Keywords for the course: archaeology, nationalism, modernity, politics, heritage (and others)

February 2, 2010

Arch 1810. Under the Tower of Babel: Archaeology, Politics, and Identity in the Modern Middle EastSpring 2010

Mehmet IIenters ConstantinopleFausto Zonaro, (1854-1929)

British Empire 1897

colonialism

keyword

“conquest and control of other people’s land and goods”

• an economic relationship• politically contested (domination and resistance) • cultural encounter• cultural “othering”/stereotypes, cultural hegemony

colonialism

keyword

mapmaking and material documentation of colonized landscapes

archaeology: a “scientific” method of knowing an “antique” land

Carsten Niebuhr German Traveller, surveyer, geographer 1733-1815.“the scientific exploration of Egypt, Arabia and Syria” sponsored by Frederick V of Denmark.

Travels through Arabia (google book)

Description de l’Egypt Napoleon Bonaparte’s “scientific” expeditionto Egypt (1798-1801). Recording of natural history, flora and fauna, archaeology, physical geography,technology, weights and measures, hydrography, meteorology, medicine,

Photographs of an Armenian–Iranian photographer: Antoin Sevruguin (1840-1933)

archaeology in the context of 19th century colonialism:

a way of systematically knowing the colonizedlandscape, surveying it, mapping it,studying its antiquities, ruins, its “antique” riches

a way of acquiring objects for Western museums and supplying themwith splendid collections

serves a religious purpose as welldiscovery of places, cities, empires mentionedin the Biblical texts. Archaeology concretely legitimized the Biblical past. Very critical for European claim for Mesopotamian heritage.Lines up well with missionary activity.

archaeology as part of the industrialistinterventions from the West, employing,exporting technologies and scientificmethodologies.

Austin Henry Layard (1817-1894) Excavations at the site of Nimrud

(ancient Kalhu), in Northern Iraq.

Paul Emile Bottaappointed as French consul in Mosul (1842)

Excavations on the mound of Khorsabad (1843-1845)on the behalf of the Louvre museum

a former botanist

archaeologykeyword

argument:

with its entangled history with colonialism,archaeology is inherently political

discussion question!

in the 20th century, with the establishment of modern nation states,archaeology gains a new status.

introduction of antiquities laws that restricted the circulation and takingaway of artifacts, regulation of the practice of archaeological practices ofWestern archaeologists..

Western archaeologists as “scientists” in the field, battling with the“nationalist” elites of the host countries?

nationalism as an annoyance that gets in the way of “science”?

Mobilization of archaeology in the construction of new national identities aspart of the project of modernity...

nationalism

keyword

cultural artifact of some kind, of the late 18th and 19th centuries,

nation state: an imagined political communitybased on ethno-linguistic, ethno-religious identities of a dominant group

Nation and its Ruins:

Stripping the Parthenon, an (ancient) monument to national identity

Athenian Acropolis in ealy 19th c.. Edward Dodwell, Views in Greece (1821)

Parthenon and its historical “burdens”

Stripped Parthenon and the Athenian Acropolis

modernity

keyword

• industrialization, new technologies of production, conquest of nature, remaking of cities

• ideals of progress and standards of comfort, a utopia of transforming everyday life-importation of European parlimentary democracy, legal system, architecture and urban planning,

• complete rupture with the recent past- an interest in the ancient past“invention of antiquity”

• complete break with tradition- interest in innovation and the avant-garde

• Modernism in the Middle East: “other modernities”archaeology as an exported science in the service of the nation state ideologies.

• “an incomplete project”, a utopia

• secularist “civil” religion

Ankara: the heart of Turkey

a 1934 documentary by Sergei Yutkevich, with the invitation by M.K. Ataturkon the new modernism of the Turkish Republic, to commemorate the 10th anniversaryof its foundation

Archaeology, politics, heritage

Heritage places Archaeological sites as sites of imagination (as Imagined Pasts)

“Heritage is of the past in the present” Nick Shepherd

Heritage Places

Places of local meaning and practice:

Religious claims ofbelonging

Storied landscapes

State ideology:

official and archaeological narratives

national identities

Global interests:

UNESCO and the idea of world heritage

Leech Pond at Kerkenes Dag

Kerkenes Dag