The Academic Research Institute in Iraq

Protecting Iraq’s Ancient Cultural Heritage

Recordings of both events are available below.

TRAINING, SITE SECURITY, museum STORAGE AND DOCUMENTATION, OBJECT TRAFFICKING, and more

September 2, 2021

We invite you to join us for a continuation of our discussion in May (see below) as we welcome a new panel of scholars, who will speak about protecting sites and objects, conservation efforts, proper documentation, raising awareness within Iraq, and the role of the international community.

Dr. zaid alrawi, moderator

Zaid Alrawi is an anthropological archaeologist from Iraq. He graduated from the University of Baghdad with a B.A. in archaeology in 2003 and earned his M.A. from the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook University in 2008. His work has concentrated on the applications of GIS and Remote Sensing in Mesopotamian archaeology. He worked at the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in Baghdad from 2000-2004. He also worked as a Research Technician from 2008-2010 on the Iraq Archaeological Digital Atlas project at Stony Brook University. Through this effort, he used satellite imagery and GIS to survey, locate and document 2000 archaeological sites within the provinces of Arbil, Nineveh, Al-Anbar and Diyala in Iraq. Zaid has obtained his Ph.D. degree from Penn State, with a dissertation that focused on the Third Millennium B.C. Rural Economy of Southern Mesopotamia, specifically investigating the locational setting of sites of production within the urban hinterland of the Lagash territory. Currently, he is the manager of the two archaeological projects of Penn Museum at the sites of Lagash and Ur in southern Iraq. 

Dr. zainab bahrani

Zainab Bahrani is the Edith Porada Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University in New York. She is the author of several books including Rituals of War (Zone/MIT Press, 2008) which won the American Historical Association Prize, and The Infinite Image: Art, Time and the Aesthetic Dimension in Antiquity (Reaktion/University of Chicago Press, 2014) which won the Lionel Trilling Prize. Bahrani is also editor and co-author of volumes written to accompany her co-curated exhibitions: Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire 1753-1914 (Istanbul, 2011) and Modernism and Iraq (New York, 2009). Major awards for Bahrani’s research include grants form the Getty Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, a 2003 Guggenheim, and a 2019 Carnegie award. In 2020 she was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Since 2012 Bahrani has been the Director of a Columbia University topographical survey, Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments, a project that studies and documents rock reliefs, landscapes, historical architecture and monuments from Southeastern Turkey to Iraqi Kurdistan and the Nineveh province in northern Iraq.  She is also the Director of another ongoing field project: the Conservation of the Bahdinan Gate, Parthian rock reliefs and monumental stairway at Amadiyah/Amedi. 

lanah Haddad

Lanah Haddad is an archaeologist specializing in the art and archaeology of ancient Mesopotamia. She studied in Germany and was a PhD Candidate at the interdisciplinary graduate program “Value and Equivalent” at the University of Frankfurt. She has participated in several international archaeological excavation and heritage preservation projects in the MENA region. Most of her work focuses in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. She has published several articles and contributed to two exhibitions.

Her passion for ancient Mesopotamia made her create strategy board game called "Urbilum - The Assyrian Empire" based onarcheological and historical information in multiple languages to build a bridge between the diverse community in Iraq and their heritage. She plans to develop further creative tools to reconnect the people to their heritage and raise more awareness.

Currently, Haddad is a field assistant on the conservation of the Bahdinan Gate, Parthian rock reliefs, and monumental stairway at Amadiyah/Amedi, with Columbia University in New York under Dr. Zainab Bahrani.

dr. abdulameer al-hamdani

Dr. Abdulameer Al-Hamdani is an Anthropological Archaeologist specializing in Near Eastern and Mesopotamian archaeology. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Ancient Archaeology, Baghdad University 1987, an MA and PhD in Archaeology from the Department of Anthropology of State University of New York at Stony Brook, May 2013 and 2015. He has specialized in using remote sensing, GIS techniques in archaeology; regional archaeological survey, intensive systematic survey, and landscape archaeology. Dr. Al-Hamdani has served as the Minister of Culture, Tourism, and Antiquities in Iraq, Chairman of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, Director of the Antiquities office of the Dhiqar province, Director of the Nasiriya Museum, and has led numerous excavations in Iraq.
Currently, he is a visiting researcher in the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook University, New York, US, and the Department of Archaeology at Durham University, UK.

