9 Resisting and Remaking Heritage Work: An Archaeology of the Surface in Acre's Old City

Abstract

The Old City of Acre (‘Akka) is home to a predominantly Palestinian community within the larger Israeli municipality of Acre. Bounded by late eighteenth and early nineteenth century land and sea walls, the Old City's dense mix of Ottoman and Crusader-era architecture sits on a peninsula less than one square kilometer in area on the Mediterranean coast. In 2001, the World Heritage Committee designated the Old City as a UNESCO World Heritage site, intensifying the Israeli state project of developing the city as an international tourist attraction. This chapter examines contemporary interventions on the surfaces of the Old City by way of photographic surface survey. Documented surface interventions include residents’ deposition of bread for animals to eat and fishermen to use as bait and surface adornments that reflect local aesthetic values. An archaeological analysis draws attention to an expansive repertoire of local care practices. Residents selectively appropriate the language and work of “heritage” to represent their own histories and serve their own aspirations against the grain of the state project, offering an alternative theorization of heritage that insists on maintaining ‘Akka as at once a historic and livable space.