The virtual exhibition Unsilencing the Archives: The Laborers of the Tell en-Nasbeh Excavations (1926–1935) has been recently launched online by the Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology. Developed with support from the Palestine Exploration Fund, it portrays the role of local laborers and Egyptian foremen in excavating Tell en-Nasbeh, an archaeological site about 8 miles northwest of Jerusalem in what was British Mandate Palestine. Local laborers employed at archaeological digs around the Middle East appear only anecdotally in field documentation, dig reports, and publications. Large excavation projects—almost exclusively directed by European or American scholars—have historically hired dozens and hundreds of […]