to the amount of wear on the plough shoes at particular points across the site. Other factors, such as depth of plough soil, the dryness of the soil and the nature of the subsoil may have also affected this pattern. It is clear that recorded surface distributions have undergone a far more complex redistribution throughout time through various farming practices than originally anticipated. In one instance this had a dramatic effect with material being moved up to 30m from their point of origin by post ploughing activity. Without a full comprehension of these practices it is difficult to see how artefact patterning within the plough soil can be interpreted at a level beyond general site/activity identification [Dickson, Hopkinson and Timms 2005].

The opening of new areas for agriculture can have a particularly damaging effect on archaeological remains (Trow 2010). Frequently, the first plowing is done with larger implements, which deeply scour the landscape, destroying anything in the path of the plow. The well-known Kissufim Mosaic (fig. 13) is a case in point. “In June 1977 a tractor-driver at Kibbutz Kissufim on the coastal plain east of Gaza was preparing a new field for cultivation. Glancing back at the furrowed earth he noticed fragments of colored mosaic, and realized that he had inadvertently plowed across an ancient site. (Cohen 1980). The floor was dated to A.D. 576-578 based on a Greek inscription in one panel, shown mounted on the side wall in the picture. Savage was participating in an archaeological survey in the northwest Negev at the time, and saw the damage first hand, while Cohen was excavating the mosaic. Multiple plow scars had caused extensive damage to a significant portion of the floor.

Observed Impacts —Agricultural Land Use on Archaeological Sites in Lebanon

Many of the sites in our research sample were impacted by agriculture by 1970 (see Appendix A). The summary statistics on page A-43 suggest at first glance that there has been only a small decline in agricultural land use in the intervening 40 years; the average change is only .808 hectares across all 82 sites and buffers combined. However, the average masks a considerable amount of variation from site-to-site; the standard deviation is 2.268 hectares for the change in the number of hectares under agriculture from 1970 to 2010. Agriculture has declined in the central Beqa’a Valley (Allam 2011), where many of our sites are located, but it has not done so everywhere in the valley—in some places it has intensified.

Instead of a steady decline in the amount of site and buffer area under cultivation, what we instead see are two trends; agricultural land use has intensified at some sites (e.g. Tell Frach, Tell Dibbin and Tell Deir Zenoun II), but declined sharply at others (Tell Meouchi, Tell Ma’shuq, and Tell Neba’a Faour I – discussed under Observed Impacts – Housing/Infrastructure Development). These examples are the most extreme cases, judged by the z-scores of the change in total site and buffer percentage devoted to agriculture (A-43). They are discussed further below.

Tell Frach:

A site with Pottery Neolithic B, Chalcolithic, Middle Bronze, and Roman occupations, Tell Frach (fig. 14, A-26, B-50) occupies a spur jutting out into a small valley in the far north of Lebanon. Though there was some evidence in 1970 of terracing in the vicinity of the site, the overall mound/spur appeared to be intact, and was classified as unaltered. The buffer was a mixture of agriculture and vegetation. By 2010 the unaltered area on the site had decreased to a small circle, and the rest was is in agriculture. Most of the vegetated areas in 1970 are now also being farmed, but there are a few buildings in the buffer, which are classed as development. Agricultural land use increased from 52% to 92% of the site and buffer areas combined in the 40 year interval (A -26). A comparison of the images from 1970 and 2010 also shows that there was quite a bit of residential development just outside the site buffer by 2010. It does not bode well for the site, since once development starts, it usually continues.

Tell Dibbin:

A fairly large site (7.826 ha, with a buffer of 13.415 ha; total area 21.241 ha), Tell Dibbin (fig. 15, A-20, B-39) lies in east-southern Lebanon not far from the Israeli border. As long ago as the 1850’s (Robinson 1856: 375), the site was identified as the likely location of the Biblical Ijon (to which the Arabic A’youn, meaning “springs”, is related). The name survives in that of Marj A’youn, "meadow of springs," a well-watered, oval-shaped plain where the Litani River turns sharply westward to the sea. Tell Dibbin was located within the Israeli Security Zone from the 1980s through 2000, and is in the area that was heavily bombed by the IAF during the 2006 Hezbollah War. Two areas of vegetation and agriculture are visible on the site in 1970. The rest appears to be unaltered. The area within buffer is all agricultural. By 2010 the site and buffer are completely under agriculture, including the slopes of the tell itself. Agricultural land use increased from 72.6% to 100% during the 40 year period of our study (A-20).

