UPDATE – CHI Update: Spring 2023 Tunisian Implementation Tour

For nearly a decade ASOR’s Cultural Heritage Initiatives (ASOR CHI) has brought together scholars, heritage experts, and communities whose common goals have involved activities to protect heritage and cultural identity throughout the eastern Mediterranean and northern Africa. Over the past two years, a major focus of ASOR CHI has been working with partners in the Maghreb to document and preserve the rich heritage of ethnic and religious minorities. ASOR’s implementing partners in Morocco and Tunisia have documented over 300 locations important to Amazigh, Christian, and Jewish communities, many of which face acute threats from urbanization or lack of upkeep.

Tunisian and Moroccan implementers have documented and curated over 300 entries using KoboToolbox. The database continues to grow and informs ongoing discussions with local, regional, and national officials.

In celebration of ASOR’s continued collaboration with partners in North Africa, ASOR organized a Tunisian implementation tour from April 28 – May 10, 2023. Many Tunisian partners who have played prominent roles in the project’s success met with ASOR leaders and CHI staff. ASOR staff (Andy Vaughn, Will Raynolds, Hanan Charaf, and Jared Koller) were joined for this 13-day trip by ASOR President Sharon Herbert, and by ASOR members and supporters, including Prof. Carol Meyers, Prof. Eric Meyers, Prof. Jack Sasson, Ms. Marian Scheuer Sofaer, and Prof. Abraham Sofaer. The trip commenced in Tunis with a welcome dinner at the Dar Zarrouk restaurant in Sidi Bou Said. The dinner provided the first opportunity for ASOR’s implementing partners in Tunisia and the ASOR delegation to share knowledge about their respective expertise with one another and discuss future collaborations.

In late 2022, ASOR received a follow-up grant from the anonymous donor who funded the project in Morocco and Tunisia to expand our efforts in the Sahel region of Africa (Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger). The first few months of this collaboration have involved virtual training in software applications useful during cultural heritage surveys. ASOR is grateful for our ability to participate in weekly Zoom meetings with four partner organizations, who have helped to coordinate the training: Koombi Culture (Burkina Faso), IKAM Burkina (Burkina Faso), ONG Culture Art Humanité CAH (Niger), and Oralité Plus (Niger).

The April-May 2023 tour in Tunisia was the perfect opportunity for the ASOR CHI team and our new partners in the Sahel to meet in person, while also continuing the ongoing virtual heritage training on the ground. Thus, in addition to the ASOR delegation, two members from each of the four partnering organizations rounded out the group visiting important heritage sites throughout Tunisia. Our Burkinabé and Nigerien colleagues are artists, museum professionals, and heritage experts on numerous fields of study, whose enthusiasm shown brightly throughout the trip.

The first full day was perhaps the longest of the entire trip. We spent the morning becoming acquainted with the ancient settlement of Carthage. Located along the Gulf of Tunis, Carthage shows evidence of early permanent settlement by the 9th century B.C.E. Carthage was a great trading empire throughout the Mediterranean, whose rivalry with an emerging Roman Empire led to a series of conflicts from the 6th century B.C.E. onwards. By the 2nd century B.C.E., Rome’s influence in Carthage appears more pronounced based on archaeological evidence and historical records.

Carthage also sits among an exceedingly beautiful landscape. Built among mountains and bordered by an often turquoise Mediterranean Sea, the archaeological park was the perfect place to begin practical heritage survey training with ASOR’s colleagues from the Sahel. The large archaeological site provided an excellent canvas to document activity areas using KoboToolbox. The Burkinabé and Nigerien experts also spent the morning refining their photogrammetry techniques on different types of architectural features and material cultural within the park.

In the afternoon, we were guided through the Tunis Medina by two members of Association Carthagina, a group of young Tunisians who are working to raise awareness about the Tunisian heritage and culture. Jamel Ben Saidane and Safouane Tlili navigated the group through narrow streets, stopping to note important markers of Jewish history within the Medina. Both Jamel and Safouane were crucial in successfully documenting minority heritage locations and organizing educational outreach events throughout the project.

