Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

After 1918

2021; Penn State University Press; Volume: 9; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.9.1-2.0200

2166-3556

Steven A. Rosen,

Archaeology and Historical Studies

With the explicit and specific focus on the British Mandate period in Palestine, the eight articles in this issue of JEMAHS explore a period little investigated in the archaeology of the region. The explanation for this dearth of study is probably best found in the historical origins of archaeological practice in the region, motivated first by biblical connections and later by state building and the construction of identity, to neither of which the Mandate period—nor for that matter the Late Ottoman period—is relevant. As Saidel and Erickson-Gini indicate in their introduction, materials postdating 1700 CE are not even protected by the Israel Antiquities Law, indeed itself a legacy of British presence. There is great importance in merely addressing this scarcity.The studies presented here are situated chronologically, methodologically, and in terms of subject matter in the general realm of “historical archaeology,” defined by its practitioners as the archaeology of colonialism, the archaeology of the post-1492 Americas, or, generally, the archaeology of capitalism (Hall and Silliman 2009; Leone 1995; Orser 2013). Beyond chronological coincidence, the assumption behind these definitions is the existence of shared and interrelated historical themes and trajectories including the rise of modern world systems, mercantilism, and capitalism; the rise of European colonial systems with their concomitants of slave economies and consequent diaspora cultures; the impacts of the industrial revolution, including, of course, both the technologies and the social displacements; and the legacies of the collapses, destructions, and transformations of indigenous societies. Of course, methodologically, historical archaeology also integrates with texts and other forms of documentation such as drawings, photographs, and films, not to mention oral histories, even more deeply and completely than the archaeologies of earlier periods with less complete historical documentation.In engaging with all aspects of these defining themes, the articles presented here offer a new relevance to the archaeology of the region, even if it is an archaeology only recently discovered. Thus, reviewing each of the above motifs, the issue of world systems and international connections is especially evident in the presence of imported goods and stylistic elements, as in Arbel's study of premodern Jaffa and in the two studies of the Qālūnyā village (Kisilivetz et al.; Saidel, Erickson-Gini, and Mashiah). This, of course, ties directly into general European colonial expansion, inherent to the very definition of the British Mandate period but especially notable in Chetrit's exploration of British picquet outposts, as well as references to military presence by both the Turks and the British, for example, around Beersheba (Eisenberg-Degen and Hevroni) and the Hesi region (Blakely). The impacts of technological change and the industrial revolution are reflected in the replacement of wells in Jaffa by modern water infrastructures, in the industrialization of ceramic production at Faluja (Israel and Saidel), and in the impact of the railroad and the internal combustion engine in the Hesi region (Blakely). Behind all of this, the general demographic expansion, accompanied by increasing economic prosperity, which began in the Late Ottoman period but achieved a peak during the Mandate period, is seen in the growth of Jaffa (Arbel) and Qālūnyā (Kisilevitz et al.; Saidel, Erickson-Gini, and Mashiah) and in the rise of Beersheba and its hinterland (Eisenberg-Degen and Hevroni). Finally, the destruction of indigenous cultures is evident in the mere fact that the analyses of Faluja (Israel and Saidel) and Qālūnyā (Kisilevitz et al.; Saidel, Erickson-Gini, and Mashiah) are analyses of abandoned and bulldozed remains.If historical archaeology as a subfield has tended to focus on the above themes, the articles here do not deal explicitly with them. The studies are nonetheless important. For example, the details of archaeological reconstructions are inherently important (especially in a journal with “heritage” in its title!), irrespective of whether they can be placed into some larger theoretical frame. For example, Fischer and Taxel in their analyses of the Yavneh Sands and Nabi Rubin offer convincing interpretations for small-scale presence and agricultural practice probably never mentioned in historical records; the little windows opened in the ground showing the flooring of well houses destroyed in the expansion of Jaffa offer a literally tangible glimpse into an agricultural hinterland that would otherwise be erased from memory. The archaeology of the physical hinterland around Beersheba in the twentieth century (Eisenberg-Degen and Hevroni; Blakely), with the dynamics of technological change and interactions between settled and nomadic, offers perspectives well beyond the texts. In fact, it may have legal ramifications for Bedouin claims against government land expropriations for which traditional history and legal documents have proven inadequate.The architectural details presented in literally all the articles are case studies in the kinds of documentation that serve as the underpinnings of all good archaeology and history. Of course, archaeology is an observational and non-reproducible science. This documentation is fundamental for future explanatory frameworks and syntheses.The archaeology of the Mandate period is historical archaeology also in the close integration with historical records. It is worth noting that unlike earlier historical archaeologies, researchers have access to a more diverse range of documentary materials, including contemporary maps (e.g., Blakely; Fischer and Taxel), photographs from the period (e.g., Blakely; Chetrit; Fischer and Taxel; Saidel, Erickson-Gini, and Mashiah), early aerial photographs (e.g., Saidel, Erickson-Gini, and Mashiah; Kisilevitz et al.; Fischer and