Introduction—What is Preservation?

Tangible “heritage” (artifacts, buildings, and sites) has always played key roles in identity and nation-building in the Middle East. As countries in the Middle East face unprecedented disorder and violence we lack more nuanced answers to what preservation was, is, and what it can be in the future. This roundtable—initiated as a session at the Middle East Studies Association's annual meeting in 2016—offers a much-needed perspective and critical voice in a debate that has become increasingly monolithic. In other words, current notions of what “cultural heritage” is and how it should be preserved are limited and often dismiss the limitations, complexities and ironies of iconoclasm. Objects seen as valuable by some but “idolatrous” to others, for example, have sometimes been destroyed precisely because they were considered worthy of preservation by opposing parties. Further, preservation and destruction were rarely exclusive binaries, but rather connected and identified in crucial ways. They are, in other words, two sides of the same coin: Archaeological excavation has destroyed buildings and deposits in strata above selected layers or artifacts, often removing sites that are meaningful in other ways, such as Islamic shrines.