https://orcid.org/0009-0009-3680-1460
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ABSTRACT
Within the social, religious, and political context of present-day Jerusalem, soil is meaningful and marketable. This is evident in the Temple Mount Sifting Project, an archaeological tourist venture in occupied East Jerusalem. There, for almost two decades, archaeologists and many thousands of visitors have sieved through tons of earth—construction debris from building works on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif that were undertaken without archaeological supervision. The Sifting Project has recovered thousands of finds and, yet, come under scrutiny from an archaeological practice point of view, particularly, because the material is out of context. Even though the debris itself is treated and presented as archaeological soil, “backdirt,” it does not actually derive from a controlled excavation. How, then, is the material different from construction debris from other building sites where it would be treated as modern waste, rather than a gateway to the past? Within the soil the Sifting Project is concerned with, the worlds of archaeology, religion, and politics collide. This contribution examines the concept of backdirt within the contexts of archaeological practice, politics, and the heritage industry in occupied East Jerusalem.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my thanks to the peer-reviewers and journal editors for their very helpful and insightful comments on the initial drafts of this article.
Disclosure Statement
The author confirms that there are no competing interests to declare.
Notes
1 The term “occupied East Jerusalem” reflects International Law, according to which East Jerusalem has been under Israeli occupation since 1967.
2 The name “Solomon’s Stables” goes back to the 12th century a.d., the Crusader period, when the Knights Templar used the Temple Mount as their headquarters and the vaulted subterranean space as stables. At that time, the entire artificial platform was associated with Solomon’s legendary construction projects described in the Book of Kings. A source from this period describes the structure as “a wondrous building, resting on piers and containing an endless complication of arches and vaults” (Theoderich 31; Gibson and Jacobson Citation1996, 269).
4 El’ad’s activities are discussed in detail by, for example, Galor (Citation2017, 127), Nasrallah (Citation2020, 172), and Emek Shaveh (Citation2023).
5 A vast amount of scholarship has been dedicated to studying the relationship between archaeology and nationalism in Israel (e.g., Silberman Citation1989; Abu El-Haj Citation2001; Baram Citation2008)—to the extent that R. Kletter notes that the “myth busters” re-revealing this fact “are becoming trivial” (Citation2006, 315).
6 The “Right of Return” allows people of Jewish heritage to reclaim houses abandoned behind the 1948 ceasefire lines; it does not apply to Palestinians.
7 On the control over land through national parks in occupied East Jerusalem, see, for example, Greenberg (Citation2009a) and Braverman (Citation2021).
8 I would like to thank Professor Raphael Greenberg for drawing my attention to this.
9 The NGOs’ sponsors include oligarchs Roman Abramovich and Eugene Shvidler (Reich and Shukron Citation2021). See also the BBC short: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-54237970.
10 See M. Dumper (Citation2002) on the politics of sacred space.
12 See also publications by IAA archaeologists, placing the events in a wider context: Avni and Seligman (Citation2001, Citation2006); Seligman (Citation2013).
13 Eventually, the relationship between the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Department of Antiquities improved, and several supervised excavations were conducted in the 1990s. This period was short-lived, as is evident in the site’s presentation to the public as a combination of a tourist attraction and a religious site (Kletter Citation2019, 50–64).
14 On the Mughrabi Quarter, see, for example: Abowd (Citation2002); Al-Jubeh (Citation2019); Lemire (Citation2023). See Kletter (Citation2019) for a critique on recent developments at the Western Wall Plaza.
15 See also the 780,000 year old site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in northern Israel, which was bulldozed by the Sea of Galilee Drainage Authority (KDA) in their efforts to reduce the impact of regular flooding of the Jordan River in the Hula Valley. IAA archaeologist Gideon Avni explained the lack of attention from the public: “But this is part of the sociology of Israel. The interest in biblical archaeology is greater than that for earlier or later periods” (Romey Citation2000a).
16 See also the pamphlet titled Too Much Stuff on disposal policies within UK museums (National Museums Directors’ Conference Citation2003).
17 See, for example: Greenberg (Citation2009a, 266); Ilan and Gadot (Citation2010, 106); Seligman (Citation2013, 186); Bar (Citation2018, 21).
18 This is not to justify or defend standards of archaeological practice in occupied East Jerusalem, but rather the aim is to set it within a wider global context of archaeology as an entirely imperfect discipline.
19 C. Bonacchi (Citation2022, 5) argues that “the role of public archaeology, public history and heritage studies is in fact to expose appropriations of the past of all types, so that citizens are aware of them and their social and political implications, and are thus able to make more fully informed decisions.”
20 The Israeli archaeology activist group Emek Shaveh promotes archaeological outreach as such. See: https://emekshaveh.org/en/.
22 Ironically, then and now, Tutankhamun’s funerary mask is the epitome of ancient treasure.
23 Further, the consensus is that the study of out-of-context, unprovenanced material encourages the illicit trade of antiquities (Sease Citation1997; Renfrew Citation2000; Kersel Citation2023).
24 The sifting project directors, on the other hand, claim that eyewitnesses observed and followed the trucks that removed the debris from its original location outside the el-Marwani mosque and that they have further evidence confirming the legitimacy of the material that is being sifted (Shragai Citation2005, 10). This argument is largely based on the large number of fragments of Islamic tiles (opus sectile) from the Dome of the Rock that have been retrieved through sifting the debris.
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Elisabeth Sawerthal
Elisabeth Sawerthal (Ph.D. 2023, King’s College London) is a researcher at King’s College London and librarian at the Palestine Exploration Fund. Her research interests include divination in ancient Egypt and in the Hebrew Bible, heritage, and the politics of the past and the roles of archaeology and biblical studies in the MENA region today.