French Archaeologists Research Articles

Iron Age Metalworking at Masafi-1? A Reconsideration of the Metal Hoards Discovered in the Collective Buildings

Excavations in a series of superimposed Iron Age II collective buildings located at Masafi (Fujairah, UAE) by the French Archaeological Mission in the UAE allowed the discovery of two deposits of copper-base metal items buried in two jars. Copper smelting played a major role in the economy and the society of the region and consistent evidence suggest that it also had a symbolic importance. A summary of the archaeometallurgical study of the items discovered at Masafi is presented here and the context of the two deposits is discussed, in order to reconstruct the nature of these two hoards and the function of the buildings.

Phonological Variants of the Old Egyptian Particle sk/sT in the Biographies of Wnj

In 2012, excavations by the French Archaeological Mission at Saqqara uncovered several blocks bearing an inscription with remarkable parallels to the well-known biography of the Sixth Dynasty official Wnj from Abydos. These parallels led Philippe Collombert to identify the owner of the Saqqara blocks, named Nfr-wn-Mrjj-Ro, with the aforementioned Wnj. Despite their strong parallels, the two versions of the same text show a slight but interesting difference: the subordinating particle is written sk in the Saqqara version but sT in the Abydos version. These two texts then can form the core of a case study to examine these particular phonological variants in Old Egyptian texts. In this article, I will provide a brief overview of the ⟨k⟩ > ⟨T⟩ phonological change of Early Egyptian, and then discuss other attestations of the particle sk/sT to attempt to illuminate the linguistic context for this particular change in the texts of Wnj. Finally, I will suggest a possible explanation for this change, with the linguistic analysis informed by the historical and textual background of both texts – that of an official moving his tomb away from the Capital Zone and adopting a non-Capital Zone socio-dialect in the process. The investigation of this particular sound change illustrates some of the (not insurmountable) challenges of historical linguistic studies of Old Egyptian.

The Idiosyncratic Case of Archaeology in Istanbul under Occupation

The Idiosyncratic Case of Archaeology in Istanbul under Occupation Ceren Abi (bio) KEYWORDS Occupation of Istanbul, Archaeology, Allies, Ottoman Empire, International Laws In this article, I will focus on the archaeological activities of the Allied forces during the occupation of Istanbul after World War I. I will address three questions: Why did the Allies engage in archaeology? Why did the Allies not ship their archaeological finds in Istanbul to Europe, given that they did so from elsewhere in the empire? Indeed, all parties that fought on Ottoman lands carried out archaeological activities during the war.1 Lastly, why would they do this in the midst of a brutal global conflict and an occupation? I argue that we can answer these questions by looking at what they sought to gain. Firstly, to stake territorial claims or at least to delineate a zone of influence; secondly, to legitimize their occupation; and thirdly, to take advantage of an exceptional opportunity to produce knowledge and acquire antiquities. The Allies claimed to be the true successors of the ancient civilizations that had developed in the Ottoman lands, which provided an ideological rationale for the occupation. There was precedent for using the past to assert territorial claims, such as by the French in Egypt in the late eighteenth century, [End Page 255] and by France and Italy in North Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.2 During the occupation of Eastern Asia Minor during the First World War, Russia also asserted its claim to be the legitimate heir of the Byzantine Empire and initiated excavations.3 In 1919, when the Greek Army occupied the Western coast of Asia Minor, they were similarly accompanied by archaeologists who collected antiquities with the intention of proving the essential "Greekness" of the lands. At the same time, the Italians, who had long had a cultural interest in the same territories, attempted to establish their own historical claims through archaeological studies into the Roman past.4 The Allies also tried to accomplish these same goals through the use of civilizing mission tactics. For example, the French military established a museum in Adana,5 while Italian forces established one in Antalya.6 These museums were presented as having civilized the occupied land and conspicuously displayed the importance of protecting local antiquities. The occupation was also framed as an "exceptional opportunity," in the words of Sir Frederic Kenyon, the director of the British Museum.7 By 1915, when the Allied armies began fighting in the Ottoman lands, the British were already conducting excavations and were shipping their finds back to Britain and France.8 The Ottoman Antiquities Law of 1884 declared all antiquities to be state property and strictly banned their exportation. Article 56 of the 1899 Hague Convention, which concerned the laws and customs of war, prohibited [End Page 256] the seizure of "historical monuments, works of art or science."9 Article 43 of the Hague Convention of 1907, likewise decreed that occupiers must respect the laws in force in the occupied country. Thus, theoretically the Allied archaeological activities were already legally questionable. In Istanbul, it was the French who conducted excavations, working in the Gülhane and Makriköy districts to uncover Byzantine remains.10 The Ottomans also attempted to maintain control of archaeological discoveries and the movement of finds during the occupation period. At the same time, however, officials from the Ottoman state and the occupying archaeologists maintained a scholarly relationship. For example, Theodor Makridy Bey, an archaeologist at the Ottoman Imperial Museum, co-authored articles with French archaeologists.11 The association of Makridy Bey and other Ottoman officials with French archaeologists predated the war. Furthermore, Ottoman officials engaged in civil gestures with the occupation forces.12 Nonetheless, during the occupation, the nature of French excavations became contentious. The French argued that the excavations were mutually agreed upon by General Charpy, the head of the French occupation forces in Istanbul, and Halil Edhem, the director of the Ottoman Imperial Museum, via an exchange of letters. However, Ottoman documents indicate that Halil Bey was upset about not being notified, to the extent that he brought the issue to General Charpy and demanded an explanation and cessation of the excavations...

