Palestinian archaeology
Palestinian archaeology is the study of archaeology in present-day Palestine, stretching from prehistory through three millennia of documented history. Besides its centrality to the study of biblical archaeology, the region of ancient Palestine is one of the most important to an understanding of the history of the earliest peoples of the Stone Age. Palestinian archaeology is marked by a degree of acrimony not shared in other area studies in the field between archaeologists who see biblical scriptures as legitimate historical documents and scientific archaeologists who see the hard data from excavations as being incompatible with the biblical "historical" record.
Palestinian archaeology also refers to the practice of archaeology by Palestinians, both in the region of Palestine and the present day state of Palestine. Palestinian contributions to the study of archaeology in their own homeland have been obscured, and continue to be sidelined by the Israeli occupation.
Origins
Modern Palestinian archaeology began to be practiced in the late nineteenth century, primarily by foreigners to Ottoman Palestine. Early expeditions lacked standardized methods for excavation and interpretation, and were often little more than treasure-hunting expeditions. A lack of awareness and attention to the importance of stratigraphy to the dating of objects, led to the digging of long trenches through the middle a site that made follow-up work by later archaeologists more difficult.One early school of modern Palestinian archaeology revolved around the powerful and authoritative figure of William F. Albright. His scholarship and that of the Albright school, which tended to lean toward a favouring of biblical narratives, were treated with great deference during his lifetime. Albright himself held that Frederick Jones Bliss was the Father of Palestinian archaeology; however, the work of Bliss is not well-known to those in the field. J.A. Blakely attributes this to the actions of Bliss' successor at the Palestine Exploration Fund, R.A.S. Macalister, who seems to have buried his predecessors' achievements.
Albright sat on the board of directors of the Palestine Oriental Society founded by Albert T. Clay. The work of this society was more ethnographic and anthropological than archaeological. Among its members was Tawfiq Canaan, a Palestinian doctor and one of several Palestinians focused on investigating Palestinian "material culture," as it related to folklore and customs. Canaan and Stephan Hanna Stephan, who also worked at the British-administered Department of Antiquities alongside Dmitri Baramki, contributed several articles to the society's journal. Hanna and Baramki also authored several archaeological papers for the Quarterly produced by the Department of the Antiquities.
While the importance of stratigraphy, typology and balk to a scientific study of sites became the norm sometime in the mid-twentieth century, the continued tendency to ignore data in favour of subjective interpretations invited criticism. Paul W. Lapp, for example, whom many thought would take up the mantle of Albright before his premature death in 1970, engaged in a harsh critique of the field, writing:
"Too much of Palestinian archaeology is an inflated fabrication Too often a subjective interpretation, not based on empirical stratigraphic observation, is used to demonstrate the validity of another subjective interpretation. We assign close dates to a group of pots on subjective typological grounds and go on to cite our opinion as independent evidence for similarly dating a parallel group. Too much of Palestinian archaeology's foundation building has involved chasing ad hominenem arguments around in a circle."
S. Buniwotiz in "How Mute Stones Speak: Interpreting What We Dig Up" echoes this critique, applying it to the "Israeli School" of Palestinian archaeology, as epitomized by Yigael Yadin, writing that,
" despite its new scientific arsenal, biblical archaeology during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s was still parochial, highly pragmatic and bound to traditional interpretative frameworks. Slowly, however, as previous interpretative concepts were discarded, exciting new cultural/historical insights gradually came into view, even through old research strategies."
Thus, towards the end of the twentieth century, Palestinian archaeology became a more interdisciplinary practice. Today, scientists from different fields of expertise work together using new technologies to examine micro-remains, like seeds, or skeletal remains.
Development
Besides the work of Dmitri Baramki and Stephan Hanna Stephan, and influence of Tawfiq Canaan on archaeologists with whom he was acquainted, like Kathleen Kenyon and Nelson Glueck, Palestinian contributions to the study of archaeology in their own country were largely unknown and unrecorded, and they had little ability to determine the areas of inquiry and focus.It was only recently established for example, that the first Palestinian archaeologist to excavate in the field was a woman named Yusra, who worked with Dorothy Garrod on excavation the Tabun Cave between 1929 and 1935. Credited with having discovered the Tabun I Neanderthal skull belonging to a female, Yusra's last name, her fate after completing her fieldwork, and even exact village of origin in the Haifa area remain unknown.
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the West Bank was administered by Jordan, and archaeological excavations in the region were carried out by its Department of Antiquities, as had been the case throughout the British Mandate in Palestine. Made up of Muslim and Christian officials and headed by the British archaeologist Gerald Lankester Harding until 1956, field archaeology was conducted primarily by foreigners, in expeditions such as those by the École Biblique at Tell el-Farah and Khirbet Qumran.
Rising nationalistic pressures led to Harding's dismissal in 1956 and thereafter, the Department of Antiquities was headed by Jordanian nationals. The Nablus branch of the Department of Antiquities was headed by Fawzi Zaydan from 1956 to 1967, and a few skilled Palestinian fieldworkers were involved in work at the excavation sites during this period, like Nasr Dyab Dweikat. Dwekat never authored or published a paper, but he participated in excavations of Neapolis, the Roman city of Nablus, and Sebastia, and on excavations at the archaeological sites of Tell Balata, Tell Dothan, Tell Ta'anach, and Tell es-Sultan. He also continued to work on the field under the different administrations to follow until his death in 2011.
