When it was founded in 1865, the Palestine Exploration Fund was the first society created specifically to investigate “the archaeology, geography, manners, customs and culture, geology and natural history of the Holy Land”. Although clergymen were instrumental in its creation, the Fund consciously positioned itself as a scientific, rather than a religious society. It was swift to launch itself into the field, with Warren and Birtles’ expedition to Jerusalem from 1867, Kitchener and Conder’s Survey of Palestine begun in 1872, and Palmer’s Ordnance Survey of Sinai in 1882. In the last quarter of the 19th century, archaeologists were either independent scholars or worked in museums; the secular orientation of Levantine archaeology in the UK, combined with its imperial interests in the region, meant that its leading practitioners came initially from the military, later from oriental institutes, and by the second quarter of the 20th century, from departments of Classics or archaeology.
Today 33 universities in the UK offer an undergraduate degree in archaeology, and 37 offer theology and religious studies at an undergraduate level. However, the heritage of Bliss, Macalister, Flinders Petrie and Kenyon is struggling within British academia. Only 11 departments offer modules that include Levantine archaeology — with a strong preference for the Palaeolithic-Neolithic and Roman periods or broader Near Eastern syntheses; a degree in which the majority of options are taken from the Levant and that include the Bronze and Iron Ages or post-Roman periods is possible at only three of them. Individual modules on Israelite religion are equally rare within the departments of Theology and Religious Studies. Of course, the PEF and the CBRL actively sponsor British research across the regional post-graduate or post-doctoral levels, and scholars at individual institutions continue to run research projects; even so, we should be concerned about the long-term health of the discipline within UK universities.
There are two strands to this concern, both of them bound up in wider forces that are not peculiar to the UK. The instability of Syria and Iraq has driven archaeologists from the field and is reorienting research towards libraries and museums. There is much necessary work to be done there, but in the short to medium term it means that graduates are losing field experience. This connects with a shift in emphasis within universities away from empirical observations to data framed by theory. This is a good thing, but within the constraints of a three-year broad undergraduate degree students are not trained in typology and classification of complex material culture in any depth in any discipline. It is expected that such in depth knowledge will be acquired within the context of a doctorate-level dissertation. We are producing scholars who are experts in very narrow ranges of material culture within specific time-frames.
In part this is the consequence of choosing to study the material culture of a region that is not our own. Yet the sizable audiences at PEF lectures and those of sister organisations shows that there is a clear public interest in the archaeology of the region and we do need experts to cater to their needs in the future. Popular and academic books still sell, museums are still popular and many visit the region as tourists. The difficulty is translating this interest into higher education. Fewer trained experts means fewer capable of offering modules; fewer modules means smaller academic interest and fewer young scholars coming into the field. In the UK, the most energetic and responsive sector is that of the 1-year taught Masters degree: it is the arena where modules are tried out and shifts in popularity of particular subjects are most readily apparent: see, for example, the rise in conflict and heritage studies as a result of recent political events across the world.
The PEF, particularly once it has moved to its new premises later this year, will continue its role as research facilitators and will be able to embark on outreach activities and thus will play its part in keeping the subject alive. The shrinking of the university sector needs a strategic vision, co-ordinated across the universities both within the UK and in the Levant, to ensure the training of young scholars across all aspects of the discipline into the future.