The New York Times called him ''a tanned, scrawny Indiana Jones'', and Nicolo' Marchetti is surely the only archeologist in the world today digging for the treasures of the past under the watchful eye of al-Qaeda machine guns.

Marchetti leads the Turkish-Italian team that is unearthing the mythical Hittite capital of Karkemish, which has been named in the Bible, under far from optimal conditions. On the banks of the Euphrates River, the excavation site straddles the border between Turkey and war-torn Syria. First discovered and briefly explored in the early 20th century by T. H. Lawrence aka Lawrence of Arabia, Karkemish now lies within a mine-infested military zone, 65% of it in Turkey and 35% in Syria.

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Source: http://www.ansamed.info