Signed by Valerius: an Early Imperial wall painting from the fort of Deir el-Atrash in the Egyptian Eastern Desert

AbstractDuring the 2020 excavation campaign of the French Archaeological Mission to the Egyptian Eastern Desert (MAFDO), the team in charge of the excavation of the Roman fort of Deir el-Atrash uncovered a polychrome painting on one of the original entrance tower gates from the late 1st–early 2nd c. CE. The iconographic program includes, in the top register, a horseman genius and a caravan of dromedaries with its driver. In the lower register, a pattern of vine stalks and leaves occupies the space. This discovery is exceptional, as very few Roman paintings have been preserved in a military context. In addition to depicting a scene of everyday desert life, the supply of the fort, the scene also illustrates the power of the Empire and its presence at its borders.

Recent research on the stone jars of Northeast India: Evidence from East Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya

The stone jar sites of Northeast India have been a subject of great interest since their first discovery in 1929 by James Philip Mills and John Henry Hutton in North Cachar Hills, Assam. In Southeast Asia, they were first reported by McCarthy (1900) in Laos and subsequently by the French archaeologist Madeleine Colani in 1935, who reported them in great numbers and speculated about their connections to Assam within a wider salt trade network. The present paper focuses on the stone jar sites from an unreported region of Northeast India along the Saipung Sub-division in East Jaintia Hills in the state of Meghalaya. The stone jars from the sites form the extreme westerly extension of the stone jar culture reported from Northeast India. The results of preliminary fieldwork undertaken in February 2020 across the Saipung reserved forest of Meghalaya led to the discovery and documentation of eight previously unreported sites. A small-scale excavation of four jars in the East Jaintia Hills have helped to provide key insights on the mortuary practices of the people who made and used these stone jars. Material evidences from the excavation clearly suggest that the stone jars are visible relics which were erected on top of a pit where the post-cremated cultural materials of the dead are buried. Such significant findings bear relevance to the further understanding of stone jar sites within the broader context of Northeast India and Southeast Asia.

ИСТОРИКО-АРХЕОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ ПАМЯТНИК САРАЗМ - ПАМЯТНИК ВСЕМИРНОГО НАСЛЕДИЯ ЮНЕСКО

The article is devoted to one of the most ancient historical and archaeological monuments of Central Asia - the Sarazm settlement, which is located on the bank of the Zeravshan river in the Penjikent district of the Sughd region of the Republic of Tajikistan. The author reports that the Sarazm settlement was first discovered in 1976 by A.I. Isakov and since then it has been the subject to close interest of Tajik, Russian, French archaeologists. Within the course of their work, such important characteristics of Sarazm as the initial size of the settlement, its chronology, the evolution of the economy of the Sarazmians, and others were established. In particular, there are four periods in the Sarazmian history: 3500–3200 BC, 3200–2900 BC, 2900–2700 BC and 2700–2000 BC. The high days of the settlement came in the period of the Late Paleolithic and Early Bronze Age. The Sarazm population was engaged in agriculture and livestock breeding, the crafts of the Sarazmians were at a high level, as evidenced by the finding of well-preserved buildings (palatial , religious, residential), tools and jewelry. The author also emphasizes that the Sarazm settlement was one of the main metallurgical centers of the region, which used its own raw materials (due to the rich resource potential of the mountains in the upper reaches of the Zeravshan River) and had steady contacts with the ancient population of Iran, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, India and others. The uniqueness of the historical and archaeological site of Sarazm and its significance for world history and culture were confirmed in 2010, when Sarazm was included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

