Digging up the Homeland: A History of Archaeology in Palestine – Israel

Digging up the Homeland: A History of Archaeology in Palestine – Israel, by Chloé Rosner, will be published on 19 October 2023 by CNRS Editions.

Archaeology has always had a close and ambiguous relationship with politics, between science, competition and instrumentalisation. This is particularly true in the Holy Land, where the rediscovery of its extraordinary heritage in the 19th century was inseparable from the events that shook the history of Palestine.
The tombs of the Kidron Valley, the synagogues of Galilee, Hazor, Masada, etc. This book shows how the exploration of these sites was used in the service of Zionism in Palestine and then in Israel. It shows how archaeologists not only unearthed the past, but also interacted in the present with the national, colonial, cultural, educational and linguistic ambitions and projects of the Jewish national movement and the Israeli state.
Combining archival research and political analysis, Chloé Rosner first traces the early days of archaeology in Ottoman Palestine, with its learned societies and antiquities collections, and then identifies the shift from a quest for the sacred to a heritage ‘inventory’ that would support the Zionist cause. Jewish archaeology, which became institutionalised at the beginning of the twentieth century and became involved in the field during the British Mandate, played a prominent role in the creation of a “homeland” and helped to shape Israeli national archaeology between 1948 and 1967.