Racing to Save a Ukrainian Archaeological Site Exposed by the War

0:00Today on State of the World, racing to save a Ukrainian archaeological site exposed by the war.

0:11You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. The war in Ukraine has touched all aspects of life in the country, including efforts to preserve the nation's history. Two years ago, actions by the Russian military exposed a significant archaeological site, an 18th century shipwreck. Now a team from around the world is working fast to save it in the face of two threats, rapid deterioration and fighting nearby. NPR's Hanna Palomarenko takes us to an island in the Dnipro River. The island is called Hortetsa, and it's not far from the front line.

0:56It has been a wartime base for centuries. This is an archaeological site. This is where the Russian army camped in the 1730s for the Russo-Turkish war. Fred Hoker is a maritime archaeologist. NPR met his team when they traveled to Hortica late this summer. The site has been known and the people from the National Reserve here on Hortica have been excavating different parts of this for over 25 years. Hoker is the head of research at Vasa Museum and the Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums in Stockholm. He's tall and 10 with a trim gray beard. Hoka walks along a woodsy path to meet Ukrainian and American colleagues.

1:42They're on this leafy island to salvage and preserve a shipwreck from the 18th century when there was war between the Ottoman and Russian empires. The wreck we're excavating from that 1738 fleet is one of the things that was not just exposed, but threatened by the change level of the river. In June 2023, Russian forces destroyed a major Ukrainian dam upstream, exposing some ships that had been underwater. Once you have waterlogged wood exposed, it's vulnerable and will fall apart very quickly once it dries out. That's Kathy Green, another member of the team. She's the president of the National Maritime Historical Society Society in the U.S.

2:26She stands over the shipwreck, her blonde hair tied back under a yellow baseball cap. This is a really interesting sight because it's not a singular vessel. It's a part of this larger maritime landscape. There's a whole battlefield here. Above the sandy beach, tents are pitched on the rocks. The archaeologists usually start their day by gathering here. They chat over cups of tea and coffee, then walk to the site to meet Mitro Kabalyah. He's Ukrainian and the lead archaeologist for the Hortitsyn National Reserve. So what do you want to get done today? Kabalyah gazes at the waves of the Dnipro River, glistening in the sun.

3:14Back in the 1700s, he says, you could see almost 300 ships here. Fred Hawker points to brown wooden fragments in the sand. This is the wreck that we've excavated here. It's the first six meters at the bow of a troop transport, a shaloup, they call them, that was originally about 18 meters long, so this is about a third of it. The archaeologists remove the fragments, then submerge them in water to avoid deterioration. Another member of the team, Larry Babbitts, is shoveling sand into a big hole where the wreckage was found. He's a military and maritime archaeologist and a retired professor. Can I talk about politics?

4:01He says the ship they're working on dates back to a much earlier war of Russian expansion. Today, this river is 20 miles from the front as the Russians tried to take property and land from a country that was freely independent. And that hasn't changed. The city of Zaporizhia, which Hortitsa Island is part of, is often hit by Russian bombs and missiles. The archaeologists said they drew up wheels before traveling to Ukraine. Hawker said there were attacks during their three-week stay here. The bus station has been destroyed. A supermarket was hit by, I think, an Iskander missile. And, you know, there are air alerts all the time.

4:47For him, the rewards of rescue in history outweigh the risks. This war is partly about the survival of an idea, the idea of Ukraine as a country, that part of that survival is not just guns and bombs and bullets. part of that survival is the survival of ideas. Dmytro Kabale, the Ukrainian archaeologist, spent two and a half years on the front line, fighting in some of the fiercest battles against the Russians.

5:19And this is also part of our history, he says. We must preserve it in order to understand who we are and who we are dealing with. As the team finishes the day's work, I asked Fred Hawker what he would remember most about this expedition. Well, it had nothing to do with archaeology. It happened one Friday night when the team went to hear a local jazz band. He recorded this video. As he listened to the music, he realized how much this expedition and the backdrop of war had affected him. One of the ways that we deal with the risk is you just suppress those thoughts and those emotions. But they started playing an old jazz standard, Georgia on my mind.

6:07And almost all of us broke down in tears. A few days later, Hawker, Green and Babitz leave Ukraine. They promised their Ukrainian colleagues that they would return. Hanna Palomarenko, NPR News, on Hortitsa Island in southeastern Ukraine.

6:29that's the state of the world from npr thanks for listening