De la Dordogne aux tropiques : les missions archéologiques françaises au Brésil

Cet article revisite l’histoire des missions archéologiques françaises au Brésil à travers l’examen critique de leurs contextes institutionnels, académiques et scientifiques, et vise à approfondir la compréhension de l’influence française sur l’histoire de l’archéologie brésilienne. Il met en évidence les aspects scientifiques et diplomatiques qui ont donné naissance à de longs programmes de recherche au Brésil et le caractère empirique de l’américanisme français, l’accent mis sur les origines de « l’Homme américain » et la préférence donnée aux études de contextes anciens en amenant aux tropiques une « science préhistorique » issue notamment des fouilles des sites de Dordogne mais aujourd’hui pratiquée dans une perspective globale.

Digital Archiving and Data Stewardship in French Archaeology

In France, the archaeological sector has undergone a major shift in the last 10 years in terms of digital data creation and management. The digital transformation of the profession and its practices is still in progress and is not uniform. If general policies and laws are now clearly adopted at a national level, then institutional or individual situations are more complex. We can clearly separate the development-led and academic sectors, with reference to the volume of data produced and the challenges faced. A critical overview of the barriers highlights the fact that, beyond technical issues, data management (specifically sharing) is a human challenge in terms of scientific priority and in the adoption of new practices. This article gives an overview of the main questions and issues with reference to major nationwide initiatives.

The death of infants in Early Iron Age Cyprus. A jar burial from Kition-Bamboula

During recent excavations of the French Archaeological Mission at Kition-Bamboula, in modern day Larnaka, Cyprus, an infant jar burial was discovered. It was found under a floor layer in a domestic context, and is dated to the beginning of the Late Cypriot IIIB period (end of the 12th– early 11th century BC). This jar burial is part of a series which seems to be attested, at least in the present state of documentation, only in eastern Cyprus (Enkomi, Salamis and, on a lesser scale, Kition) during a period that spans the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age. The Kition-Bamboula jar burial is notable for its wealth (jewellery, vase offerings, and food deposit). This article proposes a detailed and multidisciplinary study of the burial, as well as a comprehensive consideration of the treatment of infants’ dead bodies in Early Iron Age Cyprus.

'Quality' Advice from French Preventive Archaeology

In their lucid and thought-provoking paper, Carolina Andersson, Agneta Lagerlof and Eva Skyllberg clearly identify the looming quandary of contemporary archaeology: how can we promote our professional concerns with scientific and patrimonial ‘quality’ in a context increas ingly dominated by (often short-term) economic and political considerations? Almost twenty years have passed since the Valletta Convention called for the reconciliation of archaeology and spatial planning (CoE treaty n° 143, 1992), but some European countries still remain ambivalent or uncertain regarding the systems they have chosen to implement. In terms of their overall policies on archaeological heritage management, Sweden and France are both clearly on the ‘public service’ end of the spectrum, where the state is expected to take re sponsibility over threatened archaeological remains and then control the quality of their protection and study (cf. Demoule 2002; Demoule 2010; Willems & Van den Dries 2007:10; Kristiansen 2009:643 ff). Given these affinities, some recent experiences in French archaeology can well serve as examples – or indeed as cautionary tales – for the un folding situation in Sweden. A brief terminological excursus will clear the way, insofar as both Swedish and French can offer some linguistic depths vis-a-vis the lin­ gua franca. In the critical spirit of this paper, the casual expression ‘de velopment-led archaeology’ appears difficult to uphold. It builds on an ambiguity in the English language between a wide-ranging and noble notion of development (‘sustainable’, ‘social’, ‘cultural’) and the more

The Early Imperial fortress of Berkou, Eastern Desert, Egypt

AbstractIn 2020, during excavations in the Wadi al-Ghozza in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, archaeologists from the French Archaeological Mission to the Eastern Desert of Egypt discovered a well-preserved Flavian praesidium. This small and unusually shaped fort, identified in ostraca found in the fortress as Berkou (Βɛρκου), lay along a track leading from ancient Kaine (Qena) to the imperial quarries at Porphyrites. The fort lay over the remains of a Ptolemaic village and incorporated elements from the water system of the older settlement. This article presents the results of those excavations, including an overview of the fort's architecture and associated finds, as well as a discussion of its role in the regional transportation and security network that supported Roman exploitation of the nearby porphyry quarries in the 1st c. CE.

