Past Perfect? The Archaeologies of Mandate Palestine 1917–1948

Abstract

This book tells the story (stories) of the archaeologies of one small land, promised by the greatest twentieth-century Empire on earth to two peoples. It tells of the archaeology of the rulers, western and colonial, and of the three ‘local’ archaeologies, religious and nationalistic, which formed beside it. The book tells how the British High Commissioner could keep a desolate and barren field – the place of Golgotha – but not prevent the tenant from placing manure there before ploughing; he could only expropriate that field by public Show more