Rethinking the Historiographical Impulse: The History of Ancient Israel as a Problem

The first part of this paper provides some insights into the problematic nature of the genre “history of ancient Israel”, both in terms of historiography and of historical epistemology. It is argued that the concept “history of ancient Israel” is essentially valid within a particular modern theological or biblical historiographical context. As such, this history of ancient Israel may indeed progress and generate new understandings but is nonetheless seriously limited by its main concern with “biblical Israel”. It is also proposed that in order to overcome these thematic and epistemological historical limitations, a wider history of ancient Palestine or the Southern Levant should be envisioned, into which to understand the epigraphic and archaeological realia of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, together with other contemporary polities in the region, and the later development of biblical traditions and texts. The second part of the paper addresses questions of ethnogenesis, socio-political organization and identity in the light of the previous discussion, setting the stage for an alternative history of Israel and other historical realities in ancient Palestine.     

Sites,sacredness, and stories: Interactions of archaeology and contemporary paganism

Folklore has, until very recently, been at the fringes of archaeological research. Post-processual archaeology has promoted plurality in interpretation, however, and archaeology more widely is required to make itself relevant to contemporary society; so, contemporary folkloric practices vis-a`-vis archaeological remains are once again receiving attention. In this paper we examine contemporary Pagan understandings of and engagements with “sacred sites” in England. Specifically, we explore how Pagan meanings are inscribed and constituted, how they draw on “traditional” understandings of sites and landscapes, and instances in which they challenge or reify the “preservation ethic” of heritage management. From active interactions with sites, such as votive offerings and instances of fire and graffiti damage, to unconventional (contrasted with academic) interpretations of sites involving wights and spirit beings, Neolithic shamans, or goddesses, there are diverse areas of contest. We argue archaeology must not reject Pagan and other folklores as “fringe,” but, in an era of community archaeology, transparency and collaboration, respond to them, preferably dialogically.     

A human-centered GIS approach to modeling mobility on southern Baffin Island,Nunavut, Canada

Southern Baffin Island has been occupied for several millennia, but its enormous size, coupled with scarcity of identified inland archaeological sites that can be confidently linked to coastal occupations, makes modeling ancient seasonal mobility across the region through traditional cost-surface least-cost pathway approaches impractical. We present a method that combines weighted multi-criteria cost surface analysis with a watershed function to create a “mobility-shed” of non-winter travel pathways covering the study area. We evaluate the predictive utility of the resulting pathways for future archaeological survey by assessing their spatial relationships to known archaeological sites. The results of this comparison suggest that elevation and land cover criteria should be augmented with ethnographic and resource availability data to model mobility in this region.     

The end and renewal of ideology in Central Europe and in Hungary

Society has to be understood as a process of fast changes (revolutions) and slow transformations (reformism). This is what has been happening in Central Europe, where the big changes of 1989–1990 were preceded by several small social, political and ideological transformations. When analysing Central European societies, one should also remember that there is an ‘official’ society and a ‘hidden’ society.In addition, the relation of state and civil society is deformed since in most cases the civil sphere is repressed and undeveloped due to the predominance of the ‘official state’. In such societies, you cannot find real hegemony but only dominance, which is practiced by the state not only in the sphere of economy, society and culture, but also in and through ideology.The essence of modern totalitarian society cannot be understood without addressing the permanent existence of unofficial, ‘civil’ ideologies penetrating the ‘hidden’ society at the same time as the ‘official’ ideology. Apart from the slow transformation of ideologies and the crisis of ‘official’ ideology, the strengthening of ‘hidden’ ideology is also required for revolutionary changes. This is how a historically new situation with new ideologies can come into being, in clear contrast to the renewal of old ideologles, which generates a mixture of the old and the new. A look at what happened in Central Europe, but particularly Hungary, should clarify the point.     

Doorway Orientation, Settlement Planning and Cosmology in Ancient Israel During Iron Age II

An examination of Iron Age buildings and settlements in ancient Israel indicates that a large number of them were oriented toward the east, while the west was extremely under-represented. An examination of various climatic and functional considerations does not seem to explain the phenomenon. Many ethnographic studies, however, have demonstrated the strong influence that cosmological principles can have on the planning of buildings and settlements, and that in many cases the east is preferred. In the present study, however, we have additional information. The common Biblical Hebrew word for east is qedma (forward), while the west is ahora (backward). Additional words for these directions indicate that the east had a good connotation while the west had a bad one. Thus, the archaeological pattern, along with language and texts (which are used as a substitute for human informants), seem to give an important insight into some of the cosmological principles of the ancient Israelites.     

