ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, Middle Eastern archaeologists working actively in the field have observed unprecedented disposal of local landscapes under the sovereignty of late capitalism. This disposal took place in the form of infrastructure projects, extraction of resources on massive scales, and the broader contracting of the countryside to private companies for mining and quarrying. This assemblage of extractive operations brought about an increased intensity of the looting of cultural heritage. These heritage landscapes under the increased threat of looting include historic buildings, archaeological sites, and monuments, as well as ancestral landscapes of belonging, whether they are agricultural, pastoral, or geological. In this contribution, I argue that in the regions of the global south such as the Middle East and North Africa, we are living through an extreme episode of heritage violence, and this violence can be closely linked to other practices of extraction in the countryside and the climate crisis. A major challenge for heritage studies today is, on the one hand, being a chronicler of heritage destruction under the current neoliberal regimes, and on the other hand, to contextualize this violence within the conditions of disposability, precarity, extraction, dispossession, and salvage economy, which are more broadly associated with the regimes of climate and environmental injustice. This chapter draws attention to this overall state of injustice in the countryside, particularly in Turkey, and suggests that such a political ecology of heritage injustice can only be addressed by a new form of politically engaged and on-the-ground fieldwork.
