First Person: Relics vs. “Real” Archaeology

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After President Lincoln was assassinated, his wife requested a lock of his hair. Others soon made the same request. So his physician clipped a number of small locks of the deceased president’s hair. According to a Washington Post article, one of these locks of hair, the size of an eyebrow, was recently donated to a Gettysburg museum.¹ The estimated worth is between $30,000 and $50,000. The superintendent of the park is quoted as saying, “This is one of those special objects that gives you the chills when you see it.”

Not to some highfalutin professional archaeologists.

Relics have a bad name in “real” archaeology.

To many (perhaps most) eminent professional archaeologists, a relic is something to be brushed off your clothes, lest it dirty your credentials.

Real archaeologists are looking at the bigger picture—details of social structure, the sweep of history, the course of civilizations. Relics are, at best, for the public. Real archaeologists have neither time nor interest in relics.

In a recent posting, Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) archaeologist Gideon Avni says that the public’s interest in “relics” (his quotation marks) “deserves examination within the fields of psychology and sociology, rather than within the field of archaeology.”² (He was speaking of the bone box inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”.)

Somewhat amazingly, American scholar Byron McCane of Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, dismisses the James Ossuary even if it is authentic and even if it refers to Jesus of the New Testament. The reason: It is a relic. Here are Professor McCane’s words:

Even if the words “James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” had been an authentic ancient inscription, and even if they had referred to Jesus of Nazareth, they would not have told us anything we did not already know about James, Joseph, Jesus, ossuaries, ossuary inscriptions, Jewish burial practices in Early Roman Jerusalem, or even primitive Christianity there. This inscription did not contain any new information. We already knew that Jesus of Nazareth existed, that he had a father named Joseph and a brother named James.³

As editor of a magazine intended to appeal to the public as well as to professional archaeologists, I am acutely aware of this attitude on the part of many professional archaeologists. Yet they all revel in anything that directly relates to the Bible, and they speculate about this connection—and show off their “relics”—in the press releases they issue at the end of each excavation season.

Recently, a tiny golden bell was discovered by IAA archaeologists in a Jerusalem sewer near the Temple Mount. It is about a half-inch in diameter and has a tiny loop at the top to tie it to something, perhaps a piece of clothing. The bell is engraved with small circular channels starting at the top. Archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron are quoted as saying, “It seems the bell was sewn on the garment worn by a high official in Jerusalem.” The IAA press release then goes on to say that “high priests, who served in the Temple, used to hang a gold bell from the fringes of their robe,” citing the Book of Exodus. (The high priest Aaron’s robe had bells of gold; see Exodus 28:33–35.) The press release added, “It is impossible to know for certain if the bell did indeed belong to one of the high priests; however, the possibility should not be entirely discounted.” A 16-second audio of the bell ringing was placed on YouTube. Another release explained that “If one takes the sound of the single bell and prepares a series of staggered overlays of the sound of the bell, it will be possible to recreate what was heard over two thousand years ago when the high official walked in Jerusalem.”

I think we all have a legitimate interest in relics. We are moved by the realia of the relationship to a meaningful past. Relics give us an emotional relationship, in contrast to an intellectual relationship, to that past. IAA archaeologists, in a moment of candor, recognize this.

I’m going to shift gears now—rather abruptly, so prepare for a bump—to something in which the public has little if any interest, but which is fascinating to professional archaeologists and sometimes even to BAR readers like you and me.

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In the mid-seventh century B.C.E., the Philistine city of Ekron expanded dramatically and developed a huge olive-oil industry. Only 4 percent of the site has been excavated thus far, but already 115 olive-oil installations have been discovered. Excavator Seymour Gitin estimates annual production at about 500 tons. Gitin and many others attribute this sudden prosperity to what is often called the Pax Assyriaca, the Assyrian Peace. In the last third of the eighth century B.C.E., the great Assyrian empire conquered the area. The northern kingdom of Israel became an Assyrian province. In 701 B.C.E. the Assyrian monarch Sennacherib brought the southern kingdom of Judah to heel, as so dramatically described in the Bible (2 Kings 18:13–19:36; 2 Chronicles 32). Judah was never incorporated as a province into the Assyrian empire, but was a semi-autonomous polity subject to heavy annual Assyrian tribute. The same was true of Philistia, including Ekron. The entire area was pacified in the Pax Assyriaca. This is what allowed for the prosperity of Ekron’s olive-oil industry. Mesopotamia, the Assyrian homeland, was not agriculturally suited to producing olive oil.

This view widely held by the excavator and others is now being challenged by Israeli archaeologist Avraham (Avi) Faust. In his view, Ekron’s prosperous olive-oil industry stemmed not from the Pax Assyriaca but from the thriving Phoenician maritime trade in the Mediterranean. If the Assyrians were responsible for the olive-oil installations at Ekron, Faust reasons, why didn’t they also revive the formerly flourishing olive-oil industry in the northern kingdom of Israel that they had destroyed? As Faust puts it, “That the Assyrian empire did not rebuild the thriving olive oil industry they destroyed in Galilee and Samaria, which were now Assyrian provinces, indicates that the Assyrians were not interested in maximizing productivity in the region.” Indeed, Assyria and its provinces, such as the former northern kingdom of Israel, were in a deep recession. In contrast, the entire economic system of prosperous Philistia was oriented not toward Mesopotamia but toward maritime trade in the Mediterranean.

For Faust, these facts indicate that Assyria was not interested in economic development. True, the Assyrians may have benefited from this Philistine prosperity; it enabled the Philistines to pay a heavy tribute to Assyria. But the benefit to Assyria stemmed not from what it did, but in spite of what it did.

If you are not a regular reader of the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, you may have missed this fascinating debate, which is just beginning.⁴ My point is simply to emphasize that there are different areas of Biblical archaeology. All of them are legitimate. And none should be denigrated.

After President Lincoln was assassinated, his wife requested a lock of his hair. Others soon made the same request. So his physician clipped a number of small locks of the deceased president’s hair. According to a Washington Post article, one of these locks of hair, the size of an eyebrow, was recently donated to a Gettysburg museum.1 The estimated worth is between $30,000 and $50,000. The superintendent of the park is quoted as saying, “This is one of those special objects that gives you the chills when you see it.” Not to some highfalutin professional archaeologists. Relics have a […]