Chris Heard at Higgaion is currently reviewing Political Archaeology and Holy Nationalism by Terje Oestigaard.  So far he has covered chapter 1 and chapter 2a.  Oestigaard criticizes archaeology in Israel for being used far too often for political purposes and for not being engaged with archaeology in other countries.  According to Chris, Oestigaard sees Israeli archaeology as falling outside the mainstream and not engaging with the rest of the field in theoretical discourse.

You would probably find few who would argue with his first point, although I would argue that archaeology in Israel is motivated by theological reasons as often as it is political.  Neither make for particularly good science.  But like Chris, I am more interested in his claim that Palestinian archaeology is detached from the rest of the field.

While this was true by and large during the era of biblical archaeology,1  today it is not the case, at least among the archaeologists I know.  Archaeologists who work in Israel are very familiar with the scholarly literature on archaeology in the ancient Near East and are very engaged with scholars who work in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Arabia, Greece, and Mesopotamia.  When I did seminar work in Levantine archaeology, we were very focused on the theoretical literature, even though the majority of the class were philologists.

One of the areas where this is clearest is in the recent focus on ethnicity.  Archaeologists in Israel are certainly engaged in this debate within the larger field, as can be seen by some excellent works that have come out in the past few years.  This larger debate has certainly been affecting our understanding of certain key issues within the history of the Levant, such as the transition from the Late Bronze to the Iron Age.

It is true that archaeologists who work in Israel are less engaged — but not totally disengaged — with archaeology in other parts of the world outside of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  For one thing, most other areas in the world did not have developed civilizations at this time, which means there is little comparative material from the same time period.  We can have a discussion that involves a Levantine archaeologist and a specialist in 13th century German archaeology, and such discussions will yield some benefit.  But the methods and constructs used are going to be different, if for no other reason than the fact that we are talking about wet vs. dry archaeology.2


  1. For the non-specialists, I should define the term biblical archaeology, since most people assume it means nothing more than archaeology in Israel.  Biblical archaeology was a movement in the mid-20th century that used the Bible the primary mean for interpreting archaeological finds.  Archaeology, in turn, was seen as demonstrating the historicity of the Bible.  The movement is closely associated with W.F. Albright and his student G. Ernest Wright.  Few in the field of archaeology today would use this approach, but the term biblical archaeology is still used by non-specialists to refer to archaeology in Israel. [back]
  2. I.e., archaeology done in an area with high rainfall vs. that done in arid climates.  Moisture in the soil has a huge effect on how you excavate and the condition of the finds. [back]
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