Recent archaeological research at Saruq al‐Hadid,Dubai, UAE

In September 2014, the University of New England (UNE), Australia, began a three‐year programme of archaeological fieldwork and post‐excavation analyses focused on the site of Saruq al‐Hadid. In this paper, we present the initial results of our current field and laboratory research particularly related to site stratigraphy and formation processes, relative and absolute chronology, and the preliminary results of various programmes of post‐excavation analyses including archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, ceramic and archaeometallurgical studies. These studies provide new data to build into the archaeological understanding of Saruq al‐Hadid that has, to date, focused largely on intensive excavation.     

The Arab Peace Initiative: Now or Never

It has been almost a year now since President Obama set out for Cairo to deliver what has been seen as one of the largest overtures by the United States to publicly engage the Middle East. Unfortunately, despite the high hopes that this new administration garnered and the continuous efforts of high‐level American officials to put an end to the Arab–Israeli conflict, there is little fruit to bear on the ground. More often than not, the diplomatic breaches and hurdles to even get to the negotiating table have consumed the headlines, and 1 year later the multilateral relations in the region seem tepid at best. The repeated failures of the bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and Syria may be attributed to a number of factors, including a deep‐seated mistrust that has not been addressed, concerns over the long‐term security, and domestic political constraints to make the required concessions to reach an agreement. Yet while all of these elements contributed to the despondent current state of affairs, the one critical missing ingredient has been the absence of a comprehensive framework for peace representing the collective will of the Arab states. Now more than ever, the Arab Peace Initiative (API) offers the best possible chance of achieving an inclusive peace, provided that all parties to the conflict understand its significance and historic implications that have eluded all parties for more than six decades. The likelihood that the current lull in violence will continue if no progress is made on the political front is slim. If the Arab states want to show a united front, especially as the Iranian nuclear advances threaten the regional balance of power, they must finally and publically resolve to promote the API in earnest.     

Narrating the Self among Arab Americans: A Bridging Discourse between Arab Tradition and American Culture

This article expounds the nature of Arab American identity through an exploration of discourses and practices related to traveling and movement at global and local levels, with a particular emphasis on personal narratives of both men and women of different ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. Travel is dealt with here in its broad meaning and connotes migratory travel, and immigration. It also indicates traveling back and forth between the homeland and new land. Despite the fact that cross‐cultural studies of travel are scant, population movements and transnational migration are currently the focus of broad academic debates and surround such issues as transnational cultural relations, the renovation of migrants' social cosmologies, ¹ and the dynamics of identity reconstruction ( Axel, 2004 ; Clifford, 1988 ; Cohn, 1987 ; Coutin, 2003 ; el‐Aswad, 2004, 2006a ; Euben, 2006 ; Hall, 1990, 1992 ; Julian, 2004 ; Kaplan, 1996 ; Kennedy & Danks, 2001 ; Mintz, 1998 ; Tsing, 2000 ). This inquiry is contingent on ethnographic material gathered from 20 case studies addressing various experiences of Arab Americans living in the community of Dearborn, in the metropolitan Detroit area of Michigan. ² These case studies reveal some important and comparative theoretical insights that help us understand core features of the unity as well as the multiplicity, diversity, and plasticity of Arab American identity. The study concentrates on narratives of personal experience, defined as verbalized, visualized, and/or embodied framings of a sequence of actual or possible life events, through stories, narrations, diaries, memoirs, and letters ( Herman & Vervaeck, 2009 ; Ochs & Capps, 1996 ). Although personal narratives encompass a wide range of daily experiences, they are prototypes that express people's views of other cultures generated by travel or direct contact. Travel is used here to mean a range of material and spatial practices that generate knowledge, stories, traditions, books, and other cultural expressions ( Clifford, 1997 ; Euben, 2006 ). Cultures are understood by studying sites of dwelling, the local ground of collective life, and the effects of travel ( Clifford, 1997 ). Travel and migration or Diaspora ³ are prototypical rites of passage involving transition in space, territory, and group membership. They transform people's sense of themselves and others. For instance, migrants experience profound changes in their outlook and orientation as they move from the state of belonging to the homeland to that of belonging to the new land, generating a unique sense of multiple identities. The article aims to answer these questions: To what extent have travel and migration of the Arabs transformed their worldviews, including images of themselves, of others, and of new and old homelands? To what extent have these experiences of movement been incorporated into Arab American identities and articulated in their narratives as well? Do they view themselves as having one unified transnational identity, as being “Arab American,” or multiple identities? Is there a conflict of having multiple identities and maintaining one encompassing identity? And to what extent can Arab Americans be viewed as cultural mediators or agents bridging the West and the East (the Middle East) as well as the north and the south? These questions are examined within the perspectives and views of both Arab American writers and ordinary Arab immigrants of the Detroit metropolitan area. ⁴