In the nearly ten years that retired general Amir Drori has led the Israel Antiquities Authority, he has brought order and efficiency to a department that had been notably disorderly and inefficient. But he has yet to treat the archaeologists who work for him as professionals rather than as junior officers.
These archaeologists are particularly vulnerable because there is no other place for them to go to practice their profession except the universities, which themselves are retrenching under financial pressures. Life can be miserable for any archaeologist who crosses Amir Drori. There have been enough examples that this is widely understood.
Drori also wants to build an empire. His archaeologists must publish their reports in the Authority’s publications. This cuts out such prestigious publications as the Israel Exploration Journal (the journal of the venerable Israel Exploration Society) and Tel Aviv (the journal of the Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology) and other academic outlets all over the world. This often means that Antiquities Authority archaeologists cannot contribute articles on their current work to festschrifts honoring other scholars.
Well, they could—if General Drori gave them permission. But the effect is to isolate these fine archaeologists from the rest of archaeological scholarship. Can you imagine a university telling one of its archaeologists where they were required to publish their research?
But that is not all. Before archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority can publish any article, they must get permission from one of Drori’s committees. How would this rule go down in a university setting? This gives Drori control not only over where they publish, but what they say.
Drori also continues to regard Authority information as military secrets. The Authority maintains a list showing the status of excavation reports. The failure to publish excavation reports is one of the scandals of the profession.a Drori is right to insist that archaeologists (to whom he issues permits), both in the Authority and out, Israeli as well as non-Israeli, publish final excavation reports within a reasonable time, as required by law. He is doing a laudable job of this. But he refuses to release to BAR the list with the status of publications. Apparently it’s a state secret—or is it a military secret?
While Drori is doing so much that is good, it’s a shame he has brought into archaeology some of the aspects of military life that may be justified in that context but that don’t transfer well to an academic profession like archaeology.
In the nearly ten years that retired general Amir Drori has led the Israel Antiquities Authority, he has brought order and efficiency to a department that had been notably disorderly and inefficient. But he has yet to treat the archaeologists who work for him as professionals rather than as junior officers. These archaeologists are particularly vulnerable because there is no other place for them to go to practice their profession except the universities, which themselves are retrenching under financial pressures. Life can be miserable for any archaeologist who crosses Amir Drori. There have been enough examples that this is […]
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