Speakers: Dr. Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati & Dr. Giorgio Buccellati, UCLADuring the last seven years when war has raged in Syria, foreign archaeological projects have come to an almost total standstill. But then, the question arises: what were the presuppositions that, instead of allowing archaeology to disappear or, worse, to be kidnapped by a violent iconoclastic fundamentalism, could have given archaeology an impetus in fostering stronger group identity precisely at a moment of crisis? Our talk will answer this question with reference to the site of ancient Urkesh, where we have had been excavating since 1984. We talked about it already on other occasions, but innovative projects have been burgeoning at a steady rhythm around this site. We will talk about these various new activities, and draw some conclusions about the nature of community archaeology as we have experienced it in ways that were unimaginable only a few years back: it is truly community archaeology “from below,” where the “below” includes all of us, the community of archaeologists alongside the many other communities that find themselves nurtured by the distant past embedded in their territory.