First Person: Changes at the Top

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Even by the standards of Israeli archaeology, this is an unsettled time. But unlike years past, matters today are unsettled both in the field, where the work of archaeology happens, and off the field, in the offices where policy decisions are made. In the field, 2001 is shaping up to be the most disrupted dig season since the Gulf War a decade ago. The current round of violence in Israel and the West Bank has caused several excavation teams, particularly those that rely on volunteers from America, to cancel their seasons. Off the field, there has been turnover at the top levels of key organizations that deal with archaeology.

One such turnover involves Ephraim Stern, the highly regarded Hebrew University professor who has led excavations at Dor, on Israel’s northern coast, for 20 seasons. In December Stern was named chairman of the Archaeological Council, an advisory body to the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The IAA itself has just had a change of leadership of its own, and the fallout from that change led to Stern’s appointment to the Council. As we reported in our previous issue, Shuka Dorfman replaced Amir Drori late last year as head of the IAA (Strata, BAR 27:02). Dorfman is a former general, not an archaeologist, and his appointment led Moshe Kochavi, who was chairman of the Archaeological Council at the time, to resign in protest. Stern now takes his place.

The appointment of a nonarchaeologist to head the IAA “is a problem for me,” but not an insurmountable one, Stern told me from New York, where he is spending a mini-sabbatical this spring. Dorfman, Stern said, has a reputation as a good administrator; Stern added that he expects the Archaeological Council will have more influence on Dorfman than it had on Drori because Dorfman will need to look to others for their expertise in archaeology. It’s clear that Stern intends to make the Archaeological Council more active than it has been. Before he left Israel for his sabbatical, Stern convened two meetings of the Council in two months. In recent years, he told me, the Council had met only occasionally.

Other than the problem of this year’s canceled digs, Stern believes that the general outlook for archaeology in Israel today is quite favorable. In addition to the changes at the top of the IAA and the Archaeological Council, the Israel Ministry of Education, which oversees the IAA, has a new leader as well. Limor Livnat took over the post in March as part of the new government headed by Ariel Sharon. Stern described Livnat as committed to archaeological research. “She has a very positive attitude,” Stern told me. “She thinks archaeology is an important issue in the life of Israel.”

Stern expects that the ultra-Orthodox community, which has often demonstrated 061against the excavation of graves, will be a less potent force against archaeology, at least in the near term. He notes that Prime Minister Sharon, of the right-wing Likud party, has formed a broad government that includes the left-wing Labor party. As a result, the religious parties are less crucial to the government’s survival and thus yield less influence.

I asked Stern about one of the most troubling archaeological problems currently in Israel, the construction on the Temple Mount undertaken by the Waqf, the Muslim religious trust in charge of the mosques on the mount. Stern was emphatic. “Excavations can only take place with archaeological supervision. We have a law in Israel—if you work in ancient areas, you must have professional archaeologists to minimize the destruction of ancient remains.” Stern said that he would have no problem with having archaeologists from the Palestinian Authority on a team that supervised the work on the Temple Mount, but he was clear that the team would have to be under the auspices of the IAA—a condition, Stern realizes, unacceptable to Palestinians. Don’t expect this rancorous issue to be resolved anytime soon.

Stern is highly respected by his peers and is a senior figure on the archaeology scene in Israel, but he is also willing to think “out of the box.” BAR editor Hershel Shanks has long been trying to obtain IAA approval for Shlomo Moussaieff, a London-based antiquities collector, to lend some of his most impressive pieces to the Israel Museum for a temporary exhibit. Moussaieff is willing to lend but asks if he will get them back. The pieces were bought on the antiquities market and, by law, should never have left Israel. The IAA and the Archaeological Council, before Stern took its helm, would not make an exception in Moussaieff’s case. Stern told me that he is in favor of allowing Moussaieff’s pieces into Israel, and out again, too.

We expect that such unconventional thinking will serve Israel’s Archaeological Council, and the cause of archaeology, well.

Even by the standards of Israeli archaeology, this is an unsettled time. But unlike years past, matters today are unsettled both in the field, where the work of archaeology happens, and off the field, in the offices where policy decisions are made. In the field, 2001 is shaping up to be the most disrupted dig season since the Gulf War a decade ago. The current round of violence in Israel and the West Bank has caused several excavation teams, particularly those that rely on volunteers from America, to cancel their seasons. Off the field, there has been turnover at […]