Qatar’s Al-Zubarah, residing immediately on the beach of gulf, experiences natural risks of decomposition and saltation over centuries, leading to consistent archaeological preserving interventions. Zubarah is Qatar’s most substantial archaeological site, and it is considered a cultural landscape, attributing to its rich cultural and natural heritage. Archaeological excavations at the site are done ‘delicately’ without destroying the centuries-old artifact in which archaeologists maximize environment-preserving excavating techniques while avoiding implementing ‘invasive’ technology even if it is necessary for studying ancient material culture. However, the main interest presented in this case is a human-centric one where human culture, tourism, history studies are the locus of archaeological preservation.
As intensive ethical frameworks and moral virtue ethics protect humans’ autonomies, contemporary environmental ethical frameworks emerged to embrace nonhuman entities value. The interconnectedness and inseparability of humans and other life forms in multispecies spaces led environmental scholars to reconsider anthropocentric approaches to environmental discourse, suggesting that nature possesses value that goes beyond human purposes. In fact, you are generating an environmental crisis in which nonhuman subjects (animals, landscapes, ecosystems, and microorganisms) are only considered through their relationships with humans. When nonhuman entities are not intrinsically appreciated, then humanity has failed nature. From this perspective, conservation actions in the Al-Zubarah should not essentially should not essentially serve humanly institutions but necessary practices to reduce risk destruction from uncontrollable natural processes, for its own intrinsic value.
One way to look at non-invasive archaeological work at the Al-Zubarah is through care ethics. Care ethics gives value to moral characteristics that are identified as feminine (empathy and care for others) to be centered at the heart of environmental ethics (Gardiner & Thompson, 2019). This ideology suggests that absence of moral regard for nonhuman entities and other ecological systems is the fundamental cause of environmental damage and destruction. Ethics of care should be integrated into modern conceptions of justice, institutions, and more general human interactions. In an interdependent world where humans cannot function without nature’s presence, caring for our surroundings is the center of human flourishment and wellbeing. That is not valuing nature based on its instrumental value but its intrinsic value, independent of human purposes. Care can be expanded from a small-scale, anthropocentric view to a global, biocentric one, especially in terms of how human beings view the fight against natural disasters. Although the Al-Zubarah is exactly a natural site per se but natural life is present in its surrounding. it not merely an aesthetically pleasing cultural fort for humans, but it houses sparse vegetation like seagrasses. Thus, humans have a responsibility to its protection from harmful external influences, whether it is threatening natural processes or invasive archaeological technologies.
Bibliography
1- Harriet Ritvo; Invasion/Invasive. Environmental Humanities 1 May 2017; 9 (1): 171–174. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3829190
2- Krupp, F., Boer, B., & Sloane, B. (2014). Khor Al-Adaid nature reserve: Qatar’s globally unique inland sea. World Heritage Reviiew. Retrieved September 1, 2022, from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000227959.
3- Gardiner, S. M., & Thompson, A. (2019). Caring Relations. In The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics (pp. 234–247). essay, Oxford University Press.
