So many individuals have fled to Syria’s crowded northwest that households have settled in vital archaeological websites. “We, too, have become ruins.”

AL-KFEIR, Syria — As the solar set, kids in soiled garments and battered sneakers herded sheep previous the towering stone partitions of a Byzantine settlement deserted greater than 1,000 years in the past, main them into an historical cave close by the place the animals would spend the evening.

Laundry hung close to the semi-cylindrical wall of a ruined, centuries-old church. Vegetables grew between the remnants of two rectangular doorways ornamented with carved leaf patterns. Scattered about have been large reduce stones from what had as soon as been an intensive city.

It was right here, on the huge archaeological web site of al-Kfeir, Syria, the place Abu Ramadan and his household sought shelter greater than a yr in the past after fleeing a Syrian authorities assault.

They’ve been right here ever since.

Abu Ramadan, 38, mentioned he cared little for the location’s historical past as a buying and selling and agricultural heart, however appreciated the sturdy partitions that blunted the wind and the abundance of reduce stones that a household who had misplaced all the pieces might salvage to piece collectively a new life.

“We built these from the ruins,” he mentioned, pointing to a rooster coop and wood-burning range. “We, too, have become ruins.”

As Syria’s 10-year civil warfare has displaced thousands and thousands of individuals, households like Abu Ramadan’s have sought refuge from a trendy warfare behind the partitions of dozens of historical villages sprinkled throughout the hills of the nation’s northwest, a area nonetheless out of the management of President Bashar al-Assad’s authorities.

Since their unique homeowners left them between the eighth and 10th centuries, these ruins have remained in remarkably good situation for greater than 1,000 years, their stone buildings largely withstanding the passing of empires and battering by the wind and rain.

But Syria’s present battle has posed new threats to those websites with their columnated church buildings, multistory houses and stylish bathhouses. Their facades at the moment are marred by bullets, their pillars shattered by airstrikes and their limestone partitions sought out for cover by troopers, rebels and jihadists battling for the nation’s future.

Millenniums of human habitation have left Syria strewn with historic websites that date to Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman eras. UNESCO, the United Nations cultural company, has designated six World Heritage sites in Syria, together with, in 2011, the ruins in the northwest, referred to as the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria.

The use of those websites as casual refugee camps, archaeologists concern, presents a formidable menace to their future because the households add new partitions, drive in tent posts and cart off stones.

“The walls protect us from the wind, the cold and everything else,” mentioned Abdulaziz Hassan, 45, whose household lives in a tent contained in the stays of the 1,800-year-old Temple of Zeus Bomos close to the village of Babuta.

Mr. Hassan, a gardener earlier than the warfare, had moved repeatedly together with his household to flee authorities advances into insurgent territory, lastly settling in the ruins as a result of they didn’t must pay hire as those that pitched tents on personal land did.

“Where else can we go?” he mentioned. “Everywhere you go, you have to pay.”

The stays of three temple partitions towered over his tent, and the encircling hillside was marked by toppled pillars and large stones bearing carvings and Greek inscriptions.

The warfare broken historic websites elsewhere in Syria, too.

Crac de Chevaliers, one of many world’s finest preserved Crusader castles, was suffering from rubble when the federal government seized it from rebels in 2014.

And after the jihadists of the Islamic State took management of the majestic, 2,000-year-old ruins of the town of Palmyra, they held executions in its Roman theater.

The historic websites in Syria’s northwest, close to the border with Turkey, obtained much less consideration earlier than the warfare. They have been so quite a few, and so undeveloped as vacationer websites, the world felt like an open-air museum.

Visitors might scamper concerning the stays of pagan temples and early Christian church buildings, descend into underground storerooms hewn from rocky hillsides, and admire intricate designs round home windows and carved crosses over doorways.

The Syrian authorities branded them “the Forgotten Cities” to draw guests.

Built between the primary and seventh centuries, they supplied “a remarkable testimony to rural life” through the transition from the pagan Roman Empire to the Christian Byzantines, UNESCO mentioned.

The historical cities have been deserted over subsequent centuries due to adjustments in local weather, and shifting commerce routes and political management — however not due to warfare, a main cause they have been so properly preserved, mentioned Amr Al-Azm, a former Syrian antiquities official and now a professor of Middle East historical past at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio.

Efforts to guard the websites froze when Syria’s warfare broke out in 2011, and armed teams started utilizing them as bases.

In 2016, airstrikes damaged the Church of St. Simeon, shattering the stays of the pillars on high of which its hermit namesake is alleged to have lived for almost 40 years earlier than his demise in 459.

Pressure on the websites elevated additional final yr, when a authorities offensive pushed almost a million individuals into the rebel-controlled northwest. About 2.7 million of the 4.2 million individuals now dwelling in the area have been displaced from elsewhere in Syria.

The rebel-held space is small and crowded, and persons are confined, with a wall alongside the Turkish border to the north to maintain them from fleeing and hostile authorities forces to the south. As the brand new arrivals scrambled to search out shelter in destroyed buildings, olive groves and sprawling tent camps, some settled in the traditional websites.

Families with livestock favored the websites as a result of they’d more room than the crowded refugee camps. Many used the sturdy, precut stones to construct animal pens or reinforce their tents.

Some websites have underground caves, the place households retailer belongings and conceal from airstrikes once they hear fighter jets overhead.

Ayman Nabo, an antiquities official with the native administration in Idlib Province, mentioned shelling and airstrikes had broken many historic websites whereas poverty and the chaos of warfare had inspired unlawful excavations by treasure hunters.

But the best menace to the websites’ survival, he mentioned, was individuals making off with stones or breaking them aside to construct new buildings.

“If this continues, a whole archaeological site could disappear,” he mentioned.

The native administration lacked the assets to guard the websites, however Mr. Nabo mentioned he hoped they survived, each for future generations and for the individuals now trapped in what he referred to as “a big prison,” with authorities forces controlling roads to the Mediterranean coast and the remainder of Syria.

“We no longer have a sea,” he mentioned. “We no longer have a river. We no longer have a forest for children to visit.” So individuals want the websites as “places to breathe.”

For now, they’re houses of final resort for battered households.

“Whenever it rains, we get wet,” mentioned Sihan Jassem, 26, whose household had moved thrice since fleeing their residence and ending up in an improvised tent of blankets and tarps amid the ruins of Deir Amman, a Byzantine village.

“The children play on the ruins and we worry that the rocks will fall on them,” she mentioned.

Her sister, widowed by the warfare, lived in a close by tent with 5 kids.

The solar mirrored off moist wildflowers, and sheep wandered among the many scattered stones, grazing close to an historical wall the place a trendy romantic had written in spray paint, “Your love is like a medicine.”

But Ms. Jassem discovered no romance in her environment.

“We wish we had stayed in our homes,” she mentioned, “and never seen these ruins.”