Treasures of Aleppo and Palmyra: destruction and survival

Please join AIIA WA with Ross Burns to discuss some of Syria’s principal historical sites and how they have been deliberately damaged in the conflict that has raged since 2011.

Among the hundreds of archaeological sites and monuments in Syria, two cities, Aleppo and Palmyra, have been specifically targeted.  Between them they account for a significant proportion of the damage to Syria’s rich store of monuments, some of which date back as far as 3000 BC. Their targeting shows different patterns in the destruction of monuments as a tactic of war.

Despite their significance, it would be wrong to write off Syria’s historical treasures as ‘lost’ or ‘destroyed’.  A large portion of the country’s treasures still remain and, in most cases, reconstruction is possible.  Given the importance of tourism to the country’s economy before 2011, reconstruction will be necessary for the country’s recovery and integral to the task of rebuilding Syrian society in all its dimensions including health, education, housing and infrastructure.

About the Speaker

Ross Burns has written extensively on the archaeology and history of Syria including histories of both Aleppo and Damascus (Routledge 2005, 2016) and a PhD on colonnaded streets in the cities of the Roman East (Oxford University Press 2016). His first book, Monuments of Syria, was the first detailed survey of Syria’s archaeological and historical sites in English. It appeared in 1992 with later editions in 1999 and 2009. It gives both visual coverage to all of the sites in Monuments through hundreds of photos and maps and provides a cumulative catalogue of the damage to historic buildings in the current conflict. His most recent book, Aleppo, has received international acclaim.
Ross was Australian Ambassador to Syria in 1984–87 and since his retirement from DFAT in 2003 has had honorary appointments at Macquarie University in Sydney. He has also worked with Oxford University contributing to a survey of how Roman temples became Byzantine churches (or mosques/synagogues in a few rare cases) to the Manar al-Athar online and free database of photos of archaeological and historical sites around the Mediterranean.