Tell Deir Zenoun II:

With occupations identified from the Pottery Neolithic B, Late Chalcolithic, EB I, EB II, EB III, and Middle Islamic periods, Tell Deir Zenoun II (fig 16, A-20, B-37) is a small site of 2.115 ha, with a buffer of 8.471 ha, giving a total studied area of 10.586 ha. The site is located in the southern Beqa’a Valley, south of the city of Zahle. In 1970, the entire site appeared to be unaltered; it was surrounded by agricultural fields. By 2010, the entire site and buffer were under agriculture. This represents an increase from 80% to 100% of the combined site and buffer (A-20). It appears to have escaped damage during the IAF air raids in 1982 and 2006.

Other sites that have been most adversely affected by agricultural intensification in our study sample include: Tell Addous (A-8, B-14), which appears to have been bulldozed away, or perhaps completely mined for Sebakh (see below for a discussion of Sebakh mining); and Tell Naharyah (A-35, B-69) whose site and buffer were classed as 100% agriculture in 1970. The site could still be distinguished in 1970; by 2010, both site and buffer are still 100% agriculture, but the site appears to have been completely plowed away.

Developmental Impacts on Archaeological Sites

As noted above, observed disturbances and/or threats from development include activities related to mining (fertilizer extraction) and quarrying, archaeological excavation, warfare, and construction of housing and infrastructure. Each of these categories will be discussed in terms of its general impact on archaeological sites, and then specific examples from our site sample will be presented. Other than deterioration of excavated archaeological remains (discussed below), development is responsible for more damage to cultural resources than any other kind of impact:

Several national committees reported the widespread risk to archaeological heritage from development projects, such as earthwork constructions. Examples reported include: urbanisation (New Zealand, Turkey, Yugoslavia); road widening (Denmark, Germany, Slovakia, Turkey); railway building (Germany); dam constructions (China, India, Turkey); underground parking in historic cities (Switzerland); and modern agricultural deep ploughing (Norway, Denmark), which can be a special risk to earthwork sites. Much that is lost is either entirely sub-surface or unrecognised on the ground surface.

The archaeological heritage is impacted in a number of ways: destruction of entire or particular elements of past cultures or phases of human activity, particularly the earliest or less monumental manifestations; damage to the integrity of cultural landscapes by removing cultural features that are important archaeological evidence of the relationship between sites; potential damage to sub-surface remains by changes to the surrounding environment as a result of development constructions - the effects from changes to groundwater and to compression are not yet fully understood [ICOMOS/ICAHM 2002].

Development can lead to the complete destruction of archaeological sites, though activities related to construction, mining, and quarrying. Depending on the nature of the development, sites can be obliterated, such as Tell Addous (A-8, B-14), and Tell Naharyah (A-35, B-69) in the current study, which were completely destroyed by plowing or Sebakh digging. The operation of gravel and stone quarries has had a significant impact on archaeological sites in Jordan, such as the dolmen field at Al-Murayghat, which is being systematically destroyed by two gravel quarries (Savage 2010). If large buildings are erected on a site, their deep foundations can destroy centuries of archaeological deposits.

This is a pervasive problem in that development creates more development, especially where infrastructure, such as highways, dams, shopping centers, and power plants are concerned. Such facilities attract people, who attract more infrastructure. The damage is even more extensive in unrecorded or unregulated environments. Furthermore, the destruction of archaeological heritage is most likely to occur in the absence of prior recording of this heritage. ICAHM recognises this threat:

ICAHM Charter 1990. Article 4: ...A duty for developers to ensure that archaeological heritage impact studies are carried out before development schemes are implemented, should therefore be embodied in appropriate legislation, with a stipulation that the costs of such studies are to be included in project costs. The principles should be established in legislation that development schemes should be designed in such a way as to minimise their impact upon archaeological heritage.

However, ICAHM is aware that this standard is not always met. Despite many countries having requirements to record archaeological heritage, others report a lack of: regional surveys of archaeological heritage (Austria, Norway Sami sites, Panama); environmental impact studies, including archaeological heritage, as part of approval requirements for development projects (the Czech Republic noted some developers are prepared to destroy a site and pay the fine, rather than undertake archaeological investigation); geographic information systems and inventories that record archaeological potential and sensitivity (Lebanon). [ICOMOS/ICAHM 2002].

