Thursday, November 30, 2006
[Our anonymous academic is back, with more on the Nadia Abu El Haj controversy (previous: Columbia's El Haj slanders...but what are her standards?).]
James Davila of St. Andrew's University in Scotland responded to a New York Sun article recounting the Abu El Haj controversy by writing on Paleojudaica, his blog, that "If this is an accurate representation of what the book says (always a big if in a newspaper article), it does seem daft."
There are probably a lot of people without time to read the whole book, but who wonder what it says. So, here is an excerpt.
But first, a short course for the non-archaeologists among us.
Roman (Second Temple) Judea is well-documented. The details given in Josephus, Tacitus, and elsewhere correspond neatly with the very extensive evidence that has emerged from the archaeological record. For example, part of the triumphal arch known from historical sources to have been erected on the Temple Mount by the Romans was recently discovered in ancient material being illegally bulldozed by the Waqf. The inscription contains the name of Flavius Silva, a name familiar form ancient Jewish sources as the Roman governor of Judea who laid siege to Masada. Evidence of the intense fire that burnt Jerusalem in the year 70 and was described by Josephus has turned up in several digs. (A recent example.)
When coins are found in a secure context, such as under a fallen object in a house destroyed by fire, the fire cannot have pre-dated the coin.
Occam's razor is the rule that, when given two equally valid explanations for a phenomenon, one should embrace the less complicated, or, parsimonious, formulation. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae. It does apply to archaeology. Judging from the following, Anthropology may be the sole field of knowledge where it has ceased to apply.
Here, then Abu El Haj's analysis of the presentation by two small archaeological site museums, of archaeologist Nahman Avigad's excavations in a small section of that part of the Old City known today as the Jewish Quarter:
"The second residential find has subsequently been named the Herodian Quarter.... Excavators dug up ash, evidence of fire. On the basis of numismatic evidence (coins dated to the years 67, 68, and 69 C.E.), Avigad concluded that this house was in use up until the year 70 C.E.; he then dated the destruction layer found at this site to "the time of the destruction of Jerusalem [by the Roman Army] in 70 C.E." ...
"Finally, there is the archaeological site known as the "Burnt House." According to Avigad, the site was given its name because "it has a thick and distinct stratum of burning"... On the basis of coins minted in the years 67, 68, and 69 C.E. that were unearthed at this site, Avigad concluded, "the house was destroyed by fire during the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70; more accurately still, it probably happened one month after the destruction of the Temple, since according to Josephus the Upper City was captured and set on fire on the 8th of Gorpieus (Elul.)"
"As Avigad writes, this house revealed, in part, the day-to-day life of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, which "met a tragic and fiery end during the destruction of the city by the Romans." But the assertion that either of these two sites - the Herodian Quarter or Burnt House - provide empirical evidence of the Roman destruction of the city is something that needs to be looked at more carefully. How does one determine that a specific historical event is causally linked to physical remnants of fire?
"While Avigad treated the ash as evidence that these two sites were destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. during their siege of the Upper City, there is no accurate means by which to date ash, the material evidence of fire, to the decade, let alone to the year or day of its creation. Furthermore, there is no way to determine the cause of that fire without referring to textual sources, to an already known story. Clearly, we know from historical accounts (from Josephus's book The Jewish Wars for one) that the Roman Legion burned the city down, destroying the Upper City on the eighth of Elul in the year 70 C.E. It is on that basis that Avigad reached the specific dating of the destruction layer at Burnt House. This story, the Roman siege and Jerusalem's subsequent burning, is a tale of destruction much more in keeping with a nationalist historiography than are several alternative but equally plausible accounts. For example, at least some of the evidence of fire and destruction at both Burnt House and the Herodian Quarter could just as convincingly be read as evidence of class or sectarian conflict within Jewish society during the period immediately prior to its destruction at the hands of the Romans. There is ample textual evidence for that story as well. From those same historical sources, after all, we also know that Jerusalem erupted in intra-Jewish conflict on more than one occasion prior to the year 70 C.E. and that Upper City homes were set alight by "Zealots" who considered Jerusalem's priestly class to have become corrupt, having strayed from the values of Judaism. In fact, in one Preliminary Report, the house at Site E is interpreted as exhibiting the material signs of such intra-Jewish conflict: "The period of the Herodian dynasty (37B.C. to A.D. 70) was represented [at this site] by three floor levels in most of the excavated area... The building was destroyed before 70 A.D., perhaps by the Zealots, who are known to have caused severe damage to Jerusalem in the period prior to its destruction by the Romans" (Avigad) That possibility is not recognized at either Burnt House of the Herodian Mansion, however, even though the time span between those two possible kinds of fires - those set by Jewish Zealots and those by Romans - is too short for any dating of the ash itself to determine which event it proves. In other words, both of these stories are underdetermined by the data. Each is potentially compatible with it. The choice thus rests at the conceptual level: which interpretative framework is to be brought to bear upon the archaeological evidence.