After Israel occupied the area during the 1967 war, all antiquities in the area came under the control of the Archaeological Staff Officer, who is the head of the Archaeology Department of the Civil Administration. Though the Hague Convention prohibits the removal of cultural property from militarily occupied areas, both foreign and Israeli archaeologists mounted extensive excavations that have been criticized as overstepping the bounds of legitimate work to protect endangered sites. Vast amounts of new archaeological data have been uncovered in these explorations, although critics say that "relatively little effort was made to preserve or protect archaeological remains from the later Islamic and Ottoman periods, which were of direct relevance to the areas Muslim inhabitants." By 2007, the ADCA had been involved with over 6,000 archaeological sites in the West Bank including surveys and excavations, the vast majority of which had been kept from public and academic knowledge.
The first Palestinian historiography of Palestinian archaeology was authored by Baramki in 1969. Birzeit University in Ramallah was the first Palestinian university to offer a course of study in archaeology in 1970, and established the Palestinian Archaeology Institute in 1987, with the help of Albert Glock, who headed the university's archaeology department at the time. Glock's objective was to help develop an archaeological program that would emphasize the Palestinian presence in Palestine, informed by his belief that, "Archaeology, as everything else, is politics, and my politics of the losers." Glock was killed in the West Bank by unidentified gunmen in 1992. But the program he helped develop continued, with researchers from Bir Zeit University continuing excavations in Tell Jenin in 1993, building on the work of previous university excavations undertaken there and at Tell Taannek between 1976 and 1986.
Al-Najah University in Nablus and Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem also adopted teaching programs in archaeology, but only Al-Quds has been able to sustain the program, offering both an undergraduate degree in archaeology and a Master's program in restoration.
Moain Sadeq was one of the founders of the Palestinian Archaeology Institute's Gaza branch, and is an expert on Gaza's archaeology. In his role as Director of the Department of Antiquities in Gaza, Sadeq was involved in a number of archaeological projects, such as the Gaza Research Project which began in 1996 and was led by Louise Steel, Joanne Clarke, and Sadeq. The project searched for evidence of archaeological remains dating to the Bronze Age in the region. Sadeq discovered a Bronze Age site in 1996, al-Moghraqa, which became one of the foci of the Gaza Research Project and underwent excavation. In 1999, Sadeq and Peter Fischer led excavations at Tell el-‘Ajjul which was last excavated in the 1930s. Along with Hamdan Taha, the head of the Department of Antiquities, Sadeq was involved with negotiations with Israel about the return of artefacts excavated in Palestine during the Israeli occupation.
The Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land notes that, "The 1990s have seen the development of Palestinian archaeological activities, with a focus on tell archaeology on the one hand and on the investigation of the indigenous landscape and cultural heritage on the other."
Khaled Nashef, a Palestinian archaeologist at Bir Zeit and editor of the university's Journal of Palestinian Archaeology, writes that for too long the history of Palestine has been written by Christian and Israeli "biblical archaeologists", and that Palestinians must themselves re-write that history, beginning with the archaeological recovery of ancient Palestine. Such a perspective can also be seen in the practices of Hamdan Taha, the director of the Palestinian National Authority's Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, responsible for overseeing preservation and excavation projects that involve both internationals and Palestinians, as equals.
Gerrit van der Kooij, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands who works with Taha, says that, "It doesn't surprise me that outsiders become frustrated sticks by his policy of equal partnership. That means Palestinians must be involved at every step," from planning and digging to publishing. In Van der Kooij's opinion, this policy is "fully justified and adds more social value to the project."
Dever submits that the recent insistence that Palestinian archaeology and history be written by "real Palestinians" stems from the influence of those he terms the "biblical revisionists", such as Keith W. Whitelam, Thomas L. Thompson, Phillip Davies and Niels Peter Lemche. Whitelam's book, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History and Thompson's book, The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel were both translated into Arabic shortly after their publication. Dever speculates that, "Nashef and many other Palestinian political activists have obviously read it." Harshly critical of both books, Dever accuses Whitelam's thesis that Israelis and "Jewish-inspired Christians" invented Israel, thus deliberately robbing Palestinians of their history, of being "extremely inflammatory" and "bordering on anti-Semitism", and Thompson's book of being "even more rabid."
Dever cites an editorial by Nashef published in the Journal of Palestinian Archaeology in July 2000 entitled, "The Debate on 'Ancient Israel': A Palestinian Perspective", that explicitly names the four "biblical revisionists" mentioned above, as evidence for his claim that their "rhetoric" has influenced Palestinian archaeologists. In the editorial itself, Nashef writes: "The fact of the matter is, the Palestinians have something completely different to offer in the debate on 'ancient Israel,' which seems to threaten the ideological basis of BAR : they simply exist, and they have always existed on the soil of Palestine..."