Classics professor Roger Ulrich will begin working soon to develop training materials aimed at helping troops in Iraq and Afghanistan prevent damage to important archeological sites.
Ulrich's research, made possible through a Defense Department grant, will be coordinated at Fort Drum in upstate New York. There, a group of civilians engage in what the Army terms "cultural resource management," which informs troops how to avoid damaging historical monuments on the Fort's premises during training exercises.
Dr. Laurie Rush, one the program's directors, initially approached Ulrich about leading a group of student researchers to develop guidelines for the military overseas.
Because Ulrich is a classical archeologist, meaning he specializes in Greek and Roman archeology, he hopes to rely on his students' research to supplement his own knowledge.
"I don't really work in the Middle East at all," Ulrich said. "What this project is trying to do is make recommendations to military forces to prevent them from inadvertently damaging archeological sites."
The movement towards the development of guidelines comes as a Defense Department response to the outcry among academics against the damage troops are currently causing to historic sites in the Middle East. The two most reported incidents include the sacking of the National Museum in Baghdad and the reported damage of a Babylon archeological site.
"There are clearly problems that happened in both countries," Ulrich said. "This [prevention] means providing some sort of guidelines in the field so they don't put a road or a helicopter pad in there, or they don't drive a tank over it. They can't carry an archeologist around with them; it's too dangerous for an archeologist to be there."
According to Ulrich, not all the changes to standard operating procedure require a doctorate to implement.
"There are some pretty obvious measures you can take," Ulrich said. "A classic example would be filling sandbags. If you're digging in the desert and scooping up shards of pottery and cuneiform tablets, you should probably dig somewhere else."
Ulrich hopes to begin work on the project this summer and continue it into the fall, and the Defense Department hopes to complete work on the materials approximately one year from now.
The materials will include a general instruction manual, 100,000 packs of playing cards carrying cultural and historical information and 50,000 laminated sheets for troops in the field to help them recognize and protect historically sensitive areas.