Complicating the Local: Defining the Aymara at Tiwanaku, Bolivia

The archaeological site of Tiwanaku, Bolivia, is commonly held to be the “Spiritual Capital of the Aymara People.” But negotiating who qualifies as Aymara, and in what contexts, is decidedly more complicated. Local political divisions between residents of the village of Tiahuanacu (who are seen locally as less-Aymara but not as not-Aymara) and residents of the surrounding rural communities (who are considered to be unquestionably Aymara) structure discussions about who has the right to earn income at the Tiwanaku archaeological site, who manages major public events, and who is responsible for the site’s maintenance and security. The situation is complicated further by national-level events such as the Winter Solstice, where urban Aymara travel to Tiwanaku to seek their roots, and Bolivian Presidents and politicians come to participate in national Aymara “culture.” I focus on the intervención (“Intervention”) that took place in Tiahuanacu in August 2000, which resulted in the transfer of management of the Tiwanaku archaeological site from the Bolivian state to local municipal and indigenous authorities. Heritage researchers should take such local divisions into account, rather than assuming that “locals” are politically unified or easily delineated by geographical boundaries.     

Chalcolithic Hamlet Excavations near Shiqmim,Negev Desert,Israel

Abstract

We explore the nature of three small villages or “hamlets” situated in close proximity to Shiqmim—one of the largest Chalcolithic (ca. 4500–3600 CAL B.C.) settlements in the southern Levant. Located in the northern Negev Desert of Israel, Shiqmim and other large sites in the Beersheva valley have yielded data suggesting the emergence of a regional chief dom-level social organization in this period. Identifying chiefdoms in the Near Eastern archaeological record is difficult because there is little material evidence of displays of rank and power such as are found in Mesoamerican chiefdoms. A two-tier settlement hierarchy with large settlement centers that coordinate religious, political, and economic activities for a constellation of smaller satellite villages or hamlets is one of the most important cross-cultural attributes of chiefdoms documented by anthropologists. The results from archaeological soundings, material culture analyses, and radiocarbon dating of small-scale sites in the vicinity of a large settlement center in the Beersheva valley are consistent with the presence of a dynamic regional chiefdom-level society during the Chalcolithic period.     

Creative preservation: The development of an artistic approach to the preservation and presentation of the past

Abstract

The article proposes “Creative Preservation” as an artistic approach to contemporary questions concerning the preservation and presentation of archaeological sites. By examining critically the role of cultural heritage today, it attempts to search for alternative perspectives and to retrieve forgotten sensibilities such as Diderot's “Poetics of Ruins”. It first examines concepts of time and authenticity, especially in archaeological sites, as interpreted by various authors from Poincare, von Schiller, Bergson and Simmel to Choay and Jokilehto.

Dedicated to immaterial qualities of places, “Creative Preservation” suggests the refinement of “images of authenticity” in an attempt to penetrate and to communicate with deeper levels in the complex reality of ancient places – actual and specific locations which anchor and root memory in material.

A first realization of this approach is presented in the form of the spiral viewpoint recently constructed at the northwest part of the archaeological site of Ramat Rachel near Jerusalem.     

“They Will Take the Country from Us”: Labor Zionism,the Origins and Legacy of the “Other” in Israeli Mass Media,and Hegemonic Narratives

After 1948, Israel's governing elites embarked on a rigorous program of state building and settling hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants. In the process, the elites, primarily from the leading Mapai party, developed a process of othering Jewish immigrants from Arab countries, Arab citizens, and Orthodox Jews. They were physically segregated in their own schools and communities, and the elite culture described them as a threat against the European culture of Jewish immigrants from central Europe. The process targeted Mizrahi Jews before moving on to deplore the “demographic threat” of Orthodox Jews and resulted in the current normative hegemonic discourse in Israel that paints numerous groups as threatening the state. This article proposes a four‐part model for understanding “the other” in Israel: contemporary denial and nostalgia for a homogenous past, the view of Zionism as a civilizing mission, the application of separation of ethnic groups in planning, and demographic fear of the other. Altogether, they paint a picture of an Israel that has not come to grips with its past, and therefore continues the process of “othering” in its contemporary ethnocratic framework. Combining the analysis of geographic separation, and planning and media, it presents an innovative understanding of Israeli society.     

