Syro-Palestinian Archaeology - Origins

Origins

Modern Palestinian archaeology began in the late 19th century. Early expeditions lacked standardized methods for excavation and interpretation, and were often little more than treasure-hunting expeditions. A lack of awareness of the importance of stratigraphy in dating objects led to digging long trenches through the middle of a site that made work by later archaeologists more difficult.

Edward Robinson identified numerous sites from antiquity and published his findings with Eli Smith in a pivotal three-volume study entitled, Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions: Journal of Travels in the Year 1838. In Syria, Ernest Renan carried out research in the 1860s and Howard Crosby Butler of Princeton University carried out surveys of Byzantine Christian sites (1904–1909). In the early 1900s, major projects were set up at Samaria, Gezer, Megiddo and Jericho.

An early school of modern Palestinian archaeology was led by William F. Albright, whose work focused on biblical narratives. Albright himself held that Frederick Jones Bliss (1857–1939) was the father of Palestinian archaeology, although Bliss is not well known in the field. Jeffrey A. Blakely attributes this to Bliss' successor at the Palestine Exploration Fund, R.A.S. Macalister (1870–1950), who underplayed his predecessor's achievements.

While the importance of stratigraphy, typology and balk grew in the mid-twentieth century, the continued tendency to ignore hard data in favour of subjective interpretations invited criticism. Paul W. Lapp, for example, whom many thought would take up the mantle of Albright before his premature death in 1970, wrote:

"Too much of Palestinian archaeology is an inflated fabrication Too often a subjective interpretation, not based on empirical stratigraphic observation, is used to demonstrate the validity of another subjective interpretation. We assign close dates to a group of pots on subjective typological grounds and go on to cite our opinion as independent evidence for similarly dating a parallel group. Too much of Palestinian archaeology's foundation building has involved chasing ad hominem arguments around in a circle."

In 1974, William Dever established the secular, non-biblical school of Syro-Palestinian archaeology and mounted a series of attacks on the very definition of biblical archaeology. Dever argued that the name of such inquiry should be changed to "archaeology of the Bible" or "archaeology of the Biblical period" to delineate the narrow temporal focus of Biblical archaeologists. Frank Moore Cross, who had studied under Albright and had taught Dever, emphasized that in Albright's view biblical archaeology was not synonymous with Palestinian archaeology, but rather that, "William Foxwell Albright regarded Palestinian archaeology or Syro-Palestinian archaeology as a small, if important section of biblical archaeology. One finds it ironical that recent students suppose them interchangeable terms." Dever agreed that the terms were not interchangeable, but claimed that "'Syro-Palestinian archaeology' is not the same as the 'biblical archaeology'. I regret to say that all who would defend Albright and 'biblical archaeology' on this ground, are sadly out of touch with reality in the field of archaeology."

Towards the end of the twentieth century, Palestinian archaeology and/or Syro-Palestinian archaeology became a more interdisciplinary practice. Specialists in archaeozoology, archaeobotany, geology, anthropology and epigraphy now work together to produce essential environmental and non-environmental data in multidisciplinary projects.