Lost Villages of the Upper Euphrates: A Digital Archive

The British Institute at Ankara (BIAA) holds an extensive collection of approximately 30,000 images covering a range of subjects. This digital collection includes images from two sets of slides in that collection: those created by David French and Tuǧrul Çakar documenting life in the Adıyaman, Ṣanlıurfa, Elaziǧ, Malatya, and Diyarbakır regions of Southeast Turkey and those created by Stephen and Matina Mitchell in Aşvan village. These images provide a unique ethnographic record of life in villages that are now lost due to flooding. They depict villagers engaging in activities like weaving, embroidery, ploughing, collecting water, basket-making, and food preparation. This collection is part of a larger BIAA initiative to digitize and make openly accessible the full range of material in its collection, including slides, botanical specimens, archaeological excavation records, ethnographic material, unpublished regional surveys, notebooks, and more—all relating to the lost landscapes of the Upper Euphrates region