Archaeology, Nation, and Race: Confronting the Past, Decolonizing the Future in Greece and Israel by Raphael Greenberg and Yannis Hamilakis

Abstract

Reviewed by: Archaeology, Nation, and Race: Confronting the Past, Decolonizing the Future in Greece and Israel by Raphael Greenberg and Yannis Hamilakis Dimitri Nakassis (bio) Raphael Greenberg and Yannis Hamilakis, Archaeology, Nation, and Race: Confronting the Past, Decolonizing the Future in Greece and Israel. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xvi + 218. 25 figures. Paperback $25.99. In a seminal article in 1973, David Clarke declared archaeology’s “loss of innocence,” which he understood as the ongoing process of critical disciplinary definition. Clarke’s paper sketched the radical changes, especially the renewed interest in theory, that then roiled the discipline. Fifty years later, Raphael Greenberg and Yannis Hamilakis present a discussion of a new loss of innocence (161) and a new horizon in archaeology’s development, one that promises to be fertile ground for future exploration. Their aim is to expose archaeology’s “deep roots in colonialism and racism” and “to rebuild archaeology on entirely new foundations” (3). Their method for doing so is not a conventional academic monograph, but rather a series of structured conversations with themselves as interlocutors. Individual chapters focus on archaeology’s colonial origins, its practice in crypto-colonial contexts, the notion of purification, the role of nationalism and race in the development of the discipline, and decolonization. These themes are explored through engagement with the archaeology and politics of the modern nations of Israel and Greece. Clarke (1973, 8) observed that “each archaeology is of its time,” and this book is especially and avowedly so. The influence of the Black Lives Matter movement in particular, but also that of the pandemic, are tangibly felt and indeed highlighted by the authors (3). The book owes its genesis to a seminar taught by the authors at Brown University in the spring of 2020, followed by conversations via video conferencing during the lockdown. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that the main novelty of this book, at least for this reviewer, is its emphasis on race in Mediterranean archaeology. In a Greek context, of course, the issue of race has become especially pressing with the rise of racialized politics and violence against migrants from Africa and Asia, prompting a growing interest in race among Greek scholars (e.g., Avdela et al. 2017). What emerges clearly from that research and the present book is how powerful a lens race is for the study of archaeology’s development: it is critical for analysis not only of the present state of the discipline but also of its history, and it is a sufficiently productive frame that it must be considered on a par with the concept of the nation, to which it has long been subordinated (Hamilakis 2007, 2020). Greenberg and Hamilakis range widely over a broad intellectual terrain. A brief introduction to the authors’ intellectual histories and orientations (chapter 1) sets the stage for an engaging discussion in chapter 2 about the origins and historical trajectories of Greek and Israeli archaeologies. [End Page 149] Crypto-colonialism—that fertile concept first articulated by Michael Herzfeld (2002)—is the subject of chapter 3, which provides a productive lens for comparison of the Greek and Israeli cases and their “superimposed colonialisms” (58). Chapter 4 focuses on archaeology as purification, from the practice of removing material traces and communities seen as out of place to the archaeological desire for purity of categories (e.g., the hard boundaries between chronological periods). Race is the analytical focus of chapter 5, which concludes with a detailed discussion of archaeogenetic studies and the ways that they re-inscribe racial categories. The penultimate chapter (chapter 6) meditates on decolonization, understood not simply as an academic endeavor but as a broad political project. A short conclusion (chapter 7) summarizes the aims of the volume. This is an important book that should have a significant impact on archaeology, for it sets an ambitious agenda for the future of the discipline. Greenberg and Hamilakis’s goal is nothing less than an emancipatory archaeology with the potential to liberate us all from the coloniality that defines our relationship with the past and present (171). Greece and Israel are potent sites for such an undertaking, both because of the dense entanglement of the ancient...