Archaeology
Interview—The Past, Present and Future of Iraq’s Cultural Heritage
A conversation with archaeologists Mark Altaweel and Jaafar Jotheri.
In the Labyrinth of Solitude
Our territory is inhabited by a number of races speaking different languages and living on different historical levels…. A variety of epochs live side by side in the same areas or a very few miles apart, ignoring or devouring one another…. Past epochs never vanish completely, and blood still drips from all their wounds, even the most ancient.
—Octavio Paz, Labyrinth of Solitude
Resettling, Reconstructing and Restor(y)ing
The old village of Umm Qays, Jordan, is strategically lo cated to the south of the Golan Heights, overlooking the northern part of the Jordan Valley and the southern shore of Lake Tiberias. Biblical Gadara and subsequently one of the cities of the Decapolis in antiquity, it attracts modest numbers of both foreign and Jordanian tourists. From the mid-twentieth century on, Umm Qays residents increasingly abandoned farming for work in the civil service and the army, and a new village began to develop adjacent to the original village.
