Archaeology, Politics, and Identity in the Modern Middle East

1. Arch 1810. Under the Tower of Babel: Archaeology, Politics, and Identity in the Modern Middle East Spring 2010 Keywords for the course: archaeology, nationalism, modernity, politics, heritage (and others) February 2, 2010

2. Mehmet II enters Constantinople Fausto Zonaro, (1854-1929)

4. British Empire 1897

6. keyword colonialism “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

7. keyword colonialism mapmaking and material documentation of colonized landscapes archaeology: a “scientific” method of knowing an “antique” land

8. 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)

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

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

14. archaeology in the context of 19th century colonialism: archaeology as part of the industrialist interventions from the West, employing, exporting technologies and scientific methodologies. a way of systematically knowing the colonized landscape, surveying it, mapping it, studying its antiquities, ruins, its “antique” riches a way of acquiring objects for Western museums and supplying them with splendid collections serves a religious purpose as well discovery of places, cities, empires mentioned in the Biblical texts. Archaeology concretely legitimized the Biblical past. Very critical for European claim for Mesopotamian heritage. Lines up well with missionary activity.

15. Austin Henry Layard (1817-1894) Excavations at the site of Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), in Northern Iraq.

17. a former botanist Paul Emile Botta appointed as French consul in Mosul (1842) Excavations on the mound of Khorsabad (1843-1845) on the behalf of the Louvre museum

18. keyword archaeology argument: with its entangled history with colonialism, archaeology is inherently political

19. 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 taking away of artifacts, regulation of the practice of archaeological practices of Western 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 as part of the project of modernity...

21. keyword nationalism cultural artifact of some kind, of the late 18th and 19th centuries, nation state: an imagined political community based on ethno-linguistic, ethno-religious identities of a dominant group

22. Nation and its Ruins: Stripping the Parthenon, an (ancient) monument to national identity

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

24. Parthenon and its historical “burdens”

25. Stripped Parthenon and the Athenian Acropolis

26. keyword modernity • “an incomplete project”, a utopia • 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 • secularist “civil” religion • Modernism in the Middle East: “other modernities” • archaeology as an exported science in the service of the nation state ideologies.

27. Ankara: the heart of Turkey a 1934 documentary by Sergei Yutkevich, with the invitation by M.K. Ataturk on the new modernism of the Turkish Republic, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of its foundation

31. Archaeology, politics, heritage Archaeological sites as sites of imagination (as Imagined Pasts) Heritage places “Heritage is ofthe past in the present” Nick Shepherd

32. Heritage Places Global interests: UNESCO and the idea of world heritage Places of local meaning and practice: Religious claims of belonging Storied landscapes State ideology: official and archaeological narratives national identities

33. Leech Pond at Kerkenes Dag

34. Kerkenes Dag