An Afterword on History, Archaeology and Heritage in Israel/Palestine
Community Archaeology in Israel/Palestine - Raz Kletter
Emanuel Pfoh [+]
CONICET & University of Helsinki
Emanuel Pfoh, Ph.D., is a researcher at the National Research Council (CONICET), Argentina, and at the Centre of Excellence "Ancient Near Eastern Empires", University of Helsinki, Finland. His publications include The Emergence of Israel in Ancient Palestine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Equinox, 2009), Anthropology and the Bible: Critical Perspectives (edited for Gorgias Press, 2010), The Politics of Israel’s Past: The Bible, Archaeology and Nation-Building (co-edited with Keith W. Whitelam for Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013), and T&T Clark Handbook of Anthropology and the Hebrew Bible (edited for Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2022). His research interests are the historical and political anthropology of Syria–Palestine in the Late Bronze Age, the history of Israel and Palestine in the first millennium BCE and the politics of biblical scholarship.
Description
This brief afterword reflects critically and with a historical perspective on how community archaeology contributes both to handle the key relationship between archaeology and heritage in Israel/Palestine, and to the historical constructions of the most ancient (usually biblically related) past in the light of present communities of interpretation—be it religious, academic, secular, etc. Nationalist and political perspectives on heritage and archaeological practice should be transcended through properly inclusive modes of integrating the past of the region, which is in fact shared and multivocal.