The Nahrein Network aims to tackle in tandem two challenges presently facing the Middle East:
the systematic local exclusions from participation in the construction of Middle Eastern antiquity and history; and
massive population growth, coupled with endemic instability, poverty and youth unemployment.
Nahrein is the Arabic name for Mesopotamia, the area
between the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates, centred on modern-day Iraq
and northern Syria. The literate, urban cultures of Sumer, Babylonia and
Assyria predate Greece and Rome by some millennia. Together with Egypt,
they represent the crucial first half of world history.
This new antiquity, re-discovered only in the 19th century,
is now jeopardised by the conflicts presently tearing the region apart.
Since 2014, the destruction of heritage sites throughout Syria and Iraq
has received widespread publicity. International aid projects have
pumped millions of dollars of aid into the documentation, digitisation,
and conservation of threatened and damaged buildings and archaeological
sites across the Middle East. However, only a few of these schemes pay
much attention to long-term, local interests and impacts.
At the same time, the whole region is struggling with the human effects of war. According to the UNDP’s Human Development Report 2016,
youth, women and girls, rural dwellers, and those living in
conflict-affected areas are the four groups of people most at risk of
being ‘left behind’. Cultural, ethnic and religious minorities are
particularly vulnerable to systemic exclusion.
We will enable people across the region to reclaim their
ancient heritage as local history, putting it to constructive use for
their communities. The Network will harness interdisciplinary humanities
research and education to help Middle Eastern universities, museums,
archives and cultural heritage sites build their capacity to contribute
to their countries’ economic, cultural and social development in the
years ahead.
The AWOL Index: The bibliographic data presented herein has been programmatically extracted from the content of AWOL - The Ancient World Online (ISSN 2156-2253) and formatted in accordance with a structured data model.
AWOL is a project of Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Penn State University
AWOL began with a series of entries under the heading AWOL on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog. I moved it to its own space here beginning in 2009.
The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.
The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.
AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.
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