Satellite images of Russian military movements in eastern Ukraine show that several Ukrainian archaeological sites have been damaged by Russian attacks, according to a team of researchers from the University of Virginia.
The archaeological sites are burial mounds called kurgans, which are about 65 feet (19.81 meters) tall and contain human remains and artifacts dating back to about 3000 BCE.
The team’s report—published earlier this month by the Ukraine Conflict Observatory—suggests that the Russian military may be using the kurgans as advantageous battlegrounds. The report describes the geospatial data analyzed from February 2022.
“With this report, we’re able to provide insight into what’s happening in occupied Ukraine in areas that Russia has invaded and still controls,” said Fiona Greenland, a researcher with UVA’s Cultural Resilience Informatics and Analysis Lab, in a university release. “Our analysis reveals damage to these areas due to the military, but also the possibility of theft or vandalism, which should not be ignored.”
The team found evidence of damage to archaeological sites at two sites in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast. As the team reported, “the damage includes the construction of military infrastructure in the archaeological sites and the construction of a large, dirty phallus-like geoglyph in a nearby field.”
Satellite imagery and other open source tools provide a window into the state of Ukraine’s archaeological sites in an active war zone, where a conventional “shoes on the ground” approach is apparently impossible.
“We are able to look at the inhabited area, Zaporizhzhia, through satellite imagery,” Greenland said. “We were able to carefully reconstruct the timeline from before the full-scale invasion to the arrival of Russian troops in the area and the associated impact they continue to have on these ancient mounds.”
The region is under the Russian 429th Motor Rifle Regiment, according to a statement from Virginia, and the report concludes that the military may have violated the Hague Convention, which has certain requirements to respect cultural artifacts in times of conflict.
According to Kate Harrell, an archaeologist at the CURIA Lab, she said there may be other sites like the recently updated kurgans that could be damaged by Russian activities.
“There are thousands of burial mounds and, in this report, we only examined two sites in the Zaporizhzhia region,” Harrell said. “Some documentation needs to be done.”
The front lines are a dangerous place for people and infrastructure, of course, but they also show the lack of respect with which military units treat traditionally important places.