The muses and other statues of the Eastern Roman Baths of Gerasa, Jordan (2018 Campaign): Form and provenance

The Eastern Roman Baths of the Deacapolis Gerasa, Jordan, represents one of the largest and best preserved Roman baths in the entire Bilad Al-Sham. It was built during the second half of the 2nd century CE and adorned by sculptures of imported precious marble, some have inscribed bases. The 2018 excavations11The Great East Baths of Gerasa were excavated during the 2018 campaign (September 1st – October 17th) by the joint project of the French Archaeological Mission to Jerash (MAFJ), the Department of Antiquities of Jordan (DoA) and the German Jordanian University (GJU). The marble sculptures under investigation were found by the French team and the participation of local workmen from the Gaza Refugee Camp under the supervision of the DoA representative and Dr. Thomas Lepaon, the then MAFJ director. A team from the DoA and students from the GJU worked simultaneously on the conservation, restoration and presentation of the sculptures under the guidance of Professor Dr. Thomas M. Weber-Karyotakis and the Italian conservator Franco Sciorilli. This team arranged a close cooperation with Professor Dr. Khaled al-Bashaireh from the Yarmouk University to investigate the marble provenance of the sculptures. unearthed a group of well preserved statues, although headless or broken, including six Muses (Melpomene, Clio, Urania, Erato and two as yet unidentified), Cybele, Dionysus, female head, draped female, etc. This study sheds light on ten statues of the new collection, and investigates their provenance by applying combined scientific analytical techniques associated with the recently published databases on the ancient marble quarries of the Mediterranean. The results showed that the six muses were most likely carved out of Pentelic marble (Mount Pentelikon, Attica, Greece) probably in one order from the same workshop, the enthroned Cybele statue is of Thassos-3 marble (Vathy-Saliara district, Thassos Island, Greece), the Dionysus statue and the female marble head are of Proconnesus-1 marble (Marmara Island, Turkey), and the torso of the draped female statue is of Paros-2 marble (Lakkoi, Valley of Chorodaki, Paros Island, Greece). The results agree with previous studies of provenancing sculptures uncovered at Gerasa, and other sites in Jordan and the Levant. They support the suggestion that Lakkoi produced medium-grained marble variety for carving out statues. The results give more evidence about the high state of the art of Gerasa during the Roman period.

From Amélie to Terrascope: Creation, Development, Struggle and Re-birth of a Small French Independent Archaeological Laboratory

Created in France in May 2007 by Joseph Kovacik and Sabrina Save, Amélie is a small independent laboratory, staffed and partnered with the best specialists in Europe, providing palaeo-environmental and archaeometric services to the French Archaeology community. During its 13 years of existence, Amélie and its owners have been through many hurdles and run fantastic projects, always trying to be forward-thinking and bring high-level research and academia into commercial archaeology, while ensuring the sustainability of the company. One example of their endeavour to innovate is the theoretical framework and methodology they developed to survey large mechanically-stripped archaeological surfaces with pXRF to investigate human impact on soil chemistry. In February 2018, while the future of Amélie was unclear due to three consecutive years of declining turnover, a short stay in Cambridge as visiting scholars re-focused Joseph and Sabrina, with them deciding to launch a new project: the creation of a new facility dedicated to the production of micromorphological thin sections, Terrascope. Since this Cambridge sabbatical, many exciting projects have emerged and reshaped the future of Amélie, Joseph, and Sabrina. This is their backstory.

Towards the Mid-Late Holocene Environment of Mochena Borago Rock Shelter, Wolayta, South Ethiopia

With the objective of understanding the mid-late Holocene subsistence pattern and the local ecology, archaeobotanical investigation was conducted on soil samples collected from 29 contexts from the rock shelter site of Mochena Borago. The samples were collected by the French Archaeological Mission in 2000 and 2001 field seasons. Flotation was carried out using bucket and 2.0 mm mesh size sieve. Recovered botanical remains were classified based on size and grain morphology. Seed analysis was conducted at 5-20x magnification. A total of 112 seeds and fruit stones were identified which include 55 Sapindaceae cf. Deinbollia type (dune soap-berry), 33 Myrtaceae cf. Syzigium guineense type (sometimes called waterberry), 9 Plectranthus edulis (Wolayta dinich/potato), 7 Euphorbiaceae Croton sp. (rushfoil), 2 Cordia cf. africana (wanza in Amharic), 1 Ebenaceae cf. Diospyros (commonly known as ebony trees), 1 Olea europea ssp. africana (Olive Oil). Plectranthus edulis is an indigenous crop for the study area and Cordia cf. africana and Olea europea ssp. africana are reported for the first time in archaeological context of the whole region of Ethiopia. The study provided data on the ancient economy and ecology of the site in a region where archaeobotanical research is limited.

