1st Edition
The Changing Landscape of Israeli Archaeology Between Hegemony and Marginalization
Focused on the connections between archaeology and Israeli society, this book examines the development of Israeli archaeological research, taking historical, sociological, and political contexts into account.
Adopting a Foucauldian framework of power and knowledge, the author begins by focusing on archaeological knowledge as a hegemonic discipline, buttressing the national Zionist identity after the establishment of the State of Israel. The liberalization of political culture in the late 1970s, it is argued, opened the door for a more democratized archaeological discipline. Making use of in-depth interviews with archaeologists belonging to various groups in Israeli society as well as documents from the Israel State Archives (ISA), the book touches on multiple fields of research, including Near Eastern archaeology, religious Jewish society, Israel/Palestine relations, and the status of women in Israel. Moreover, although the book deals with the sociology of Israeli archaeology specifically, the author’s comparative approach—which highlights the mirroring of social processes and the archaeological discipline—can also be applied to other societies.
The book will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of archaeology, sociology, and Israel Studies, as well as to readers with a general interest in the archaeology of the Holy Land.
Biography
Hayah Katz is a senior lecturer in the Department of Land of Israel Studies at Kinneret College. Her main field of expertise is biblical archaeology. Another research focus is the historiography of archaeological research in the Land of Israel from the 1920s until modern times. As part of this research, she has written the biography of Ruth Amiran.
"Hayah Katz’s book The Changing Landscape of Israeli Archaeology is an original study, which includes a number of 'firsts' in terms of subjects. It treats expertly the secular archaeology of the establishment and the Academy in the first decades of Israel, and the responses to it by the religious Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli communities. The discussion of women in Israeli archaeology is a bonus. The author is a religious, open-minded archaeologist, and her writing expresses clarity and empathy."
Raz Kletter, Docent for Near Eastern Archaeology, University of Helsinki