Dr. mohammad sabri

Dr. Mohammad Sabri Abdulraheem earned his PhD in Archaic Archaeology from the University of Baghdad. He has directed and been a member of many archaeological expeditions and survey teams across different sites and parts of Iraq. Dr. Sabri has been a researcher at Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) since 1999, during which he has led many SBAH investigations and artistic committees there and at the National Museum of Iraq. Dr. Sabri has also lectured in the departments of archaeology at the universities of Baghdad, Babil and Qadisiya. In addition, he has written and translated dozens of research papers.

ali ubaid

Mr. Ali Ubaid is a senior staff archaeologist of Iraq’s State Board of Antiquates and Heritage (SBAH) and is the General Director of the Investigation and Excavation Department at SBAH. He graduated from the University of Baghdad in the year 1993. Since then, he participated and has led many archaeological expeditions in southern Iraq. For years, Mr. Ubaid has been the antiquities inspector of Alsamawah area in southern Iraq. Mr. Ubaid has a number of archaeological research projects published inside and outside the country.

May 25, 2021

This discussion was held as part of TARII’s cultural heritage preservation series, which welcomed a group of scholars to discuss the protection and preservation of Iraq’s ancient cultural heritage, moderated by Dr. Jean Evans. We were pleased to hear remarks from Dr. Patty Gerstenblith, Dr. Katharyn Hanson, and Riyadh Hatem Mohammed. Dr. Abdulameer Al-Hamdani was scheduled to attend but was then unable to participate. They discussed the current state of training, site security, museum storage and documentation, and object trafficking; and the role the international community has played and should play.

DR. JEAN EVANS, MODERATOR

Dr. Jean M. Evans is the Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Oriental Institute (OI) at the University of Chicago. For the OI Centennial, she oversaw the complete renovation of the OI Museum, the first comprehensive reinstallation of the galleries in thirty years. Jean’s research focuses on the art and archaeology of ancient Iraq, primarily Sumerian temple sculpture and sacred material culture; the reception and representation of ancient Iraq; and the production of knowledge in museums and museum display. She is the author of The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture: An Archaeology of the Early Dynastic Temple (2012), and her co-edited volumes include Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. (2008) and Mesopotamian Temple Inventories in the Third and Second Millennia BCE: Integrating Archaeological, Textual, and Visual Sources (2019). Her research has been supported by fellowships from Ludwig Maximilian University, the Getty Foundation, the Academic Research Institute in Iraq, the Warburg Institute, and the German Archaeological Institute. Jean received her PhD in Art History and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, and she was a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1999-2008. She has worked on excavations in Syria at Tell Brak, Tell Mozan, Hamoukar, Tell Zeidan, and Tell Qsoubi.

DR. PATTY GERSTENBLITH

Dr. Patty Gerstenblith is a distinguished research professor of law at DePaul University and director of its Center for Art, Museum & Cultural Heritage Law. She is founding president of the Lawyers Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (2005-2011), an officer of the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield, a member of the steering committee for ABA's Art and Cultural Heritage Law Committee, and a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. From 2011 to 2017, she served as an appointee of President Obama as the chair of the President's Cultural Property Advisory Committee in the U.S. Department of State, on which she had previously served as a public representative in the Clinton administration. From 1995 to 2002, she was editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Cultural Property. Gerstenblith received her AB from Bryn Mawr College, PhD in art history and anthropology from Harvard University, and JD from Northwestern University. Before joining the DePaul law faculty, Gerstenblith clerked for the Honorable Richard D. Cudahy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

DR. KATHARYN HANSON

Dr. Katharyn Hanson is a Smithsonian Secretary's Scholar and a Cultural Heritage Preservation Scholar at the Museum Conservation Institute. She works as an archaeologist specializing in the protection of cultural heritage. Dr. Hanson received her doctorate from the University of Chicago with a dissertation entitled: Considerations of Cultural Heritage: Threats to Mesopotamian Archaeological Sites. Previously she held a visiting research position with the Geospatial Technologies Team at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania Museum and MCI. She directs archaeological site preservation training at the Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage in Erbil, Iraq and serves on the Board of The Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TARII). She has been involved in various archaeological fieldwork projects for over 25 years and has curated museum exhibits and published on damage to ancient sites in Iraq and Syria. Her research combines field archaeology, remote sensing, and cultural heritage protection methodology and policy with on-the-ground action to protect culture.

RIYADH HATEM MOHAMMED

Riyadh Hatem Mohammed is the Head of the Remote Sensing Department at Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH). In his role at SBAH, he is also a member of a number of committees and working groups, including the Ministerial Committee for Confronting Disasters and Crises. Mr. Mohammed has degrees in Statistics and Mathematics, and Computer and Communications Sciences from the University of Baghdad. He is specialized in remote sensing, analysis of satellite imagery, GIS, surveys, and planning, with numerous certifications. They include ArcGIS, physical and laser surveying, and topographic, geophysical, and aerial survey utilizing various techniques and programs. Mr. Mohammed has conducted surveys of more than 6,500 Iraqi archaeological sites and has trained extensively in survey techniques, devices, and programs.