Exploitation of groundwater in the oasis of Masāfī (UAE): A diachronic perspective

AbstractIn order to understand the role of water resources in the establishment and long‐term evolution of settlements investigated by the French Archaeological Mission in the UAE in the oasis of Masāfī, wells and springs of all periods, identified at the surface and in stratified contexts, were mapped and studied thanks to a multidisciplinary approach combining archaeology, geomorphology, geoarchaeology and ethnography. Our study demonstrates that: The Masāfī oasis was located in a specific geological setting entailing the accumulation of groundwater resources at reachable depth. The groundwater resources remained rather stable from the mid‐second millennium BC to the second half of the twentieth century AD. In this respect, the apparent abandonment of the oasis during some periods cannot be explained by water depletion. The groundwater resources have decreased sharply since the second half of the twentieth century AD, due to the introduction of new water extraction technologies, motor pumps and then drillings, as a result of the modernisation and industrialisation of UAE economy. Our study also stresses the importance of well and spring irrigation in the development of the sedentary settlements in south‐eastern Arabia, technologies that have often been neglected in the regional archaeological literature in favour of the qanāt.

Hesy-Ra ...the first dentist

In about 2650 BC, a particular title was bestowed on a high Egyptian official... it reads: Wer-ibeh-senjw. Intriguingly, there are alternate translations of the award. Wer implies "Great one". Ibeh may be "dentition" but could also be "ivory". Senjw is a plural form meaning "arrows", or "cutters", or "physicians". So Wer-ibeh-senjw could translate to "Great one of the ivory cutters" or to "Great one of the dentists".
 The official is known as Hesy-Ra and his tomb was discovered by Auguste Mariette, a French archaeologist, in 1861, and excavated later by Egyptologist James Quibell. The tomb contained the clues as to which profession the official followed. The walls, 42 metres long, were covered with paintings and objects of daily life... and most relevant were six wooden panels some of which depicted Hesy-Ra in his practice of medicine and dentistry.

La question de l’authenticité du lot « Waddington » dans le corpus des lamelles de Styra (IG XII 9, 56) : l’apport de la linguistique

In view of a new edition of the lamellae from Styra (Euboea, IG XII 9, 56, ca. 475 BCE), I address the question of the authenticity of the lot which was purchased by William Henry Waddington (1826–1894). The Waddington lot seems to have disappeared without a trace, except for the description provided by the French archaeologist François Lenormant, who is known to have occasionally forged new epigraphic evidence. However, a careful linguistic analysis of the hapaxes and rare anthroponyms, combined with a reconstruction of epigraphic and onomastic knowledge in Lenormant’s time, reveals that the lamellae of the Waddington batch are authentic. In fact, some anthroponyms that were hapaxes at that time have been found later in Euboea or elsewhere in Greece, while most of the current hapaxes have a plausible formation. I then discuss the problematic cases and I conclude that these are not due to invention, but to the difficulty of reading certain tablets correctly. In conclusion, I also consider the value of Lenormant’s edition as a whole (quality of drawings, proposed readings and supplements).

The archaeology of Afghanistan revisited

The discipline of archaeology in Afghanistan was at a turning point when the original editions of The archaeology of Afghanistan and the Archaeological gazetteer of Afghanistan were published in 1978 and 1982, respectively. The first three decades of modern archaeological activity in Afghanistan (1920s–1940s) were dominated by French archaeologists who primarily focused on the pre-Islamic past, particularly the Buddhist period. Following the Second World War, however, Afghanistan gradually opened archaeological practice to a more international community. Consequently, the scope of archaeological exploration expanded to include more robust studies of the prehistoric, pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. In the 1960s, the Afghan Institute of Archaeology began conducting its own excavations, and by the late 1970s, national and international excavations were uncovering exciting new discoveries across the country. These archaeological activities largely halted as Afghanistan descended into chaos during the Soviet-Afghan War (1979–1989) and the Afghan Civil War (1989–2001); the Afghan Institute of Archaeology was the only archaeological institute continuing operations. The original editions of the volumes under review were therefore timely and poignant publications that captured the peak of archaeological activity in twentieth-century Afghanistan and became classic texts on the subject.

