Dr. Shelley-Anne Peleg wanted to be an archaeologist from a young age. Shortly after her family made aliyah from South Africa, they went on a trip to Masada. The desert fortress had been excavated by Yigael Yadin in one of the most celebrated archaeological digs in Israel’s history. Dr. Peleg has worked in archaeology, she says, “since I became a grown-up” – first as a student at the Hebrew University, then for decades with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). But alongside the digging, another question kept nagging at her: how did archaeology come into being?
This question lies at the heart of her five-part Beit Avi Chai series “The History of Archaeology” which traces the field in this land from the mid-XIX century to the present. In recent years, Peleg says, she has given increased attention to “the development of archaeology as a scientific profession.”
From exploration to archaeology
The story begins in mid-XIX-century Jerusalem with two British officers, Charles Wilson and Charles Warren. Peleg emphasizes that neither of them was an archaeologist in the modern sense. “Both were engineers,” she says. “They had no idea what archaeology was all about.” Wilson came to the city in 1864 to carry out the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem. One of his discoveries was the great arch that still carries his name next to the Western Wall. Warren followed a few years later, digging beneath the city on behalf of the newly founded Palestine Exploration Fund and finding the shaft that bears his name in the City of David.
Once their assignments were complete, she notes, “both of them transferred to other positions that had nothing to do with researching the past.” Wilson went on to head the Ordnance Survey, while Warren became Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London, where he presided over the hunt for Jack the Ripper. For both, then, Jerusalem was a job, not a vocation. The person who turned exploration into a science, Peleg says, was the Englishman William Matthew Flinders Petrie. “He was a genius,” she says. Petrie spent years excavating tombs in Egypt and began to work out the sequence of the dynasties that had ruled there. His crucial insight was that this Egyptian sequence was also relevant to what lay in the ground of the Holy Land. “He connected the dots,” Peleg explains. He grasped that the layers of an ancient site were a timeline: “lower is earlier, higher is later.” Once an object that could be linked to the Egyptian chronology was found in a particular layer, the entire layer could be dated, even hundreds of miles from Egypt. Petrie put these ideas to work in 1890 at Tell el-Hesi, in southern Israel, in what is often described as the first stratigraphic excavation in the country. Because pottery styles changed over time, even an ordinary potsherd could prove more useful for dating a layer than a spectacular treasure.
Just as revolutionary, in Peleg’s view, was Petrie’s insistence on recording everything. “He showed it was important to document every single find in its relevant place on the site,” she says, “so if we made a mistake later, we could refer to the original documentation. People didn’t do that before; they just collected.” That, she says, is why he is the father of scientific archaeology.
The British Mandate: Bringing order to excavation
The next great leap came with British rule. When they established the Department of Antiquities, Peleg says, “their contribution was huge.” For the first time, archaeological excavation was regulated by law. “People couldn’t just come and dig whatever they wanted,” she explains. Excavators needed a license, as well as authorization to remove finds from the country. They also had to provide detailed documentation of their discoveries and demonstrate their ability to restore some of the objects they excavated. The department ran an inspection unit, and it invited foreign academic schools to excavate under its supervision. “We still use the Antiquities Law today in Israel,” Peleg notes. The Mandate also left behind the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem, opened in 1938 and known today as the Rockefeller Museum, which still houses many of the finds of that period.
Megiddo: A new era of excavation
The site that best illustrates this era, according to Peleg, is Megiddo. Its story began earlier, during the late Ottoman period, with the German excavator Gottlieb Schumacher, who, she says, “made huge mistakes but had a broad scientific approach.” Schumacher dug at Megiddo from 1903 to 1905; this was followed by a major excavation under the auspices of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute between 1925 and 1939, funded by John D. Rockefeller Jr. The American excavators made a methodological breakthrough. Rather than attempting to excavate the entire mound, they concentrated on different sections, an approach whose results can still be seen at the site today. This allowed them to identify about 30 different layers of occupation, which, Peleg says, was “scientifically speaking, important.” They also introduced new means of documentation, including photography from above so that the different parts of the site could be pieced together, using aerial photographs from a camera suspended beneath a balloon.
The finds were spectacular: a Canaanite palace with its famous carved ivories, Israelite structures including ‘King Solomon’s Stables,’ and a sacred area for offerings. Together, Peleg says, they provided “a good picture of the development of the city,” which could be compared to historical sources describing Megiddo under Egyptian rule, and have formed the basis of the ongoing debate as to whether some remains date to King Solomon’s time.
Archaeology in the new State of Israel
With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, archaeology entered a new chapter. What happens when a young state begins to excavate its own past? Peleg notes that the new Israeli administration first wanted to develop tourist sites such as Masada, Avdat, and Beit She’an. At the same time, it continued the British legacy: inspecting sites and launching the Archaeological Survey of Israel, which set out to identify and document sites above ground, without excavating them. From then on, construction projects required archaeological clearance.
Peleg acknowledges that connecting Jewish identity to the land, through sites like Masada and ancient Jerusalem, mattered a great deal, and that these places became symbols of the newly established country. But she insists the picture is broader. “It’s not just about Jewish identity,” she says. “It’s also about understanding the sequence and what led to what.” Today, she emphasizes, Israeli archaeology looks at “the past of all the civilizations of this country.”
Peleg’s own career reflects that breadth. She joined the IAA as a young archaeologist in the early 1990s, shortly after it replaced the Department of Antiquities in 1990, and had what she calls “the privilege” of helping uncover the Crusader remains of Acre. “I uncovered the toilets,” she says. These were the latrines of the vast compound of the Knights Hospitaller, part of the Crusader capital of the Kingdom of Acre that helped earn the city its listing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001. She went on to develop educational programs to help the public understand both Acre and Beit She’an.
For Peleg, Acre shows how the different strands of modern archaeology come together. The city was the main gateway to the Holy Land for medieval pilgrims. After its destruction, the ruins became the foundations for the Ottoman city built on top of them, the city in which people still live today. “It all comes together,” she says: “excavations, conservation issues and tourist development.”
The Future: Preserving what we have unearthed
Asked about the future of archaeology in Israel, Peleg gives an answer that may surprise those who imagine archaeologists are always eager to dig. “First of all,” she says. “I wish there would be fewer excavations.” Salvage excavations ahead of construction are one thing, she explains, because they mean the country is developing, which is important. “But afterwards the site is destroyed and built over.” Most excavations in Israel today are salvage digs of this kind. While research into the past matters, she argues, far more time and money should go into conserving the sites already uncovered and preventing their deterioration. “Without investment, those sites will be lost,” she warns.
It’s a fitting conclusion to the history of archaeology in the land. The XIX century engineers wanted to find things; Petrie taught the field to record them; the British taught it to regulate them. The challenge now, Peleg believes, is to make sure that what has been found survives – so that these sites can go on telling “the whole story of the cultural heritage of this country.”
For more, see Dr. Shelley-Anne Peleg’s English-language online series at BAC, “The History of Archaeology ”.
Main Photo: The Knights halls Acre\ Ariel Manor, from the PikiWiki website\ Wikipedia
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