In 2020 the house of the archaeological mission of Tell Afis in Saraqib was reopened by the Directorate of Antiquities to recover the materials still present in the warehouses after the devastation occurred during the war.
These materials, essentially pottery, lithics, bones, and paleobotanical specimens, were transferred to the museum of Marrat al-Nouman, also damaged during the war.
In 2021 the archaeologists of the University of Florence carried out a mission of control and first intervention to safeguard these materials in this museum with the preliminary arrangement of 140 boxes for their transferral to the museum of Hama. In December 2021, the mission’s own house was inspected by the two co-directors of the excavation to verify its conditions and damage suffered.
In 2022, two campaigns were carried out for assessment and reorganization of the materials transferred to the Hama Museum in collaboration with the institution’s local staff.
On these occasions a series of restoration works on some vases of particular interest has also begun.
In 2023 and 2024 a small team of old (C. Felli, G. Minunno and S. Soldi) and new expedition members (S. Bartolozzi, E. Bolognesi, M. Cioli, A. Fontini, F. Lentini, F. Mandorino, R. Rosati, L. Siciliano) from the University of Florence with S. Mazzoni and S.M. Cecchini has completed the survey of extant materials from Afis itself and from the surveyed sites of the Jazr region in the storerooms of the Hama museum.
In September 2024 a small presentation of this work was arranged within the museum while a set of panels illustrating the history of Afis excavations and their main results were put into place outside the building.
