Abstract: For decades, Afghanistan has been affected by conflicts that periodically replay the dramatic chronicle of a country in collapse. Cases such as this pose questions to archaeology about the ethical and pragmatic boundaries of actions to protect cultural heritage, when so much of the country’s civil society lives under the leaden cloak of insecurity and poverty. Wars and conflicts inflict all forms of deprivation: of human lives, freedom, and dignity of the person in the first place, but also of the mutual right of belonging between cultural heritage and local communities. It is the defense of this right that characterises archaeology in areas affected by conflicts and/or, as in the case of Afghanistan (and many other areas of the world), kept in the shadows by insufficient recognition and scarce representativeness. Impoverished by wilful destruction (often used as an instrument of propaganda and division), indirect damage, vandalism, brutal looting of museums and archaeological sites, Afghanistan’s cultural heritage is also undermined by the intrinsic fragility of the materials from which it is largely made up (clay, stucco, wood). To laymen, the fragmentary remains that we find semi-dissolved in the archaeological layers say little or nothing. They are poor, not resistant, and almost non-existent. They do not justify the commitment of resources with which we attempt to unearth and protect them. It is therefore up to archaeologists to overturn the sedimented hierarchy of the material ontology of cultural heritage, by reconstructing, with the tools at their disposal, the original forms, contexts, and the wealth of knowledge, values, beliefs, and attitudes embedded in ephemeral media. This is an emblematic case of the mutual permeability between the ‘material’ and the ‘immaterial’, which requires us archaeologists not to identify our work with excavation alone. The Italian Archaeological Mission in Afghanistan, which has long been confronted with the dilemma “to stay or to leave?”, has chosen to stay and operate in alternative ways. We have dedicated a great deal of time to recovering, digitising, studying, and putting online the old archaeological documentation, with the aim of reconstructing an extraordinary physical and aesthetic dimension that has been largely lost, and sharing it with a wide public. We like to think that there might be children among this public, Afghans and otherwise, who will hopefully be more conscious owner of cultural heritages in danger of silently disappearing.
eartHeritage – PRIN 2022JL5HLY
