Middle Eastern Archaeology of periods after prehistory and before the Byzantine era is generally divided among Biblical, Ancient Near Eastern and Egyptological schools. Near Eastern archaeologists and Egyptologists habitually draw distinctions between their fields and that of “pre” (i.e., linguistically challenged) historians and anthropological archaeologists. Regardless of one’s orientation, however, the Bible looms large in the history of all of these disciplines. The development of Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern archaeology was partially influenced by a general Christian religious interest in the lands mentioned in the Bible while the exploration of sites in Israel, Palestine and Jordan, was directly tied to an enlightenment-inspired belief that the Biblical text could be proven scientifically. Despite the fact that, after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, this quest was partially transfomed by nationalist interests, the Bible continues to affect how sites are viewed by the public and by officials.
One story, perhaps apocryphal that has made the rounds of archaeologists in the region, for example, concerns a prominent prehistorian’s discovery of Upper Paleolithic human remains in one of the Carmel Caves. As required by law, he informed the religious authorities in Israel. These individuals normally take an avid interest in the discovery of skeletons, asserting that every human bone found in the Land of Israel today is deserving of a decent Jewish burial. The archaeologist was, to his relief, not to be deprived of his important find. Reportedly, he was told of this in a letter which, loosely translated, ceded jurisdiction over the remains because they appeared “to date from before creation.”
Nadia Abu El-Haj in Facts on the Ground describes Israeli Archaeology as consistently conflating text, dogmatic belief and practice but, in truth, this state of affairs predates the founding of the State of Israel by over one hundred years. The ideologies in question began with the written word. The Bible, “supported” by cuneiform tablets, papyri, scrolls and inscriptions, has a privileged status beyond that of mere artifact. One ignores the text at the peril of making one’s work irrelevant, as there are few who will refer to an archaeology of the “Holy Land” denuded of its associations with the Bible. Scholars who have attempted this to do this are dismissed by many of their colleagues as “minimalists.” The term is an interesting choice in that it implies a kind of austerely modern approach to archaeology. In any other context, it would connote an elimination of the extraneous—a reduction of a work to its most fundamental features suggesting that a minimalist approach would eliminate any consideration of the Biblical Text altogether. This is far from case, however, as a minimalist and a maximalist are both equally defined by their textual approach.
Ideology in the archaeology of the "Holy Land" effectively began in the late nineteenth century when exploration of the region by intrepid Europeans combined religion with an imperialist ethos of exploration for the sake of it and for the glory of the motherland. Starting in the twenties, others came—committed Christian religionists from European monasteries, Jesuit institutes, protestant and Jewish theological seminaries. The seminarians, as many of us refer to them, persist to this day, with a sizable percentage of the American Schools for Oriental Research, the organization of archaeologists in Palestine, being made up of ministers, priests and rabbis. It is this legacy that is the language and the means by which method has become informed. It is the primary reason why archaeology in this region is different from that practiced anywhere else in the world.
One story, perhaps apocryphal that has made the rounds of archaeologists in the region, for example, concerns a prominent prehistorian’s discovery of Upper Paleolithic human remains in one of the Carmel Caves. As required by law, he informed the religious authorities in Israel. These individuals normally take an avid interest in the discovery of skeletons, asserting that every human bone found in the Land of Israel today is deserving of a decent Jewish burial. The archaeologist was, to his relief, not to be deprived of his important find. Reportedly, he was told of this in a letter which, loosely translated, ceded jurisdiction over the remains because they appeared “to date from before creation.”
Nadia Abu El-Haj in Facts on the Ground describes Israeli Archaeology as consistently conflating text, dogmatic belief and practice but, in truth, this state of affairs predates the founding of the State of Israel by over one hundred years. The ideologies in question began with the written word. The Bible, “supported” by cuneiform tablets, papyri, scrolls and inscriptions, has a privileged status beyond that of mere artifact. One ignores the text at the peril of making one’s work irrelevant, as there are few who will refer to an archaeology of the “Holy Land” denuded of its associations with the Bible. Scholars who have attempted this to do this are dismissed by many of their colleagues as “minimalists.” The term is an interesting choice in that it implies a kind of austerely modern approach to archaeology. In any other context, it would connote an elimination of the extraneous—a reduction of a work to its most fundamental features suggesting that a minimalist approach would eliminate any consideration of the Biblical Text altogether. This is far from case, however, as a minimalist and a maximalist are both equally defined by their textual approach.
Ideology in the archaeology of the "Holy Land" effectively began in the late nineteenth century when exploration of the region by intrepid Europeans combined religion with an imperialist ethos of exploration for the sake of it and for the glory of the motherland. Starting in the twenties, others came—committed Christian religionists from European monasteries, Jesuit institutes, protestant and Jewish theological seminaries. The seminarians, as many of us refer to them, persist to this day, with a sizable percentage of the American Schools for Oriental Research, the organization of archaeologists in Palestine, being made up of ministers, priests and rabbis. It is this legacy that is the language and the means by which method has become informed. It is the primary reason why archaeology in this region is different from that practiced anywhere else in the world.
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