Tunisia’s temperate climate, access to the Mediterranean Sea, and fertile soil in the north made it an idyllic place for human occupation, migration, and trade.  Homo erectus remains have even been found in the region dating to roughly 1 million years before present. Thus it should not be surprising that many archaeological sites in Tunisia suggest prosperous living conditions and often long-standing settlements. Dougga, for example, stood for nearly 17 centuries overlooking the valley of Oued Khalled. Surrounded by olive groves, Dougga’s stunning views and near-fully intact architectural remains captivated the group for an entire day. Rarely overcrowded from tourist traffic, one could immerse within the ancient landscape by walking along fully paved Roman roads that weaved between homes, municipal buildings, temples, and bath houses.

The Tunisian Scouts (Les Scouts Tunisiens) have been one of ASOR’s most reliable and impressive partners throughout the project. The organization was founded in 1934, and has nearly 32,000 members. One pillar of the scout movement in Tunisia has been community service, including planting trees, building community schools, and in our case assisting in the cleaning of archaeological sites. The ASOR team was able to visit the archaeological site of Oudna soon after the Scouts had undergone one such effort. Located on a hilly plateau, visitors to Oudna today can see remains of a fortress, cisterns, an aqueduct, a triumphal arch, a theatre, an amphitheater, a basilica with a circular crypt, and a bridge. Many mosaics have also been discovered at Oudna as well. After touring Oudna, the group enjoyed a wonderful lunch hosted by the Scouts and was treated to a fashion show featuring Phoenician textile designs that are over 2000 years old based on historical and archaeological evidence.

ASOR CHI’s commitment to training and supporting members of religious and ethnic minority communities in heritage documentation and outreach often involves detailed surveys of cemeteries that are in disrepair. We have found great interest from descendants of past Jewish communities in providing information about the people buried in such cemeteries, whose history is often only known by those very living descendants or altogether forgotten. The ASOR delegation visited two Jewish cemeteries, Borgel and Soliman, during which prominent scholars from Tunisia and the United States were able to examine tomb inscriptions and tomb designs together. ASOR hopes that these fruitful discussions will result in future detailed documentation efforts at Borgel Cemetery, home to nearly 25,000 individual burials.

One cemetery located in the town of Soliman (northern Tunisia) required immediate attention as it was located next to a construction zone. ASOR has been working with the local heritage society on this cemetery since October 2022. The heritage association and partners from Manouba University carried out preliminary documentation and extensive cleaning. It was fortuitous timing that our group was visiting in early May, before any further damage was caused to the site from encroaching urbanization. The teams from Burkina Faso, Niger, and ASOR worked with local expert, Awatef Bahroun (The Heritage Laboratory of Manouba University), to develop a documentation plan for Soliman. The team had only one day to realize the finalization of the detailed documentation plan of all graves. This final, detailed stage included advanced survey plotting in QGIS, creating entries into KoboCollect, and taking photographs of individual tombs for later photogrammetric analysis. This effort demonstrated the effectiveness of using KoboToolbox, QGIS, and photogrammetry together within a defined survey plan. The detailed survey would not have been possible without the ability of the Sahel team to work in unison even after just meeting one week prior. In the end, 72 individual burials have been identified and are in the process of being analyzed. Ms. Bahroun continues to monitor the cemetery given its precarious location, and ASOR is using the detailed documentation as a guide or “paradigm” for detailed documentation of other cemeteries.

This gathering provided a moment to reflect on our partnerships these past few years and has launched enthusiasm among all involved to expand the work. ASOR is committed to advancing this goodwill. Currently, ASOR is facilitating virtual conversations with its partners in the Maghreb and Sahel to reflect on the project as a whole and suggest ways to build on the momentum of these collaborations into the future. One suggestion is the formation of regional and country-specific working groups on topics related to heritage work (GIS skills, Heritage Advocacy, Heritage Digitization Efforts, Grant Writing and Grant Proposal Development, and Youth Heritage Initiatives to name a few). ASOR and its partners continue to explore new projects and opportunities that build upon the KoboToolbox heritage database and new interpersonal connections created over the past two years in the region. Please visit the ASOR CHI website for further updates on this trip and from all of our partners.