Nadia Abu El-Haj

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 for the first time 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. Boldly uncovering an Israel in which science and politics are mutually constituted, this book shows the ongoing role that archaeology plays in defining the past, present, and future of Palestine and Israel.

Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society

Facts on the Ground

This volume analyses the scientific work and social implications of the flourishing field of genetic history. The author examines genetic history's working assumptions about culture and nature, identity and biology, and the individual and the collective.

The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology

The Genealogical Science

How and why did archaeology in Israel emerge? How can the practices of archaeology help answer those questions? This text addresses these questions and specifies relationships between ideology, colonial settlement and historical knowledge.

Nadia Abu El-Haj

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