Читать книгу A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East онлайн

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But the epigrapher claimed instead:

This analysis is mistaken. The value of looted tablets and other inscribed artifacts as historical documents is only minimally reduced by the loss of contextual information, and the loss to historical knowledge will be greater if they are not studied and published. There is no evidence to suggest that academic study and publication promotes the market, or that the antiquities trade is in the hands of armed insurgents.

It seems clear (from publications) that different sub-disciplines focusing on the ancient world continue to have different approaches to the problem.

It is undeniable that the unprecedented destruction of archaeological remains has damaged the field of Hellenistic and Roman Near Eastern studies. The field, however, is not closed for further research (see, for example, the recent collection “Remembering Roman Syria,” edited by Jen Baird and Zena Kamash as an issue of the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies: Baird and Kamash 2019). More international and interdisciplinary networks are needed which focus on various sites within the region, in order to think about the way in which the next generation of scholars (of any discipline) can be trained in such a way that the fact that they will be the first who are unable to see the ruins of the Near Eastern lands in the way that their predecessors could still experience them will not be detrimental to their own future contributions. Possible avenues for collaboration are digitization of available resources, shared documentation, creation of databases of artifacts (an excellent example is the upcoming publication of the corpus of Palmyrene funerary sculpture by Rubina Raja’s Palmyra Portrait Project: https://projects.au.dk/palmyraportrait), joint grant applications, and collaboration on wider public engagement activities. Needless to say, the next generation will have their hands full with damage assessment and conservation issues, and – where possible – analysis of recovered items. May the chapters that follow play a role in facilitating that process!