Fertilizer Mining

Fertilizer digging can destroy part or all of an archaeological site, and is classed with development in this study, as it is a form of mining, though it is done for agricultural purposes. “Sebakh” (Aramaic for “dry earth”) is comprised of midden soils and decomposing, unfired mud bricks. It has been a traditional source of fertilizer in the Near East and Egypt, probably for millennia:

For manuring proper the fellaheen use rubbish heaps or "Koms.” These are the remains of numerous ancient towns and villages; they are rich in nourishing salts. This refuse soil, called 'Sebakh,’ is being quickly used up; it contains about 12 per cent, of salts, namely, saltpetre, soda, and ammonia. Great care must be applied in using this refuse, as the soil contains numerous injurious substances. Usually 20 tons of this refuse earth are put on one feddan [an Egyptian unit of area equal to 1.038 acres], and as it is considered ownerless it only costs the carriage. At times this refuse earth is so short of nitrogen that it does not pay the transport on the backs of camels. As the dwellings of the Egyptian farming people have been made since ancient times of mud-bricks, that have never been burnt, but have been merely dried in the sun, the weather soon pulverizes them, and this dust mixed with the remains of the food of both men and animals, gives a most valuable manure. [Schanz 1913: 215].

Sebakh digging could occasionally reveal important archaeological remains so that later excavation and study could be conducted. In 1887 in the Egyptian village of Et-tel el Amarna, a local woman found a cache of over 300 cuneiform clay tablets while digging for Sebakh. Weigall (1908) reported "Last year in the sebakh digging near the temple of Edfu a pink granite stele was found dedicated by Taharqa in the sixth year of his reign ...In the sabakh diggings at Edfu there was also found a grey basalt statue of Thoutmosis II and III ...In the sebakh digging at the temple of Dendereh there was recently unearthed a part of a colossal crystalline limestone statue of a woman..." At Oxyrhynchus in Upper Egypt, Flinders Petrie, the noted British Egyptologist, observed, "Another column suggests a third colonnade but this region is so deep in Coptic and Arab rubbish that it would be very costly to clear. The work will be done before very long by the natives digging for nitrous earth. Even in a month or two I saw a huge crater cleared out close to the town exposing an early Arab mosque which would soon be destroyed. The rate at which the sabakh digging goes on is astonishing." (1922:36). “The work of the sebbakhin at archaeological mounds did, however, have the effect of stimulating interest in the sites they dug; for in the course of their removal operations, ancient artifacts came to light and many of them found their way onto the antiquities market. Among the most common finds were papyri, which were soon coveted by both collectors and museums. These papyri inspired two English scholars to undertake the first serious archaeological work that had ever been done at Graeco-Roman sites in Egypt. In 1895 Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt arrived in the northeastern Fayoum with the intention of excavating for these valued documents" (Gazda 1983).

In spite of its sometimes revealing important archaeological finds, the damage done to sites was so extensive that in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the colonial Department of Antiquities included in the 1905 Antiquities Act, “The Governor of a Province shall have power to forbid digging for sabakh in any place except under such restrictions as are thought fit and any person digging in any forbidden place shall be liable on conviction to a term of imprisonment not exceeding one month or to a fine or to both.” (Governor General of the Sudan 1905). A permit was required to dig sebakh in Egypt. “As was common practice in Egypt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, local farmers obtained government permits to remove soil from the mound to use as fertilizer (sebbakh). Archaeological sites provided an excellent source of sebbakh because decomposed organic debris creates a soil very rich in nitrogen” (Gazda 1983).

A secondary effect of fertilizer digging on archaeological sites is to spread the artifacts contained in the midden soils over a wide expanse of farmland (Wilkinson 1982). Bintliff and Snodgrass realized that the most satisfactory explanation for the carpet-like distribution they observed through walking 40 square kilometers of Boetian countryside was that “…prehistoric, ancient, medieval, and early modem farmers in Boeotia systematically collected animal and human excrement, together with household rubbish, and regularly spread it across the cultivated landscape as fertiliser. Leavening this mainly organic material was some ceramic debris-broken pots, house tile-which thus found its way continuously into those sectors of the landscape most assiduously cultivated (1988: 508).”