Olympian Jupiter. Winckelmann and Quatremère de Quincy on Ancient Polychromy

A number of Western museums may boast of their important collections of Classical Greek and Roman art. Marble statues of deities or heroes from Classical Antiquity, and important works in painting and architecture from different historical epochs, have traditionally made up the canon of Western art. In recent years, critics have claimed that this tradition represents an idealisation of the white, Caucasian body type which excludes other races from the concept of beauty. Although we today know that ancient statues in marble were often painted in vivid colours, they say that art theorists have either been ignorant of, or glossed over, this fact. While the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann has often been regarded as a proponent of our Western predilection for whiteness, the French archaeologist Antoine Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy is by many celebrated as the first to realise the extent and importance of ancient polychromy. In this paper, I will try to show that this is a distorted view, especially where Winckelmann’s theories are concerned. Far from being ignorant about ancient polychromy, Winckelmann was an important source for Quatremère de Quincy. In addition, Winckelmann’s appreciation of the white marble surface was not the result of racial prejudice, but the expression of an aesthetic opinion that he shared with Quatremère de Quincy.

Exile in the Desert with Sarmi Moussa

Exile in the Desert with Sarmi Moussa Melinda Smith (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Patrick Gruban In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything. —Thomas Merton [End Page 47] It was past midnight, and the bench I sat on in the small mud-brick airport in Ouargla was hard. It kept me from sleeping. I was in transit in this remote oasis town, waiting until just before sunrise to board the flight to Djanet in the southeastern Algerian Sahara. It was here that I saw Tuareg men for the first time. Two large draped forms filled the bench across from me—men dressed in their traditional indigo caftans with white turbans called cheches wrapped around their heads and draped across their faces so only dark eyes were visible. Tuareg men are sometimes referred to as “blue men” because the indigo dye can stain their skin. The pictures I had seen of Tuareg people didn’t do justice to these two imposing figures, and I watched them doze off. The Berber-speaking Tuaregs of North Africa were known for their camel-caravan journeys across the Sahara. Now they take planes when they need to, and drought has forced them to sell off their herds and crowd into tented camps and oasis towns. As the long shadows of morning stretched across the stark landscape, we landed on a sandy airstrip on the outskirts of Djanet, the small town that served as the gateway to the Tassili n’Ajjer. Near the Libyan border to the east, the Tassili n’Ajjer, which means “plateau of rivers” in the local Berber language, was named when water, trees, and grass were part of an ecosystem far different from the arid, rocky landscape it has become. The Tassili is home to more than fifteen thousand Neolithic paintings and engravings depicting the vanished savannah, where herds of cattle and other large animals foraged for grass and crocodiles swam in streams and swamps. This open-air museum was well known to the Tuareg people but was “discovered” by French archaeologists only in 1933. It has since brought a slow stream of adventurers and scientists to see the record of people who lived in this high desert nine or ten thousand years ago. I’d decided that before I left Algeria, I too needed to see this remarkable landscape and its treasures. It was the 1974 winter break from my job teaching English at the University of Oran, the major higher education institution in western Algeria. I was living in Algeria because I couldn’t bear to be an American anymore. By the early 1970s, after years of street protests against the Vietnam War, after being tear-gased and arrested and demoralized, I needed to go away. The Watergate scandal had just erupted. President Nixon had ordered the mining of Haiphong Harbor, North Vietnam’s [End Page 48] only port. Media images of the burning flesh of screaming Vietnamese children stalked me. In 1972, after I turned twenty-five, I found a way out. I didn’t flee to Canada like so many war resisters. After all, my life wasn’t threatened by the draft or the war, only my sense of identity. I fled to North Africa, an unlikely place. Algeria chose me, not the other way around. The country was recruiting English teachers for its three universities. I had a newly minted MA in teaching English as a foreign language, pursued as a passport out of the US, not a career choice. Algeria had waged an iconic struggle for independence from 132 years of French colonization. The revolution was held up as the world’s blueprint by other countries fighting for self-determination, from South Africa to Palestine. One million Algerians had died in the war. The French, in their final coup de grâce, burned the library at the University of Algiers before abandoning their colony. The country began building its own institutions, educating a new generation of skilled leaders and workers. I happily accepted a job offer. Algeria had severed diplomatic ties with the US after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. I was glad to be...