An Amazing, Top-Rate Scholarly Work | Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial...

book: Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society | Nadia Abu El-Haj

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	• Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society Nadia Abu El-Haj University Of Chicago Press, 2002 - 363 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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Thought provoking

Scholarly, unbiased, thoughtful argument touching on a highly explosive, emotionally charged issue, nationhood. Insightful and courageous thinking. Explores how groups come to define themselves and suggests how distinctions and divisions among "tribes" of humans are created and promoted. Very interesting!

An Amazing, Top-Rate Scholarly Work

This is an amazing book that should be taught in every relevant course! As an archaeologist, I found it impeccably researched, well-written and indispensable. A must-read for those who are committed to rigorous scholarship as opposed to political agendas. What is most remarkable about this eye-opening book is the disciplined and highly sophisticated methodology in utilizing original sources in order to interrogate the construction of historical identity. The author masterfully examines the process of legitimization and transformation of land attachment into an ideological or religious attachment. This book will be required reading for my graduate and also advanced undergraduate students.

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Archaeology in Israel is truly a national obsession, a practice through which national identity?and national rights?have long been asserted. But how and why did archaeology emerge as such a pervasive force there? How can the practices of archaeology help answer those questions? In this stirring book, Nadia Abu El-Haj addresses these questions and specifies for the first time the relationship between national ideology, colonial settlement, and the production of historical knowledge. She analyzes particular instances of history, artifacts, and landscapes in the making to show how archaeology helped not only to legitimize cultural and political visions but, far more powerfully, to reshape them. Moreover, she places Israeli archaeology in the context of the broader discipline to determine what unites the field across its disparate local traditions and locations.

Boldly uncovering an Israel in which science and politics are mutually constituted, this book shows the ongoing role that archaeology plays in defining the past, present, and future of Palestine and Israel.

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