Fishing Gear from a 7th-Century Shipwreck off Dor, Israel

The ancient anchorage of Dor, Israel, contains wreck-sites from several periods. Underwater exploration of one Byzantine wreck discovered the remains of a medium-size boat constructed with iron nails. Coin-finds dated it to c .665 AD, after the Muslim conquest. The wreck was probably caused by natural agents, but an event in the Byzantine-Muslim conflict can not be discounted. The artefacts include a group of objects testifying to the practice of light-fishing. Literary sources indicate a prevalence of light-fishing, but archaeological finds are very rare. This discovery clearly indicates light-fishing in late antiquity. A sounding-lead and steelyard can be seen as auxiliary to the fishing.
© 2007 The Authors     

Archaeology and the Bible Revisited: A Review Article

David and Solomon, a new book by Israel Finkelstein and Niels Asher Silberman, through their discussion of Palestinian archaeology's current understanding, proposes to provide evidence to prove the accuracy of Frank Cross's more than 30 year old revision of Martin Noth's theory of a “Deuteronomistic History.” The authors attempt to confirm the history of the redaction of the biblical narratives about Saul, David and Solomon, involving seven distinct oral and four written strata of tradition. Their argument moreover claims the warrant to assert the historicity of each of these legendary kings of Israel. The present article argues to the contrary that the “archaeological evidence” proposed does not support such a redaction history nor establish the historicity of either the biblical figures or their stories, but that the harmony of biblical and archaeological issues is circular and illegitimate by the standards of historical research. It argues, moreover, that the claim of an oral tradition, reflecting original memories of an historical David or Saul is an entirely unnecessary and unlikely explanation for the origins of both the figures and their tales in the stories of 1-2 Samuel and 1 Kings. It moreover argues that the hypothesis of a redaction history in a succession of four cumulative revisions, beginning in the eighth century and completed in the sixth to fourth century, BCE—lacking as it does reference to a readable text—is neither critical nor falsifiable. Finally, Finkelstein and Silberman's book is judged as an unsuccessful attempt to return to the methods of “biblical archaeology” that were legitimately impeached in the mid-1970s.     

Precision Medicine: Historiography of Life Sciences and the Geneticization of the Clinics**

In 2013, Hans Jörg Rheinberger proposed that Mendelian genetics and molecular biology were “scientific ideologies,” that is, for him they are systems of thought whose objects are hyperbolic; they are not, or not yet, in the realm of and not, or not yet, under the control of that system. This article proposes that precision medicine today is a scientific ideology and analyses the implications of this statement for historians of biology, genetics, and medicine.     

From the mouth of babes,strength: Psalm 8 and the book of Isaiah

ABSTRACT

As a response to my previous article on Geshur, Nadav Na’aman has recently brought up the history of Geshur. Much is at stake concerning the methodological approach in how archaeological data and the Hebrew Bible are used to reconstruct ancient realities. Geshur is a prime example of how archaeological data should not be interpreted and used. Na’aman’s hypothesis on Geshur is built on conjectures, obscure readings, textual emendations, arguments from authority, lack of methodological discipline, and circular reasoning. The reconstruction of Geshur highlights the importance of investigating the core of the arguments concerning any proposal on ancient Israel.

Geshur may well have existed, but unless something substantial can be said of Geshur, the name is as hollow as the names of the Hivvites, Girgashites, and Perizzites. We do not know when it existed or what its culture, extent, religion, or capital was. The biblical references could well go back to a very small entity or a small town that grew in importance in the transmission of the text. In sum, we do not know much more than its name and perhaps the very approximate area, but this information amounts to next to nothing.     

Envisioning Artifacts: a Classic Maya View of the Archaeological Record

This paper explores a Classic Maya (ca. AD 250–900) “material vision”—that is, a locally determined and culturally specific way of understanding the material world, its salient qualities, and associated meanings—based on evidence found in hieroglyphic texts from across the Maya world. Understanding Classic Maya ways of seeing the material world is an important undertaking as part of exploring alignments and misalignments between ancient indigenous and modern archaeological understandings of what today we view as “artifacts.” This topic is explored in the article through two related inquiries: first, I look at “artifacts” (i.e., materials that qualify as such, in an archaeological material vision) recorded in the hieroglyphic record, yielding thematic understandings of objects related to form and function, wholeness versus brokenness, and the relational potential of objects. Second, I use ten hieroglyphic property qualifiers that indicate Maya material perceptions and categories to gain explicit insight into some organizing principles within a Maya way of visualizing the material world. Throughout the article, I ask: can we envision archaeological objects using Maya conceptions, and how does this way of seeing align or misalign with archaeological material engagements?     

