A new approach to discover, identify and preserve ancient buildings using pioneering drone technology is being used for the first time at cultural heritage sites in southern Iraq. 

The use of high resolution drone imagery represents a major advance in fieldwork research, enabling archaeologists to identify buildings that would otherwise remain hidden under the surface.

But at the same time, it creates further headaches for the policing of southern Iraq’s cultural heritage, an archaeological jewel that continues to suffer from organised looting.

The new technology is being deployed by the Girsu Project team, an initiative launched in autumn 2021 involving experts from the British Museum and Iraqi archaeologists. The Project is focussed on modern Tello, the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu, where the world’s oldest bridge and a significant temple complex have already been uncovered. Remote sensing technology has been deployed to uncover an extremely large complex dating from over 4,000 years ago. This complex has already yielded an impressive number of finds. Around 1,000 artefacts were discovered in the autumn 2021 season alone, including inscribed votive objects, clay tables, a rare foundation figure, beautifully carved cylinder seals and a unique stone statuette in the shape of a worshipping braided figure, dated to the early 3^rd millennium. All these finds have been transferred to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.

The Girsu Project has developed another ground-breaking technique whereby the mud-bricks discovered at the site of an ancient building are excavated and conserved simultaneously – a new way of ensuring that conservation runs in tandem with excavation and research.

It is hoped both these fieldwork developments will provide new and important insights, both into the sites themselves and into objects now held in the British Museum and Iraqi museums.

However, uncovering further archaeological sites in Iraq may also expose the country to further risks of organised and random looting. It’s been estimated there are more than 25,000 archaeological sites in Iraq, ancient Mesopotamia in antiquity, but there's precious little surveillance or security at most of these sites.

Imposing harsh penalties to prevent any form of looting is probably why the sentence passed earlier this month on retired geologist, 66 year-old Jim Fitton from Bath was so severe. Visiting the ancient Sumerian site of Eridu on an organised archaeological tour of Iraq, Fitton collected twelve pottery shards and stone fragments, which had been dispersed from the spoil heaps of earlier excavations. Although the artefacts are of no financial or historical value, he was arrested at Baghdad airport and convicted this month under a 2002 law of smuggling antiquities out of the country, a crime which carries a sentence of seven to fifteen years in prison. Fitton is expected to appeal.

Speaking to The New York Times, Iraq’s culture minister, Hassan Nadhem, said his ministry had no input into the sentencing, although he did add: “We support any kind of legal action against those who try to steal and smuggle artefacts”.

Looting from archaeological sites has been a perennial problem for Iraq, although Nadhem said he didn’t know of any Iraqis who, in the past two years since he has been minister, have been convicted on similar charges as Fitton.

This all confirms our worst fear that Fitton’s case is being exploited to send a wider message to the global community: remove anything from an historical site in Iraq and you’ll end up in jail – you may even face execution.

Photo: Girsu Project team with drone

Courtesy of Trustees of the British Museum