Fertilizer digging from archaeological sites is not a practice confined to the past. In 1996, Harrison et al. (1996) conducted excavations at Tell Madaba, a site in the center of the modern Jordanian city of Madaba. Their excavation in Field A took advantage of an extensive portion of the southeastern slope of the lower mound (fig. 17), exposed during clearing activity by tobacco farmers in search of crop fertilizer in the early 1980s, which revealed an vertical section, more than 8m in height, of the site's depositional history.

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Observed Impacts — Fertilizer Mining

Tell Bir Dakoue:

With confirmed occupational deposits from the EB I, EB II, EB III, MBIIb/c, LB II, Iron I, Iron II, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Periods, Tell Bir Dakoue (fig. 18, A-17, B-32) is a small site (4.062 ha, 10.949 ha buffer, total 15.011 ha) located in the southeastern Beqa’a Valley. The site was completely under agriculture in the 1970 CORONA image, as was the buffer except for two small areas of development off the NW and SE edges of the site. The developed area on the NW had already begun to expand, perhaps by as early as 1997--clearly indicated by the light colored pixels in the Landsat and ASTER images. March 2004 Google Earth (fig. 19) imagery shows trucks and heavy equipment mining the southwest side of the site, probably for sebakh. This area is now classed as developed; the northeast part of the site is still agricultural.

Tell Ain Cherif:

Located north of the town of Rayak in the central Beqa’a Valley, Tell Ain Cherif (fig. 20, A-9, B-16) has confirmed archaeological remains from the Late Chalcolithic, EB I, EB II, EB III, EB IV / MB I / Int. Bronze, MB IIa, MB IIb/c, LB I, LB II, Iron I, Iron II, Persian (Iron III), Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Periods. It is a large site (8.297 ha, 13.453 ha buffer, total 21.750 ha) which we classed as agriculture and vegetation in 1970. The site was reported to be intact except for surface plowing in 1966 by Copeland and Wescombe. Recently there has been development on west edge of the site and the buffer, mostly at the expense of vegetation. By 2005, the site appears to have been extensively looted or mined for sebakh (fig. 21). The disturbed areas are classed as developed in 2010 for this reason.

Tell Addous:

A small site (1.809 ha, 8.098 ha buffer, total 9.907 ha) located northwest of Baalbek in the Beqa’a Valley, Tell Addous (fig. 22, A-8, B-14) has confirmed archaeological deposits dating to the EB, EB II, EB III, EB IV / MB I / Int. Bronze, MB IIb/c, Roman, Byzantine, Early Islamic, and Middle Islamic Periods. The site is very clear in CORONA imagery, and was entirely in agriculture in 1970, along with the buffer. However, 2003 Google Earth imagery shows the site being mined extensively for sebakh (fig. 23—the depth of the shadow at the 12:00 position indicates how deeply the site was being mined. By 2010 it appears that most of the site proper has been bulldozed away. This area is classified as developed. The remainder is agriculture.

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The Impact of Archaeological Excavation and Looting on Sites

It is ironic that poor archaeological conservation practices constitute the greatest developmental impact to sites:

The most widely reported risk to archaeological heritage is the lack of maintenance and conservation of in situ excavated remains. Damage to archaeological heritage is almost certain when excavated cultural features are left exposed without any management plan or resources for their protection, conservation or management. Sub-surface structures and artefacts generally deteriorate very rapidly when exposed to new environmental conditions above ground. The impacts range from physical deterioration - such as the cracking and spalling of monumental stone structures, and the weathering and crumbling of mudbrick features - to the erosion and slumping of unexcavated cultural layers, as well as vandalism and looting. The consequences include the destruction of the features that are excavated, together with damage to unexcavated evidence [ICOMOS/ICAHM 2002].

Partially excavated archaeological sites that have not been backfilled attract looters like an open wound draws flies. This is especially true in periods of governmental or social instability, and Lebanon has not been truly stable for any length of time since before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (see Traboulsi 2007). Therefore, its archaeological sites are especially vulnerable. Since large areas of the country have come under the influence of various militias, and the writ of the central government holds no real power, it is not surprising that looting should be a particular problem (Bogdanos 2012).

