A brief blog on the role of archaeology as a colonial discipline and why we need to address this, urgently.

Archaeology in Palestine, as in much of the world, developed as an imperial discipline and it still is. Yet today more than ever, as Gaza faces annihilation, as Palestinians are suffering in a situation that is so horrific I can’t find the words to describe it, archaeology, historians, scholars, all of us need to address the role we play and the legacy of our disciplines.  Biblical scholar Keith Whitelam suggested that – ‘it appears as if biblical studies have proceeded in a political vacuum, seemingly cut adrift from world politics, global crises’[i], yet the reaction, or lack of, from many prominent western scholarly organisations dedicated to the study of Palestine and the wider Middle East, as the millions of Palestinian civilians in Gaza face attack from an Israeli military which has jettisoned any adherence to international law and has shown a callous disregard for civilian life, suggests this is still the status quo, and that it is not just biblical studies.

But is this surprising? Archaeology is a colonial discipline.[ii] Archaeology in Palestine has always been an imperialist archaeology.[iii]  Ever since the beginning of archaeology in Palestine there has been concerted effort to appropriate Palestine as part of western cultural patrimony. To disconnect Palestinians from Palestine. As the ‘holy land’ Palestine is central to the western world which styles itself as ‘Judaeo-Christian’, (but which is really a certain type of Christian). I am British. I have completed my thesis at a British university. My passport has allowed me to visit places off limits to Palestinian colleagues. My academic legacy stems from archaeologists who went to Palestine emboldened by the statement ‘Palestine is ours’, a statement uttered by the Archbishop of York at the first ever meeting of the Palestine Exploration Fund, the British learned society founded in 1865 which spearheaded archaeological research in Palestine. The PEF aimed to ‘recover ’a ‘lost’ Palestine which was buried under layers of ‘debris’, aka the presence of Palestinians, their homes, their culture, their buildings, placenames, their hundreds & thousands of years of history that wasn’t the narrow biblical & classical periods that interested the British.

The implications of this are stark, the myth that Palestinians have no connection to their land, the myth of an empty land, that Palestine didn’t exist until ‘Arab invaders’ made it up (Zach Foster’s excellent PhD thesis ‘The Invention of Palestine’ which covers all this in great detail). This narrative, which archaeology contributed and still contributes to (see the work of Emek Shaveh), is used to remove Palestinians from Palestine. 1948, the continued displacement of Palestinians by settlers, the events in Gaza right now. Nadia Abu El-Haj’s book Facts on the Ground is an in-depth and incredibly valuable study on exactly how archaeology has become used by the Israeli state to justify occupation, if you read one thing on this topic it should probably be that.

Through archaeology & an archaeological lens Palestine becomes orientalised, an imagined geography, which as Palestinian scholar Edward Said suggests, is an ‘invented and constructed geographical space with little concern for the reality.^[iv]  In short, the past becomes severed from the present, this allows us as scholars of history, archaeology, biblical studies etc, to distance ourselves from contemporary politics, why should we get involved? As scholars of the past, whether historian, archaeologist, whatever we call ourselves, we must face up to our discipline’s contribution to colonialism & imperialism worldwide, our disciplines are inherently orientalist, colonial in character.

The statement from Birziet University, in the West Bank, is explicit in calling on the international academic community to speak out, stating ‘Birzeit University calls upon the international academic community, unions, and students to fulfill their intellectual and academic duty of seeking truth, maintaining a critical distance from state-sponsored propaganda, and to hold the perpetrators of genocide and those complicit with them accountable.’ As archaeologists, scholars, historians today, we still disconnect Palestine of today from its past, a past we connect to ourselves, one we connect to the wider development of ‘western civilisation’. We ‘don’t want to get involved in politics’, but still we benefit from Palestine, as we publish books & papers etc etc etc. If we stay silent to make our lives easier, to not rock the boat, how different are we from the archaeologists of the past, who believed ‘Palestine is ours’ in which the archaeology functioned as a form of colonial extraction?

Yet my academic legacy also stems from John Garstang, the first British director of antiquities in Palestine, the man who set up the department I gained my BA and MA at in Liverpool. Garstang went to Palestine as a naïve archaeologist, as a man embedded in the colonial regime, he had previously worked in Egypt (another British colonial territory), and worked for the British government. Yet after he resigned from his post in Palestine Garstang became an outspoken critic of British policy in Palestine, and became a supporter of the Palestinian cause. It is that aspect of the legacy I wish to uphold, not one of silence and complicity.  

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References:

[i] Keith W Whitelam, Revealing the History of Ancient Palestine: Changing Perspectives 8 (Routledge, 2018), 184.

         [ii] Díaz-Andreu, Margarita. A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology: Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Past. Oxford University Press, 2007.

         [iii] Trigger, Bruce G. ‘Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist’. Man, 1984, 355–70.

[iv] Edward Said, ‘Invention, Memory, and Place’, Critical Inquiry 26, no. 2 (2000): 181.