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Nadia Abu el-Haj
Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago

Abstract

The primary question put on the archaeological table after the founding of the Israeli state concerned the “character” of the “ancient Israelite conquest” of the “land of Canaan.” It was by that issue that the field would long be dominated, and by the divergent convictions regarding the character of that historical process by which it would long be “divided.” In this paper, I engage that debate not by focusing on the content of one or the other side of the argument. Instead, I highlight the work through which “answers” and “positions” in the dispute were produced, considering the convergence of positivism and nationalism that stood at its very core. Understanding this debate as an ongoing practice of nationhood, I trace the quest for “facts” and the epistemological commitments that underwrote it, thinking about the dynamic relationship between empiricism and nationalism, and how a commitment to the former gave (credible) form to the latter, not just in discursive, but moreover, in material cast.