Palestinian Archaeologists in British Colonial Networks after 1948

In this paper for the CAARI and British Museum conference on archaeology in British-period Cyprus, Sarah Irving places the island within a wider eastern Mediterranean network of colonial archaeology. She argues for a biographical and microhistorical approach that includes colonized staff alongside British officials in the production of archaeological knowledge.

Irving outlines the Department of Antiquities in Mandate Palestine, housed from 1935 at the Palestine Archaeological Museum. While senior posts were reserved for British men, middle ranks included European Jewish scholars and Arab Palestinians trained through a student inspector scheme. British personnel moved between Palestine and Cyprus: Harry Iliffe worked at the Jerusalem museum before excavating in Cyprus after 1948, and A. H. S. Megaw, Director of Antiquities in Cyprus, was seconded to Jerusalem in 1945 to assess earthquake damage to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Displaced Palestinian archaeologists also drew on these colonial connections after the 1948 war. Abd al-Salam al-Husseini and Naim Makhouly worked in Cyrenaica under former Palestine archaeologist Cedric Johns, though Makhouly's letters record his isolation in Libya and his pleas to former Jewish colleagues to help him return home. Awni Dajani later led the Jordanian department, while Dimitri Baramki became a professor at the American University of Beirut.

The main Palestinian link to Cyprus was Stephan Hanna Stephan, a translator and librarian in the Palestine department. A refugee in Beirut in 1948, Stephan travelled repeatedly to Cyprus before his death in 1949; his notes on early Arabic inscriptions on the island formed the basis of an article published by Megaw. Irving concludes by asking how Cypriot staff viewed a displaced Palestinian scholar arriving through colonial channels.