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Megan: Nadia abu el-Haj describes the Jewish archaeological mission to taxonomize and establish a unique category of "Jewish" art and architecture within the national and cultural boundaries of Israel (76). Within this new category, ancient communities were mapped based on archaeological evidence, both sacred and secular, and placed within modern maps as evidence for territorial heritage. In what ways did projects like this conflate modern and ancient? Is this a conscious manipulation of the historical record or an outcome of the scientific process? How did the various colonial projects of isolating and "mapping" individual religious histories onto the landscape contribute to formulations of identity both within and outside Israel? 

Posted at Mar 10/2010 11:51PM:
Kaley Curtis: On pages 22-23 Nadia Abu El-Haj describes the beginnings of the Palestine Exploration Fund, early work in Jewish archaeology, and the role of cartography in the colonization and re-colonization of Palestine. What role did the military play in the PEF? How was cartography used as a method of domination and power? How did the "artifact" come to be defined?

Describe the differentiation between artifacts that the Department of Antiquities could and could not interfere with and the role of artifacts in shaping a national identity.

Meredith: Why were names so important to the new Jewish settlers and why was the JPES so preoccupied with names? Why did the "foreignness of names in the Negev evoke fear?" (Abu El-Haj, 92).

What was the likely reason volunteer labor was so often used in excavation and what was the purported reason? Why was the second interpretation more heavily put forth?

Andrew Seiden

I am interested in talking about the notion of ‘rootedness’ vs. diaspora, and how these terms relate in theory to methods of controlling, acquiring, and developing the physical terrain.

Many Jewish settlers in the early twentieth century were farmers, and, as the author states, were some of the most valuable sources of ancient artifacts unearthed because of their closeness to the landscape. According to the reading (50), the majority of the Jewish public was not particularly interested in archaeology and preserving these artifacts, and would simply discard artifacts due to “lack of education.”

I want to explore to what effect the ‘uneducated’ populous had on the growing the national movement toward Hebrew, historical, and archaeological education; the touring that takes place to teach the kind of lay of the land, and the specific monuments, such as Masada, which become national icons in order to build a ‘new Jewish national identity’ and perhaps change the ideology from that of a diverse, separated, people without a common homeland to that of a homogenous community.

I find it interesting that, in the discussion of biblical archaeology, it is mentioned that the fact that archaeology takes place on or within a ‘terrain’ or ‘landscape’ is what “distinguishes it from laboratory sciences” (20). What is it that makes this landscape—and creating, filling in, or ‘verifying’ a specific ancient narrative/timeline and connecting it to the present nationalist population—that is so important?

Additionally, what can we draw from the ‘deciphering of the land,’ and ‘breaking the codes’ of the Arab names and then ‘baptizing’ Palestine with Euro-Christian names (35) concept? I find the whole colonial project of ‘knowing,’ mapping, and renaming places very in tune with inscribing a specific narrative or history.

Posted at Mar 16/2010 08:32PM:
Kaley Curtis: post discussion: I really like the idea that we talked about in class of a narrative within Judaism of exile and promise, as it so closely matched the actual process Jews went through to establish a homeland. Before the British got involved in Palestine diaspora Jews did not have a land of their own. With the settling of Palestine and the later creation of Israel Jews became rooted to the land; a process which followed the pattern of exile and promise in the Hebrew Bible. Also interesting was the point that Zionism was actually a Western idea and a European answer to the "Jewish question." Zionism can be thought of as a form of new colonialism and is in this sense distinctly Western, especially because it involves ideas of nation and nationalism imported from the West.