Howard Crosby Butler Archive

Abstract

The Howard Crosby Butler archive is a collection of materials relevant to the expeditions taken by Butler and others to Syria and the surrounding area in the late 19th and early 20th century. The group surveyed hundreds of sites in the area and later published their findings. There remain today many unpublished materials including images, filed books, sketches and more housed at Princeton University. Butler’s photographs and other written works are essential to current scholarship because they preserve these sites in forms no longer available to historians due to the destruction of these sites as a result of the Syria Civil War. Many of the sites in which Butler surveyed remain without in depth scholarship today and his unpublished work may allow historians a clearer picture of this area. The ultimate goal for work with the archive is to create a story map that will show the route the expeditions took and for each site they visited to have information for the viewer to see, including coordinates, images and general information on the architecture there.