Observed Impacts – Archaeological Excavation and Looting

Tell el Ghassil:

Located northeast of Rayak in the central Beqa’a Valley, Tell el Ghassil (fig. 24, A-23, B-44) is slightly larger than 4.311 hectares, with a buffer of 10.682 ha, for a total examined area of 14.993 ha. The site has confirmed archaeological materials from the Late Chalcolithic, EB I, EB II, EB III, EB IV / MB I / Int. Bronze, MB IIa, MB IIb/c, LB I, LB II, Iron I, Iron II, Roman, and Byzantine Periods. Excavations at Tell el-Ghassil were conducted by Dr. Dimitri Baramki and Dr. Leila Badre with the help of the American University in Beirut Museum team and archaeology students, between 1956 and 1974 (Baramki 1961, 1966; Baranski 1964; Doumet-Serhal 1996). Eleven archaeological levels ranging from 1800 to 600 BC indicated that Tell el-Ghassil was a rural agrarian site from the Middle Bronze Age through the Iron III Periods.

Copeland & Wescombe (1966) noted light cultivation on the rest of the site. In figure 24, the excavated area is classed as developed along with the road that bisects the site, and the remaining site is classed as agriculture. By 2010, Google Earth shows encroachment of agriculture fields on N and S sides of site, and increased development in the buffer. Note that the excavated area at the 7:00 position on the 2010 image does not appear to be present in 1970; the area was still under agriculture at that time, but excavations from 1910 to 1974 were conducted in this part of the tell.

In a satellite image from Google Earth dated August 19, 2009 (fig. 25), the unfilled excavation units are clearly seen, as is a severe amount of erosion around their edges (especially around the large units in the center of the site and on the southern side. Three small pits between these larger excavation units may be looters’ holes. Comparison of the 2010 image with the later image in Figure 25 shows that the development at the 5:00 position on the site is a very recent phenomenon.

Kamid el-Loz:

The site of Kamid el-Loz (fig. 26, A-4, B-7) is located in the southern part of the Beqa'a Valley; it is a medium-sized (5.32 ha, 11.591 ha buffer, total 16.911 ha) tell. About 26 meters of archaeological deposits contain confirmed materials dating from the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, EB, MB, LB, Iron Age, Persian (Iron III), Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, and Ottoman Periods. The site appears to have been the city of Kumidi in the Amarna letters, which was a residence of Egyptian administrative officials in the Late Bronze Age. Probably the most important finds were documents written in cuneiform on clay tablets dated to the 14th century BC.

Excavations were conducted from 1963 to 1981 by a German team under the direction of R. Hachmann from Saarbrücken University (e.g. Hachmann and Kuschke 1966, Hachmann 1982, Echt 1984). They focused on several areas: 1) the late Bronze Age Palace near the center of the tell; 2) two temples north of the palace (fig. 27); 3) a domestic quarter and workshops on the northern slope of the tell; 4) Late Bronze Age fortifications on the western side of the tell. In 1997 a new project began under the direction of M. Heinz from the University of Freiburg (Heinz 2010). The renewed excavations by the Freiburg team have not yet reached the Late Bronze Age levels.

The site was very well published by the Hachmann team, and known internationally as one of the most important Late Bronze Age settlements in Lebanon; the discovery of cuneiform documents at the site dating to the Amarna Period, and the mention of the site five times in the Amarna Letters of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV - Akhenaten (1352-1336 BC) made it an obvious target for looters during the chaos following the Lebanese Civil War (fig. 28). Robert Fisk (1991) reports that

...the entire hillside with its repository of ancient civilisation - the fruits of 19 years' work by German archaeologists - has been destroyed. The earth is still there, but it has been cut away with bulldozers and earth-diggers, the surviving low walls of its 3,500-year-old houses ground to pieces by treasure-hunters.

Dr Gunther Krause, director of the Kultur und Stadthistorisches Museum at Duisburg University, took part in the excavations and continued to visit until just before the Israeli invasion. He has been back since and was appalled by what he discovered. "The tell is finished," he said. "The people there have destroyed their own heritage. Everything has gone, the walls, the stone tombs, the ancient roadways. They have bulldozed until they have got down to virgin soil. It's not only at Kamid - it's everywhere in the Biqa'. Bulldozers and dynamite and metal detectors have been used on all the major heights in the valley, even around Baalbek which was always protected before now. They were quite successful in finding metal coins but they destroyed almost all the Persian and Byzantine sites."

According to Dr Krause, looters have made off with bronze figurines from a temple, sacrificial daggers, seals, cuneiform tablets and highly decorated pottery, all of it now in the hands of the international art market. "Kamid el-Loz was a Chalcolithic and Bronze Age tell," he says. "There had been some looting already, but after the Israelis left, in 1985, up to 50 people came and 'worked' the tell. In one area, there were late Bronze Age temples, one on top of another down to the Middle Bronze Age. They cut through every one and they no longer exist."