A method for the analysis of Pacific Island fishbone assemblages and an associated database management system

A method is described for the sorting and identification of archaeological fishbone assemblages from the tropical Pacific region using a comparative collection of about 300 species of Pacific fishes. This involves several stages of sorting and re-bagging to break down the task into manageable proportions. Bones identified routinely are the dentary, articular, quadrate, premaxilla, maxilla, and several “special” bones which are characteristic of certain fishes. The identification method is serviced by a computer database management system, which allows interactive and recursive analysis of results at several levels. At the lowest level it allows entry of new data into the system, and at the highest level permits comparative study of ancient fishing behaviour from selections of assemblages from various parts of the Pacific. About 17,000 identifications are at present on file from Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia.     

The smallest ideological and political battlefield: depicting borders on postage stamps – the case of Israel

There are few dozen areas in dispute around the world, where the borders have not been agreed by the involved parties or by the international community. The dispute over the Israeli border is particularly complex as it not only presents disagreement between the opposing sides in play but also in the international arena and within the Israeli political system and society. This paper examines one way in which the State of Israel is trying to define its borders through postage stamps. The argument raised is that Israel issues stamps that deal with disputed territorial areas in accordance with the ideology of the ruling party of a certain period, as well as the respective social consensus surrounding a particular area. Our findings support this argument and find three meta‐messages incorporated into the stamps, including the historical connection between the State of Israel and the land of Israel, unified Jerusalem, and the Christian connection to Jerusalem.     

The Qing Dynasty Ministry of Justice Memorials and “The New History”

The Qing Dynasty Grand Secretariat Archives are considered to be among the four great ancient texts discovered in modern Chinese history, and the memorials from the Ministry of Justice have garnered particular attention due to their well-preserved socio-economic content(s). From the 20th century onwards the New History, with its emphasis on drawing upon the social sciences’ discussions of citizens, communities and society, came to replace the more traditional “Imperial Genealogy” style of historiography, affording us a grander view of history. Progressing forward with “the times,” the New History continued to innovate and diversify the field; in terms of Qing dynasty social historical research, it brought about constant exploration and change within the field, first having shifted from socio-economic history to social history, then moving on to life history, the investigation of the “seeds of capitalism,” class relations, lower-class society, marriage and family relations, law and justice, gender studies, daily life (“life, livelihood and environment”), and so on, continually pushing the boundaries of academic research. Yet, underlying all this change was a close relationship between the use of the Ministry of Justice Memorials and the field’s overall development. This article not only introduces several findings made by academicians in using the Ministry of Justice Memorials, but also sets out to further reveal the relationship between the New History and the memorials themselves, probing into the deeper question of broader changes in historiography and their relationship with generational shifts in intellectual thought.     

The ethnoarchaeology of firewood management in the Fang villages of Equatorial Guinea, central Africa: Implications for the interpretation of wood fuel remains from archaeological sites

In archaeological literature, the study of trees and wood remains is a topic of relatively marginal interest, especially compared to texts on crops and human–animal relations. However, charcoal is the most frequent botanical remain found in archaeological sites. Charcoal analysis can therefore play a major role in the development of studies in both landscape and palaeoethnobotanical reconstruction. The majority of the archaeological charcoal assemblages reflect the exploitation of wood as an energy source (fuel). The archaeological study of firewood selection has been predominantly developed from “eco-utilitarian” or “subsistence economy” perspectives, but has not yet considered fuel collection and use as one of the most enduring categories of human–environment interactions, nor has archaeology looked into its potential as a source of empirical information on past perceptions of, and interactions with, ancient landscapes. The aim of this paper is to expand previous archaeological work on the interpretation of charcoal macro-remains through the study of firewood collection as a historically constituted, socially mediated and archaeologically observable landscape practice. In order to achieve this, we present an ethnoarchaeological case study from the Fang society of Equatorial Guinea (central Africa) aimed at gaining a better understanding of the complex interactions between cultural, ecological and economic variables in firewood collection strategies.     

Dealing with Tribes and States in Ancient Palestine

This paper offers a critique on state formation theories used in the explanation of the rise of the biblical United Monarchy. The last three decades of archaeological and biblical research have shown that there is no firm evidence for speaking of a kingdom or empire of David and Solomon in ancient Palestine. Thus what is proposed here is to evaluate the archaeological record through the data provided by the ethnological record of the Middle East, keeping the biblical stories apart from this interpretation. The analysis of the dynamics and structure of Middle Eastern “tribal states” and “chiefdom societies”, including here the practice of patronage bonds, gives us important keys for understanding Palestine's societies. The historical perspective that appears then is one different from the Bible's stories and from modern ideas such as “states” and “nations”, offering us instead a better methodology for reconstructing ancient Palestine's historical past.