The last chapter finished by pointing to new areas of investigation, and in particular to the Byzantine countryside, where funerary customs remained central to the expression of local identity in imperial settings. Throughout this book, I have identified other topics that would greatly benefit from further analysis. This postscript reflects on these and intends to take stock: where we are now and what needs to be done.

Let us start with the here and now. As I write this, in the winter of 2015, the civil war is raging in Syria. As this book took shape, I experienced the distinct displeasure of writing about cemeteries and tombs while they were being destroyed by shelling, looting, and, in some cases, the dynamite of fanatics. Palmyra has presented us with particularly heartbreaking examples of the vulnerability of cultural heritage and the people who strive to protect this heritage. The losses to Syrian cultural heritage are immense, and the damage of historical and archaeological sites, museums, archives, and storehouses, as well as the murder and displacement of local heritage workers, is still ongoing.

If something good has come out of the devastation, it is the flourishing of initiatives for the digital preservation of cultural heritage. People in Syria and across the globe have seized on the opportunity to employ new digital and online techniques to record and disseminate the extensive archival resources concerning Syria. Similar initiatives are underway for the heritage of Iraq. Virtually restoring lost and inaccessible heritage is a potent answer to the cultural crimes being committed in the region. I hope that these trends continue, and that the online database that accompanies this book, originally meant as a resource for further investigation, will also serve as a form of digital preservation of tombs from Roman Syria.

This brings me to the next point, regarding so-called “legacy data.” Much of the information used for this book was collected a hundred years ago or so, and found in archives. This material can be difficult to access and analyze; yet it is there. The methodological framework employed centers on dealing with fragmented and decontextualized funerary assemblages. I hope to have demonstrated that it is possible to work with such data. Now that Syrian sites and museums are not accessible, we still have excavation reports, survey notes, and epigraphic corpora to consider.