Books in Brief
006
Recent Archaeology in the Land of Israel
Edited by Hershel Shanks and Benjamin Mazar
(Biblical Archaeology Society and Israel Exploration Society: Washington, D.C., 1984) 208 pp., $19.95
Recent Archaeology in the Land of Israel is an anthology of articles dealing with different aspects, areas and periods of recent archaeological activity in Israel. This edition has translated the original Hebrew volume, and it has expanded on it and given it a new format, placing illustrations at pertinent points within the chapters. The volume is a fitting tribute to Joseph Aviram, secretary of the Israel Exploration Society, after his 40 years of service to the society and to the Department of Archaeology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
A galaxy of first-rate scholars with excellent reportorial skills has covered all the major areas and periods of Israel’s culture and history, providing an overview of Israeli archaeology during the last three decades not available in any other single volume. Several articles survey particular historic periods, such as the Monarchy period by Amihai Mazar, the Islamic period by Myriam Rosen-Ayalon, and the Crusader period by Joseph Prawer. In addition to these survey articles, there are contributions on a variety of related subjects, including a chapter on ancient churches by Yoram Tsafrir and a section on Jerusalem by Nahman Avigad, Benjamin Mazar and Yigal Shiloh. Pieces not included in the original Hebrew edition have been contributed by Lee Levine on the Hellenistic-Roman period and by Yigael Yadin on the Lachish ostraca. The latter is a highly imaginative and provocative proposal that is bound to stir up a storm of controversy regarding these sixth-century B.C. inscribed potsherds (see Scholars’ Corner: “Yadin Presents A New Interpretation of the Famous Lachish Letters,” by Oded Borowski.)
The book as a whole is a thoroughly edifying account of recent archaeological activity in the Holy Land, crisply written by the archaeologists and their associates in related disciplines. I recommend the book for all those interested in this remarkable area of the world with its extraordinary history.
Adventurer in Archaeology: The Biography of Sir Mortimer Wheeler
Jacquetta Hawkes
(St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1982) 387 pp., 34 illustrations, 8 line drawings, $19.95
Sir Mortimer Wheeler, whose archaeological career stretched from the Roman forts of England and France to the prehistoric civilizations of Pakistan and India and included visits to Ugarit, Jericho and Jerusalem, is one of the most famous archaeologists of all time. To those interested in Near Eastern archaeology, he is best known as a pioneer in the development of modern excavation technique. Wheeler was one of the first archaeologists to lay down a carefully surveyed grid as a guide to his excavations and was one of the first to draw vertical sections of the superimposed layers of ancient debris. Wheeler’s stratigraphic techniques were extensively used by Kathleen Kenyon at Jericho and are known today as the “Wheeler-Kenyon method,” the basis for the work of nearly every modern dig throughout the world. In this detailed biography of Wheeler, Jacquetta Hawkes, the well-known archaeological writer and longtime associate of “Rik” (as he was familiarly known), sets out to depict Wheeler as a “hero figure.” She does not quite succeed. The portrait of Wheeler that she draws is deeply divided and sometimes quite unsympathetic; his archaeological achievements stand in sharp contrast to his less flattering personality traits.
Hawkes recounts Rik Wheeler’s boyhood with meticulous detail, but the anecdotes of his early life prove only vaguely relevant to the progress of his later career. She traces the circumstances surrounding his first archaeological position on the Royal Commission for Historical Monuments in Wales, his service as an artillery officer in World War I, and his appointment as director of the London 008Museum in 1923. Unfortunately, she neglects to provide an archaeological context for his early association with archaeology; there is little background information on the state of archaeology at the time, and only a dry recitation of names, places, and publication dates.
India was the scene of Wheeler’s most formidable achievements. In the section of the book dealing with his work there, Hawkes provides a more vivid portrait of her hero at work. Wheeler was appointed Director General of the Indian Department of Archaeology by the British colonial administration in 1943, and it is fair to say that during his four-year tenure he single-handedly linked the archaeology of India to the rest of the ancient world. Besides training a generation of native Indian archaeologists, Wheeler conducted excavations that shed new light on the connections between the Indus civilization and Mesopotamia, and between Roman civilization and the Indian Iron Age. But once again, the personal side of those achievements is seen in a much less favorable light: Wheeler’s letters and reminiscences are filled with racist contempt for his Indian students, from whom he seemed to have demanded an almost god-like respect.
Wheeler’s greatest fame came in the early 1950s as the result of a popular British television program called “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?” in which archaeologists were challenged to identify obscure artifacts. Through the success of this program, Wheeler became a celebrity and in 1954 was voted TV personality of the year. Mortimer Wheeler became the world’s best-known archaeologist, and in this role, his flamboyant personality was given free rein. His sudden popularity led Wheeler to devote more of his time to the general public, publishing several non-specialist books on his excavations, guiding numerous tour groups through Greece and India, and appearing in archaeological films for the BBC.
By the 1970s, Wheeler’s popularity had begun to wane. Within the scientific community, a younger generation of archaeologists was emerging and, while giving Wheeler full credit for the advances that he had made in excavation technique, often cast doubt on the historical conclusions of several of his most important digs. Wheeler, as always, relished the controversy and remained active in the archaeological world until his death in 1976.
Adventurer in Archaeology is a book with too much detail, an anthology of facts and anecdotes linked together only by chronological time. Despite Hawkes’s opinion that Wheeler was “an epic hero in an anti-heroic age,” the material that she has assembled depicts him rather as a swaggering, tragic figure—a latter day Victorian, trapped in the modern age.
Recent Archaeology in the Land of Israel
Edited by Hershel Shanks and Benjamin Mazar
(Biblical Archaeology Society and Israel Exploration Society: Washington, D.C., 1984) 208 pp., $19.95
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