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| New Palmyra Project | |
|---|---|
| Name | New Palmyra Project |
| Formation | 2015 |
| Founder | Bassel Khartabil (Bassel Safadi) |
| Type | Nonprofit / Volunteer Project |
| Headquarters | Remote / Online |
| Region served | Global |
New Palmyra Project The New Palmyra Project is a volunteer-driven cultural heritage initiative focused on digitally documenting, reconstructing, and disseminating three-dimensional models of endangered and destroyed antiquities from Palmyra and other sites. Founded in the wake of armed destruction in Syria, the project combines contributions from archaeologists, technologists, conservators, and activists to preserve architectural memory through open data, outreach, and educational resources.
The project traceable origins link to activists and technologists responding to the destruction of the Palmyra archaeological site after 2015, inspired by earlier digital preservation efforts such as CyArk, Google Arts & Culture, and the UNESCO emergency campaigns. Founding figures include volunteers associated with Bassel Khartabil (also known as Bassel Safadi), who was detained during the Syrian Civil War; contemporaries and collaborators drawn from networks around Open Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, University of Pennsylvania, and independent researchers catalyzed the initiative. Early operations leveraged crowdsourced imagery from travellers and journalists documenting monuments like the Tetrapylon of Palmyra, the Temple of Bel, and funerary towers, intersecting with online communities on platforms such as GitHub, Wikimedia Commons, Sketchfab, and Flickr.
The stated mission emphasizes documentation, reconstruction, and accessibility, aligning with international cultural policies advanced by UNESCO World Heritage Centre, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and the Blue Shield International movement. Objectives include creating open-source 3D assets for research used by institutions such as the British Museum, Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and academic programs at University College London and Harvard University. The project advocates for digital repatriation practices echoing debates involving ICOM, Council on Library and Information Resources, and activist organizations like Creative Commons and Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Practitioners employ photogrammetry workflows derived from methods developed by Agisoft, RealityCapture, and open-source toolchains such as MeshLab and CloudCompare, integrating point-cloud processing techniques similar to those used at Laser scanning projects coordinated by English Heritage and the CyArk methodology. Geographic referencing routinely uses GPS metadata and satellite resources from Copernicus Programme and Landsat missions, while texture mapping and mesh retopology rely on pipelines shared on GitHub and demonstrated at conferences like SIGGRAPH and Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology. The project also experiments with procedural modeling inspired by work at MIT Media Lab and virtual reality presentations compatible with platforms from Oculus and HTC Vive.
Major reconstructions include digital models of the Temple of Bel, the Arch of Triumph (Palmyra), the Tetrapylon of Palmyra, and funerary monuments integrated into online viewers hosted on Sketchfab and archives synchronized with Internet Archive. The team has produced datasets reused in exhibitions at institutions like the Royal Ontario Museum, the Pergamonmuseum, and academic visualizations published through collaborations with Stanford University and ETH Zurich. These reconstructions informed reconstruction proposals debated at fora such as UNESCO World Heritage Committee meetings and were referenced in publications in journals like Journal of Archaeological Science and proceedings from Digital Heritage conferences.
Collaborative partners span museums, universities, and NGOs including the Smithsonian Institution, British Museum Laboratory, Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis, Princeton University, University of Oxford, Levantine Studies groups, and heritage NGOs like INTACH and Heritage for Peace. Technical alliances include software communities around Blender, Unity Technologies, Esri, and cloud storage providers used by Wikimedia Foundation for media stewardship. Funding and support have intersected with initiatives by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, academic grants from the European Research Council, and pilot programs coordinated with governmental cultural bodies such as the Syrian Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums (prior to displacement) and regional heritage offices.
Scholars in archaeology, practitioners in conservation-restoration, and commentators in cultural heritage law have discussed the project as a model for rapid digital salvage comparable to precedents set by CyArk and community-led archives like #SOSSavePalmyra movements. Media coverage appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and BBC News, while critical assessments emerged from debates at ICOMOS symposia and panels at Digital Humanities conferences. Educational uses span curricula at University of Chicago, Columbia University, Yale University, and secondary-school programs that integrate 3D assets for teaching ancient Near Eastern history associated with collections in the Martin Classical Museum and regional repositories.
Legal and ethical considerations engage international legal instruments like the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and discussions mediated by UNESCO about restitution, digital repatriation, and provenance research. Debates address copyright and licensing choices involving Creative Commons schemes intersecting with institutional policies at the Getty Research Institute and ethical guidelines promoted by ICOM and BLUE SHIELD. Concerns about representational authority, community consent from descendants linked to Palmyrene heritage, and potential misuse of digital models have been raised in forums such as Ethics of Digital Heritage workshops and by commentators affiliated with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Category:Cultural heritage preservation