I’m part of Baldati team for a year now. We hike every Sunday in the Lebanese villages; from Northern Lebanon to its South, from the sea cost to the mountains. And while hiking through these towns and discovering them, we always meet with local people and authorities and find the unrevealed archaeological treasures which date back to very ancient periods.

    These sites are most of the time abandoned, unstudied, unknown or unpublished. Usually, locals don’t know how to deal with the discoveries and the antiquities. They don’t know that once a site is excavated clandestinely or randomly, there is no going back. The information is lost forever! Moreover, they are often afraid to declare their discovery for fear of losing their territory, or of having their construction project stopped.  

   This stands for small discoveries…but we also passed with “Baldati” through very well known sites like the Roman Temples of Akroum or the Roman temple of Deyr El Ahmar, etc.

Same feeling of desolation! Abandoned and forsaken sites…….

Lebanese,

OUR heritage is threatened, it is in great peril. WE must act.

The “we” involves the Lebanese authorities and the Lebanese people.

Why is each and every stone preciously and jealously guarded in our neighboring countries?

Why are many of our important and valuable archeological findings exhibited in museums around the globe, very far from their homeland?

AWARENESS AND CIVIL RESPONSIBILITY TO PRESERVE OUR HERITAGE PLEASE!

                                                                                                                                                Rita Kalindjian

                                                                                                                                           Field Archaeologist

                                                                                                                                                    October 2011