Dr. Krause is not exaggerating. A visitor who did not know the history of the hill would assume that much of it was a building site, piled with fresh earth and rocks. For the diggers are still at work, organised - according to villagers - by five families in Kamid el-Loz who sell the artefacts from their homes. [Fisk 1991].

The more recent excavation team has little left to investigate. Google Earth imagery from May 25, 2004, shows the extent of the looting (fig. 29). The new excavation units are clearly seen on the northern part of the tell. The remains of looters’ pits, though grassed over in this image, give much of the site a lunar-like appearance.

Exacerbating Factors that Encourage Looting in Lebanon

The impacts related to archaeological excavation and looting (as well as other development) in Lebanon are particularly troubling because of several factors: lax or antiquated laws, lack of enforcement, lack of resources in the responsible agencies, corruption, and the wars and instability in the country.

The current Lebanese antiquities law was established under the French Mandate in 1926, replacing the Ottoman law; it was amended in 1933, expanded in 1966 and further modified in 2008. The laws provide for protection of listed archaeological sites and objects, and special protection for places that are declared to be “monuments” (UNESCO 2012). While, in theory, anything created in Lebanon can be regarded as cultural property, and therefore under the protection of the law, in practice, protection extends only to registered (i.e. “gazzetted” sites, objects, or monuments). This has created a significant loophole in the protection system. Non-monumental sites “...are ignored and neglected, because they do not receive the same recognition as larger or older sites. Risks include a lower level or no statutory protection, or limited resources for protection, management and conservation, because that country allocates greater status and protection to monumental archaeological heritage than less visible and less imposing archaeological features.” ICOMOS/ICAHM (2002). This is a recognized problem in Lebanon.

In addition to the lack of effective protection for un-gazzetted or non-monumental sites in Lebanon, there is no provision in the law for preemptive archaeological survey, which could identify sites in advance of development, and help mitigate adverse impacts to them. “…there are no archaeological surveys for the whole of Lebanon, and no systematic surveys of ancient sites for the South, Mount Lebanon, or the coast. In the mountains no surveys have been carried out whatsoever, other than of the Roman temples in the 1920’s by a group of German archaeologists” (Cochrane 2003).

The lack of preemptive legislation is seen as a result of lack of government policy or concern. Helen Sader, professor of archaeology at the American University of Beirut, observed that “if there was a government policy concerning archaeological heritage, and if they were serious in protecting the Lebanese national heritage, we would be in a better position. Our major problem is that we have authorities who are not interested in protecting or planning for our national heritage. This is the least of their responsibilities, and archaeology is at the bottom of their priorities” (Quoted in Cochrane 2003).

Furthermore, the Directorate General of Antiquities lacks the resources to carry out the tasks for which it is responsible:

Sader explained that “it is a problem of politics, and of the internal apparatus of the department of antiquities. In 1966, the Directorate General of Antiquities was created, but this law fell short of its aim. It could not build a department of antiquities to meet the challenges of growing archaeological activity in the country, and the law came with very modest objectives. The then-director of antiquities had his own traditional conception of archaeology, meaning every dig was run by one man and his army of workers. In this law, he thought that five trained archaeologists and 10 trainee assistants were enough to cover the five administrative areas of the country. This is still the policy today, but 15 archaeologists are only good for one dig, not for the whole of Lebanon. “In comparative terms,” she said, “the Museum of London has 200 archaeologists working within the British capital alone.” A further example of under-resourcing is that there is one archaeologist working in the Bekaa Valley, which alone, according to a survey carried out in the 1960s, has 505 sites. “We do not have the required human potential for archaeology, and the second problem is money,” Sader continued. “Archaeology is a public enterprise, and is the responsibility of the department of antiquities. Even if you do not have enough people in your department, you can always hire freelance workers. Neither the Lebanese administrative laws allow that to happen, nor the department of antiquities has the means for such a policy,” she said [Cochrane 2003].

The political situation that has existed in Lebanon since the 1970’s discourages effective policing of illegal activities, such as clandestine excavations, trafficking in antiquities, and the like. Many parts of Lebanon have not been considered safe for officials to inspect. The presence of armed militias such as Hezbollah, who are hostile to the government, make it very difficult for officials to do their jobs outside of Beirut.

