Clifford Geertz has passed on

Posted to Histarch@asu.edu Once attending Elizabeth Stone, Ph.D. archaeology graduate classes, and studying Harvard University's Dr. Starr's excavations at Nuzi, near Kirkuk, Iraq (and the Mosul oil fields and 3rd century Catholic Christians) I feel a general malaise over the multi-national occupation of the "Fertile Crescent" between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers without any apparent consultation with experts such as the recently deceased Clifford Geertz, who conducted field work in two largely Islamic cultures, Morocco and Indonesia. If a similar "multi-national" board of archaeologists and anthropologists (i.e., who have studied the Kurds I also have to read) had been convened and procedures put in place for protecting international archaeological and people resources, perhaps the level of violence would be lower there.