Taxel; Blakely), oral histories and informant interviews (e.g., Israel and Saidel; Kisilevitz et al.), drawings (e.g., Chetrit), and a wealth of written materials from a wide range of sources. Given this, the inevitable question is whether one really needs the archaeology, whether the archaeology only enhances the text history, or whether archaeology as a discipline has something unique to offer? This “handmaid-of-history” approach has been well rejected by practitioners of historical archaeology, but it is worth exploring here as well, in the context of this work.Of course, from a heritage perspective, the material remains offered by archaeology are fundamental. Museums cannot be filled with texts, and even photographs are not sufficient. The authenticity of artifacts lends a power to the attached narratives not readily transferred to texts or photographs.However, even from an analytic perspective, archaeology in this hyper-historical period has much to offer. Even in the presence of dense archival documentation, archaeology can present new materials and great detail or resolution not available in the texts or buried so deeply as to be fundamentally inaccessible. Fischer and Taxel note the presence of trees as artifacts of human presence, an important insight since not only do trees represent presence, but they reflect significant investment, in this case on the part of putative pastoralists. In fact, the presence of nomads in a landscape, or the occurrence of ephemeral events such as mortuary pilgrimages, may be paradoxically more evident from rigorous archaeological field work than from records in archives. The studies of the Yavneh Dunes (Fischer and Taxel) and the hinterland of Beersheba (Eisenberg-Degen and Hevroni; Blakely) demonstrate that nomads leave remains and that these can be integrated into larger historical narratives. Everyday activities, often not documented in historical records, may be well evident in the archaeological record. The discovery of artifacts like threshing teeth (Fischer and Taxel) and the documentation of recent terrace-dam and cistern repairs (Kisilevitz et al.; Eisenberg-Degen and Hevroni) reflect agricultural practices. The ubiquitous presence of Gaza Ware offers potentials for analysis only little tapped (Israel and Saidel; also see Israel 2006). Such studies can add new dimensions to our understanding of the landscape and its inhabitants.There is also interaction between the archives and the archaeology. As per the study of earlier periods with historical documentation, the texts and the archaeology offer counterbalancing interpretive critiques. The kilns from Faluja flatly contradict claims by el-Aref (Israel and Saidel) that black Gaza Ware pottery was produced only in Gaza. This is not only a factual correction but offers a cautionary tale about the reliability of sources.The archaeology of the Mandate period in Palestine is a legitimate subject for research of itself. However, its unique aspects, the fine historical resolution and deep documentation, offer glimpses of what is often missing from the archaeology of earlier periods. The entire period spans only 30 years. Sites, structures, and features can be dated by reference to diverse material culture, as in other archaeologies, including, among other finds, coins, ceramics, glass, gun cartridges, buttons, and of course archival materials. However, many of the use-spans of the material-culture items are longer than the period itself. Thus, for example, cartridges from the First World War were used throughout the Arab Revolt (Chetrit); Gaza Ware was a long-term technology (Israel and Saidel) extending to the end of the twentieth century. And yet, integrated into the historical record, the archaeological materials can be placed into a finer-grained historical narrative than most of us are accustomed to. Of course, such finer-grained narratives existed throughout history. This does not render earlier archaeologies incorrect, but perhaps it offers a lesson in the scale of our explanations. Offering an analogy from biology, the development of genetics did not render Darwinian evolution wrong; rather, it offered new dimensions from which to view it and to refine it.A second point concerns the way we characterize the period. If it is convenient to historically characterize the period as that of the British Mandate, this reflects only a specific political aspect of society in this period. In fact, excepting the study of British picquets (Chetrit), or the Spinney Department Store of Jaffa (Arbel), the archaeology presented in the articles here is virtually exclusively that of the Palestinian Arab inhabitants, in clear cultural continuity (if not political continuity) with the preceding Late Ottoman period. That continuity is integral to many of the articles. In fact, the archaeology offers insight into Palestinian history, often slighted in the larger geopolitical histories of the early twentieth century.The absence of an archaeology of Jewish presence is seemingly paradoxical, although perhaps not surprising. The archaeology is of ruins, abandoned during the 1948 war; so many of the Jewish sites from the period are either still inhabited or else already memorialized.Some decades ago, I had a conversation with an aged neighbor. He was a retired civil engineer, a former member of the Palmach and had been an important urban planner in his time. He described how in the 1950s he was sent out to the field to fix the location of the planned development town of Qiryat Gat. He described to me how he had arrived at a perfect crossroad, at an approximate center point between Beersheba, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. He told me how he surveyed the “empty land” (his words), fixed a stake, and declared that here would be a new town. He literally did not see the bulldozed villages of Iraq al-Manshiyya or Faluja. This blindness was difficult; among other things, I had been out to the ruins of Faluja with Yigal Israel. They are to this day well evident in the field. Of course, the blindness came out of a specific historical context.In these articles, we have perhaps begun to address this blindness.