The antiquities laws seem to be rarely enforced. Trade in cultural objects “exists de facto and is tolerated or simply ignored by the authorities” (Fraoua 2012). “Threats to Tyre's ancient cultural heritage include development pressures and the illegal antiquities trade. А highway, planned for 2011, is expected to be built in areas that some deem archaeologically-sensitive areas. А small-scale geophysical survey indicated the presence of archaeological remains at proposed construction sites. These sites have not been investigated. Despite the relocation of а proposed traffic interchange, the lack of precise site boundaries confuses the issue of site preservation” (Triposo 2012).

The laws have been flaunted even in Beirut: “About 70 archaeological sites have been allowed to disappear without a trace, either physical or photographic. The main reason for this, in our opinion – unless there is a concealed reason – is that those carrying out the excavations have not yet acquired enough of the technical capacity, academic methodology, or functional expertise needed to publish the findings. …What is being done to Beirut today can be described...as a large-scale cultural massacre” (Karam 2012). Following the destruction of a Phoenician-era port facility in downtown Beirut, a writer for Al Akbar English observed that, “Beirut's heritage sites are under continuous threat from real estate developers seeking to wash away the city's 5,000 year old history. Activists and archaeologists have long campaigned to protect the city's heritage sites from development. But Lebanon is also one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and real estate companies enjoy strong political backing” (Al Akbar English 2012). With so much corruption in Beirut, it seems even more likely that developers in other parts of the country would ignore existing legal restrictions. Responsible officials seem to find ways to simply look the other way when cultural heritage is destroyed.

Looting archaeological sites was rampant during the 1975-1990 civil wars, which gave free rein to smugglers looking for statues, jars and mosaics from Lebanon's Phoenician, Roman, Crusader and Byzantine past. "Lebanon is still a popular 'transit country' for such smuggling," said Rana Andari, who manages the archaeological collection at the culture ministry's Directorate General of Antiquities (DGA). "Police bust at least 20 attempted smugglings inside Lebanon annually, and that's not counting what goes on at the airport and border crossings." (Quoted in Moussaoui, 2010). And Matthew Bogdanos, author of Thieves of Baghdad and an expert in the movement of stolen artifacts, believes that Hezbollah is profiting from the illegal antiquities trafficking. “When you consider the routes out of Iraq and on to the rest of the world, therefore via Lebanon, it should come as no surprise that Hezbollah saw this movement as a source of financial gain. We began to see Hezbollah taxing the movement of antiquities. (Bogdanos 2011, also see UNESCO 2011).

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The Impact of Warfare on Cultural Heritage and Archaeological Sites

From the notorious Allied bombing of the monastery of Monte Cassino in 1944 (Hapgood and Richardson 1984; Parker 2003), through the destruction of archaeological sites in Operations Desert Storm (Gibson 1997) and Iraqi Freedom (Tucker 2009; Bogdanos 2006; CENTCOM Historical/Cultural Advisory Group 2012), the damage done to archaeological sites by military activity is well known. A brief overview sets the stage for observations about sites in the sample group.

Monte Cassino is a rocky hill about 130 kilometers southeast of Rome, Italy, ca. 2 kilometers to the west of the town of Cassino, where St. Benedict of Nursia established the first Benedictine monastery around A.D. 529. On February 15, 1944, 142 B-17 Flying Fortresses from the U.S. 13th Strategic Air Force dropped 253 tons of high explosives on the monastery in the first wave of an attack. A second wave included 47 B-25 Mitchell bombers and 40 B-26 Marauders, which together dropped a further 100 tons. These two waves were followed by artillery bombardment (Parker 2003: 181-182). The reason given for the bombing was that the monastery was being used by the German army as an observation post and artillery emplacement. But the Abbot of the monastery had confirmed beforehand by written message that there were no Germans in the abbey (see Hapgood and Richardson 1984: 203-204), and this justification was subsequently walked back by a string of investigations starting in 1949, and culminating with the U.S. Army’s official history from 1969, which stated that “the abbey was actually unoccupied by German troops” (Hapgood and Richardson 1984:237).

