In Digging the homeland (CNRS Editions, 336 pages, 26 euros), historian Chloé Rosner shows how archeology can contribute to building a nation. Tracing the trajectory of this discipline from Palestine under Ottoman domination in the 19th centurye century, this postdoctoral student at the National Institute of Art History (INHA) highlights how nascent Zionism took over archaeology. This work, resulting from a thesis defended in 2020 at Sciences Po, thus underlines the decisive role of Jewish archeology as a crucible of Israeli identity.
How do you experience the current situation in Israel, after years of exploring this country for your history thesis on Jewish archaeology?
The situation on the Israeli-Palestinian terrain was already very sensitive before the Hamas attacks on October 7. As a researcher, you have to weigh each word used and you feel a certain pressure, because the interlocutors expect you to position yourself politically.
This news convinces me of the need for research to show the complexity of a subject like Zionism, which we tend to treat as a monolithic movement, while history shows developments and fault lines which would require talking about of “Zionisms” in the plural. With this thesis, I specifically wanted to explore the relationship with the territory through archaeology, a field where memory, religion and politics are intertwined.
How has “digging out the homeland” constituted a decisive issue throughout Israel’s modern history?
Archeology played a major role in the construction of the triptych of identity, culture and territory, whether within the framework of the national Zionist project then during the first decades of building the State of Israel at the beginning of the 20th century.e century. Historically, the Zionist movement is made up of Jews from multiple countries and cultures, whose identity and relationship to Judaism differ. Archeology is then a means of coming together to form a nation around a common memory materialized by vestiges and anchored on Palestinian and then Israeli territory.
The discipline is seen as a means of bringing out the Jewish past in order to make Palestine, inhabited by another people, a homeland – which has the consequence of ignoring other pasts, memories or traditions associated with it. . This is how archeology became an issue, which continued after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
The latter will thus seek to erase the traces of Palestine under British mandate [ce territoire, longtemps intégré à l’Empire ottoman, est passé sous mandat colonial du Royaume-Uni en 1922] to “Israelize” the territory. Archeology will thus make it possible to show that the Jewish people were united, and that they have a historical existence that must be revived.
You have 85% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.