ShareKUWAIT: Italy signed two important agreements on Wednesday with the Acting Secretary General of the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters to strengthen the collaboration in the archeological field. The first, extends for five more years the Italian study camp research activities in the island of Failaka; the second establishes a new five-year collaboration in the Kadhima area with the University "Sapienza" of Rome (Sapienza is the number one for Classics and Ancient History studies in the QS World Ranking universities by Subject).
The scientific collaboration between Italy and Kuwait in the archaeological and historical fields has a long history, which began at the end of the seventies. In this period the first Italian archaeological mission to Kuwait took place, the results of which converged into a monograph, which for decades was the basis of the archaeological research carried out in the following years on Failaka island. In 2010, Italy signed a collaboration agreement between the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters and the University of Perugia, which had as its purpose the organization of a new Italian-Kuwaiti archaeological mission on Failaka.
Now a new important Italian University, the "Sapienza" of Rome, has joined the prestigious project, which at this point also see the participation of young archaeologists and researchers from the Roman university. The Italian mission is part of a more complex research project in which various foreign teams from many European countries participate, the purpose of which is to reconstruct the millenary history of this country. The site involved in the Italian excavations, Al-Qurainiyah, is located on the north coast of the island of Failaka and represents one of the most interesting settlement palimpsests of the island and, more generally, of the entire country.
Al-Qurainiyah represents one of the most important archaeological sites on the island and in the whole of Kuwait because the different phases of occupation identified allow us to shed new light on the history of this Country. The Italian excavation of the late Islamic village of Al-Qurainiyah, abandoned in the first decades of the 20th century, helps restore a face to the original settlement of Kuwait City and the surrounding areas, before the transformations completely erased the traces of the oldest settlements.
Starting from this important cultural and working heritage and without wanting to abandon it in any way, Italy - through "La Sapienza" of Rome, the most quoted university in the world for Classical Archaeology studies - today signed a second agreement to give life to a new project, which will develop from an idea born thanks to the collaboration with the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters.
In fact, the foundations have been laid for a project to study and enhance one of Kuwait's most interesting archaeological sites outside of Failaka Island, the Kadhima area. The site represents one of the most interesting evidence of the early Islamic occupation of Kuwait, when this territory was still a land of passage crossed by the caravan route that led from Basra to Makkah. The center of Kadhima, in the Umayyad period, represented an obligatory stop for merchants and pilgrims who from the north wanted to reach the sacred places of Islam. The project will have, as its first objective, a detailed survey of the settlement area with the aim of identifying the best intervention strategy.
The area to be investigated occupies a surface of about 1000 sq km. It covers the entire coastal littoral area extending over 50 km from the modern city of al-Jahra (in the western suburbs of Kuwait City, north of which is Kadhima) in the south, to al-Sabiya in the north. The coastal strip is quite narrow, 3 to 4 km wide, with gently sloping terrain towards the extensive salt marshes around Kuwait Bay; it is separated from the inland desert plateau, the Jal Al-Zawr, by a low ridge running parallel from north to south.
It was decided to extend the reconnaissance towards the hinterland for about 20 km, a dimension that could possibly be reduced on the basis of what will be found in the preliminary phase, in order to obtain a more homogeneous and systematic coverage possible. The goal is to obtain an overview of the Khadima region and the coastal littoral as complete as possible, through the creation of an archaeological map where all the evidence will be recorded.
The ultimate aim is, therefore, the reconstruction of the settlement structure of the territory in antiquity, including the identification of the main historical-topographic peculiarities, such as - for example - the distribution of the sites around ecological facies and/or caravan routes. The diachronic setting of the research will be aimed, in particular, at understanding the transformation of the landscape and the history of human settlement in relation to the environment and its resources and the interaction between the Kadhima site and the coastal territory between the Sasanian and Islamic periods (and consequently in the transitional period between the two).
At the same time, this work will make it possible to delimit micro-areas of significant archaeological interest, where it is possible to estimate the opening of a targeted excavation in subsequent campaigns, in order to confirm or in any case deepen what has been deduced from the reconnaissance.
