Palestinian archaeology is the study of archaeology in present-day Palestine, stretching from prehistory through three millennia of documented history. notes that the term Palestine is commonly used by archaeologists in Jordan and Israel to refer to the region encompassed by modern-day Israel, Jordan and the West Bank. 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acrimony not shared in other area studies in the field between archaeologists who see biblical scriptures as legitimate historical documents and scientific archaeologists who see the hard data from excavations as being incompatible with the biblical "historical" record.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 (1891–1971). 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 (1857–1939) 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 (1870–1950), 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."
Archaeologist Shlomo Bunimovitz echoed this critique in "How Mute Stones Speak: Interpreting What We Dig Up", 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 (1950) and the Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt. In the West Bank archaeological excavations were carried out by its Department of Antiquities, as had been the case throughout the British Mandate in Palestine. The department was made up of Muslim and Christian officials and headed by the British archaeologist Gerald Lankester Harding until 1956, and field archaeology was conducted primarily by foreigners, in expeditions such as those by the École Biblique at Tell el-Farah (1946–1960) and Khirbet Qumran (1951–1956). Awni Dajani was appointed as a director with authority over sites in the West Bank; the post had initially been offered to Baramki on Harding's recommendation but he turned it down. The Egyptian Department of Antiquities did not carry out major excavations, although 'Abd el-Mohsen el-Khashab discovered the Gaza synagogue during an excavation in the region in 1965.
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 Naṣr Dyab Dwekat. 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 (Canaanite Shechem, supervised by Ernest Wright for the American Schools of Oriental Research between 1956 and 1964), Tell Dothan, Tell Ta'anach, and Tell es-Sultan (ancient Jericho undertaken by the British School of Archaeology). 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 (ADCA). 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 [are those] 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.
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 ([Hamdan] Taha and [Moain] Sadeq) and on the investigation of the indigenous landscape and cultural heritage on the other ([Khaled] Nashef and M. Abu Khalaf)."
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. At the same time he also worked with Pierre de Miroschedji of the French National Centre for Scientific Research to lead an excavation at a newly discovered Bronze Age settlement south of Gaza City: Tell es-Sakan. 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.
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.