Facts on the ground
Subtitle: archaeological practice and territorial self-fashioning in Israeli society
By: Nadia Abu El-Haj
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 352
Subjects: Excavations (Archaeology) -- Israel; Ethnoarchaeology -- Israel; Archaeology and history -- Israel; Archaeology -- Political aspects -- Israel; Archaeology -- Methodology; Israel -- Antiquities
Description: "Archaeology in Israel is truly a national obsession, a practice through which national identity--and national rights--have long been asserted. But how and why did archaeology emerge as such a pervasive force there? How can the practices of archaeology help answer those questions? In this stirring book, Nadia Abu El-Haj addresses these questions and specifies ... the relationship between national ideology, colonial settlement, and the production of historical knowledge. She analyzes particular instances of history, artifacts, and landscapes in the making to show how archaeology helped not only to legitimize cultural and political visions but, far more powerfully, to reshape them. Moreover, she places Israeli archaeology in the context of the broader discipline to determine what unites the field across its disparate local traditions and locations."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 321-343) and index