Gibson reported that:

The Gulf War of 1991 has had a devastating impact on the archaeology of Iraq. This statement is true although destruction of sites during the war was relatively slight, as far as can be gauged. Bombs dropped into the ziggurat enclosure area at Ur created large craters, about ten metres in diameter and four metres deep, and one strafing run by a plane resulted in four hundred holes in one side of the ziggurat. Use of Tell al-Lahm, to the southeast of Ur, as a position for US troops was accompanied by machine-excavation of several large holes. Probably other tells suffered similar damage, but lacking a systematic study of the war's effect on antiquities, as requested by UNESCO but denied by the U. N. Security Council, we cannot say for certain.[Gibson 1997]

Although the U.S. military has tried subsequently to avoid destroying archaeological sites, the necessities of war frequently dictate that such places be attacked if they are being used by the enemy and the lives of U.S. soldiers are at stake. Sometimes the fog of war and/or political pressure make an attack almost inevitable, regardless of whether there is any real danger from a place. Hapgood and Richardson (1984) present a detailed account of how these factors influenced the destruction of Monte Cassino. Sometimes, decisions are made by military planners that adversely affect cultural resources, even when the lives of troops are not directly endangered. Tucker (2009) records “The United States military turned the site of ancient Babylon into Camp Alpha in 2003 and 2004, inflicting serious damage according to an exhaustive damage assessment recently released by UNESCO. Bulldozers leveled many of Babylon's artifact-laden hills. Helicopters caused structural damage to an ancient theater.”

In 2011, early reports indicated that NATO had bombed the ancient sites of Leptis Magna and Sabratha (Radyuhin 2011) in Libya. However, “Subsequent inspections indicated that the sites had not been targeted by NATO, though nearby military targets were. The claims circulated across the internet regarding NATO's bombing of Leptis Magna were later shown to be not true. NATO did bomb locations nearby Leptis Magna and Zlitan, but there is no evidence that they bombed Leptis itself. However, it emerged later that the bombing extravaganza nearby did cause some reverberating damage, since the laws of physics dictate that the vibration of blasts travel through the ground way beyond the target's boundaries” (Nesmenser 2011). A small Roman fort occupied a hilltop overlooking Leptis, and it contained a radar station, which was completely destroyed by precision bombing. The fort sustained damage as well (Blue Shield and IMCuRWG 2011:6). “In Sabratha, one of the most important sites in Libya, there had been posts from Army Brigade 219 that occupied the place from early July until the 17th of August. They established several firing positions and observation posts. Some damage from small arms fire on the amphitheatre can be found which is minor. There is also some minor damage from anti aircraft fire.” (Blue Shield and IMCuRWG 2011:7).

Archaeological sites, especially prominent structures such as the Crusader Period Castle of the Sea near Sidon, the Castle of St. Louis in Sidon, the Castle of St. Giles in Tripoli, Tibnin, in southern Lebanon, and Beaufort, high above the Litani River, are frequently used by modern-day militias and armies for precisely the same reasons they were built in the first place. They command expansive views of the countryside around them. For this reason they were originally fortified, and recent combatants in the wars of Lebanon have reoccupied these fortified heights (Fisk 2002: 54). The mounded tell sites of the ancient Near East are also tempting targets for military operations, since they often provide the best viewsheds in their vicinity. From time immemorial, humans have sought the high ground in conflicts, and archaeological sites frequently offer the best topography in a region. As locations for radar installations, sniper nests, forward artillery observation posts, and other operations, sites are often too well situated to ignore, and subsequently come under fire. “The Great Mosque of Samarra, built in the 9th century, was once the largest mosque in the world. Its minaret, the Malwiya Tower, is a dramatic spiraling cone that rises more than 170 feet above the desert. Not only is the tower one of the most recognized buildings in the Middle East, it was featured on Iraq's currency. Despite protests issued by scholars, U.S. snipers occupied the Malwiya Tower as a lookout. In 2005, the top floor of the minaret was blasted by an insurgent bomb” (Tucker 2009).

Other than direct military activity, looting constitutes the most destructive impact on archaeological sites and cultural heritage. Bogdanos (2006) described the looting of the Baghdad Museum after the fall of Baghdad in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Looting continues in Iraq because of the breakdown of civil authority, an indirect cause of the Iraq war (Tucker 2009). "The immediate, near-term and long-term effect of Operation Iraqi Freedom on the cultural heritage of Iraq cannot be overstated. It also, in several respects, is not yet fully known, because ongoing problems such as site looting continues four and one-half years after the invasion, and the long-term effects of military action at Babylon" (CENTCOM Historical/Cultural Advisory Group 2012). It is now occurring in Syria, too (Fisk 2012). These are indirect effects of warfare.