Bringing the Past into Today
We connect ancient sites with the communities living around them — through conservation, education and shared pride in a common heritage.
Who we are
Archaeology that belongs to everyone
IIMAS-CHCE — the International Institute for Mesopotamian Area Studies, Cultural Heritage and Community Engagement — is a multinational team of archaeologists and communicators. We believe an excavation is only half the story: the other half is what a site comes to mean for the people who live beside it.
For decades our work has grown out of Tell Mozan, ancient Urkesh, in Syria — the only foreign archaeological project to remain continuously active through the Syrian conflict — preserving and maintaining the site, and continuing its work of communication and education without interruption. What we learned there now guides our work at sites across the region.
What makes us different
We do not treat community engagement as outreach after excavation; we build it into conservation, interpretation, education, and site management from the beginning.
Local audiences first
The communities living alongside a site are our first audience, not an afterthought. Every project is shaped around their needs and their sense of ownership.
Partners, not teachers
We work with schools, families and institutions as equals. Local knowledge shapes our projects as much as archaeology does.
Built to last
Local materials, ancient techniques and local hands: our conservation is sustainable financially, environmentally and across generations.
Where we work
One approach, many places
Syria
Tell Mozan / Urkesh
Our home base and incubator: a major Hurrian city continuously cared for, presented and shared with its neighbors since excavation began.
Syria
The Museums of Syria
The history of Syria told one object at a time: with the DGAM, our traveling poster exhibit carries the treasures of the region's museums to schools and communities.
Syria
Island of Arwad
A Phoenician island with a medieval castle and an Ayyubid fortress, where heritage and daily life have shared the same roots for 5,000 years.
Recognition
An approach that has earned trust
2020
ILUCIDARE Special Prize (European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra) for heritage-led international relations, awarded to our schools exchange between Italy and Syria.
2021
Balzan Prize for Art and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East awarded to our founders, Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, honoring both the scholarship and the community engagement of the Urkesh project.
Heritage needs partners
Every panel we print, every wall we conserve and every school exchange we organize depends on people who share our conviction that the past belongs in the present.
Donate