Underground – Archaeological Research in the West Bank, 1948–1967: Management, Complexity, and Israeli Involvement

Abstract

The years of the British Mandate to Palestine witnessed accelerated development in numerous realms, including the thriving of archaeological research. For the first time, a local department of antiquities was established and an impressive museum was opened. During this period, excavations were also conducted by resourcerich research teams (Ben-Arieh 1999a; 1999b). The leap in research also affectedmembers of the country’s Jewish population (Yishuv). In 1920, the initial excavation of Hamat Tiberias was conducted by the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society, and 1925 marked the establishment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which quickly began to take part in the excavations of the ‘Third Wall’ in Jerusalem (Ben-Arieh 2001). The increasing strength of the Yishuv also resulted in a growing number of studies, and more than 20 significant excavations were carried out by Jewish archaeologists who lived in the country during the Mandate. As a result of the violent clashes and the riots that occurred in Palestine over the future of the country and the authorities’ treatment of its inhabitants, British Royal Commissions were established to consider the situation. The various conclusions of these bodies included a call to partition Palestine, while leaving certain zones subject to different levels of international administration (Biger 2004). The commissions had little impact on the selection of the archaeological research sites of members of the Yishuv, which were being conducted throughout Palestine. For example, between 1940 and 1942, Moshe Stekelis (1993) excavated a prehistoric site in Bethlehem, and in 1941 he conducted exploratory excavations at Tinshemet Cave (Mugharet Al Watwat), located near Shuqba Cave in Wadi en-Natuf in western Samaria (Stekelis 1942) (Figure 1). The violent events themselves had significant influence on the excavations and resulted in their cessation on more than one occasion. However, as long as Palestine was not partitioned, it continued to be researched as a single unit. The outbreak of World War II resulted in a decline in the activity of the foreign research delegations and schools, raising the profile of local Jewish researchers, who never stopped excavating. They even continued a number of unexpectedly halted excavations that had been started by their foreign counterparts (as was the case of Stekelis’s excavation in Bethlehem). Jewish excavation enterprises, such as the Beit She’arim dig and the discovery of ancient synagogues, were incorporated into the constructing of the Zionist narrative. The close relationship between archaeology and nationalism that began to emerge at the time only intensified after the establishment of the state of Israel (Feige and Shiloni Ariel University, IL Corresponding author: Mordechay Lash (ml0524239691@gmail.com) Lash, M, et al. 2020. Underground – Archaeological Research in the West Bank, 1948–1967: Management, Complexity, and Israeli Involvement. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 30(1): 8, pp. 1–11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bha-650 Bulletin of the History of Archaeology