The Liberal Arts Advantage - College of Letters & Science News

JEROME STARKEYA Buddhist shrine at Mes Aynak in eastern Afghanistan.agreed to travel for the first time to the heartof Taliban country to help make a dramaticcase for preserving this vital piece of globalheritage.Around the world, archaeologicalsites are threatened by war, environmentaldegradation, mining, dam-building, and evenmass tourism. Rebellions in Libya, Syria, andMali have endangered not only the lives ofmillions of people, but also thousands ofyears of human history.“This is a global problem,” saysUW-Madison classics professor andarchaeologist William Aylward, who iscurrently working on a project in Troy inmodern-day Turkey. “The question can be putto everyone on the face of the earth: what isworth saving?”Archaeologists and anthropologists playan increasingly vital role in communicatingnot only the importance of what will be lost,but the potential benefits to tourism andculture if it can be saved. In the digital age,the impact of a well-crafted story or petitionor documentary can resonate much furtherthan it might have 15 years ago.Aylward has witnessed this firsthand. In2002–2004, he was involved in documentingthe rescue of thousands of artifacts fromZeugma, an ancient Greek and Romanfrontier city on the Euphrates River in Turkey.One-third of the city was flooded by amassive, hydroelectric dam.“It took the threat of destruction tobring the site worldwide attention,” hesays. “The New York Times ran a front-pagestory on it. Because of that, the PackardHumanities Institute launched a fivemonthrescue operation, with hundreds ofarchaeologists working as the waters rose inthe river valley.”Now, he says, Zeugma is on the radarof Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism.Archaeological teams visit the site everysummer, and the looting that had plaguedthe neglected site has ceased.Continued on page 12report.ls.wisc.edu 11