Lost Cities Rediscovered: Reexamining Excavation Histories in Late Ottoman and Mandate Western Asia (LoCi) is a collaborative research project led by Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art Rubina Raja, Aarhus University, funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung. The project investigates the overlooked excavation histories of ancient cities – such as Gerasa, Palmyra, Raqqa, and Samarra – that were partly excavated in the 19th and early 20th centuries but whose histories remain fragmented.

Running from 2025 through 2028, the project is part of the Gerda Henkel Foundation’s Lost Cities funding program (https://www.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de/en/lost_cities) and it aims to rethink how the early rediscovery of these sites influenced both academic and public understanding of these places. The term "lost cities" is used deliberately, referring not only to cities once forgotten in Western scholarship but also to the wealth of knowledge that was lost, never published or never recorded during the late Ottoman period as well as colonial and mandate-era excavations.

The project’s core objective is to critically reassess the excavation histories of a selection of ancient cities by revisiting archives, excavation reports, and museum records. Through these efforts, the LoCi team will shed light on how urban archaeology developed as a field in the Eastern Mediterranean – one of antiquity’s most heavily urbanized regions – and how documentation gaps continue to affect our interpretation of the past.

By bridging historical documentation with modern archaeological inquiry, Lost Cities Rediscovered seeks to unveil new narratives, face the colonial legacies in archaeology, and contribute to current debates on cultural heritage and the ethics of knowledge production.