"Both of these interpretive frameworks clearly rely upon an already existing story. We already have to know that there was a Roman siege and destruction of the city. We have to know that there was internal Jewish strife in the Herodian city, a conflict that precipitated the burning down of Upper City homes. No historical cause can be ascribed to evidence of fire on the basis of the material remains alone. With no prior narrative at all, ash could quite simply be evidence of the accidental (or, at least, an inexplicable) fire, or more accurately, of accidental (or inexplicable) fires. On the basis of the ash itself, there is no way of determining either which cause the evidence of fire indexes, or whether all the evidence of fire at a single site (the Herodian Quarter or Burnt House) points toward a single historical cause, be that a known historical event or an accident. (After all, each of these houses could have been burned more than once: by Zealots, by Romans, and by accident, partially but not wholly destroyed during each ensuing incendiary incident.)
"In such arguments and interpretations, the key (historical) texts and the key (archaeological) evidence remain in a circular relationship of discovery, explanation, and proof. The history produced through this work of archaeology relies on an already-existing story, which is used, in turn, to interpret the evidence found... The overall historical narrative produced about these periods in Jerusalem's past, whether Iron Age or early-Roman, never transcended this national quest or the broader historical paradigm implied therein." pp. 143-146
I suppose that , in a sense, it is "equally plausible" [italics by Abu El Haj] that the foundations of the only two houses uncovered from the time of the destruction, both happened to have been destroyed by accident or by multiple "accidental (or inexplicable) fires" in the year between the minting of coins found in them and the date of the known destruction of the city. But it is certainly not parsimonious.
Occam, you created your razor in vain.
Moreover, while it is true that "these interpretive frameworks clearly rely upon an already existing story," the "story" of the Roman destruction of the city in the year 70 is a well-documented part of Roman history supported by a vast amount of evidence, much of it literally carved in stone. This is hardly a case of an archaeologist choosing a narrative on a nationalistically-inspired whim.
By Abu El Haj's unique reading, however, archaeologists leapt to dubious conclusions because they are dedicated Jewish nationalists, and "a tale of destruction [is] much more in keeping with a nationalist historiography than are several alternative but equally plausible accounts," such as accidental fires in the only two houses discovered, fires that happened to both occur in stone houses with tile roofs in the early months of the year 70.
How would Abu El Haj prefer to see the museums of the Old City present this material? She tells us, paraphrasing an unnamed British archaeologist, whom she also quotes as asserting the "In the end, most cities burn every twenty or twenty-five years," and, therefore, one would need "a lot more evidence than the burning of this particular house, or even of a few sites, to claim that the whole city burned down."
(Question for someone with detailed knowledge: Do the stone-walled, tile-roofed upper class residential neighborhoods of cities in the Near East burn every twenty or twenty-five years?)
Abu El Haj's alternative narrative:
At this point, Abu El Haj relates a conversation between herself, an unnamed Israeli museum conservator, and "an American writer who has authored several books and articles on the politics of archaeology in Israel, " presumably Neil Asher Silberman. "The curator argued (that) the discovery of a coin [actually, many coins dating as late as the year 69] post dating 66 C.E. is compelling evidence that this house could not have been burnt down in 66 C.E. (In so arguing, she assumed that the entire site had to have been burnt down in a single fire.)" (pp. 212-213)
Follow Abu El Haj's chain of logic with me:
Avigad found just two largely intact houses in the upper city, both burnt.
Abu El Haj knows form Josephus that there were class riots in the year 66.
She postulates that each of the two houses was burnt, but only partially destroyed, in the riots of the year 66.
Then each house was rebuilt - in the midst of a major war against the Romans, a strange time to build or rebuild a Jewish mansion, albeit not inconceivable.
And the rebuilding was done promptly, the houses were reinhabited in time to be filled with the coins, pottery, and utensils destroyed by the fires in the year 70.
All of this is in aid avoiding the parsimonious explanation; that the ash layers are evidence of the fires known to have burned the city in the year 70.
There is, of course, a political agenda here. Abu El Haj wants to establish that all archaeological dig reports and monographs are mere "stories." The story of the houses burnt by the Romans in the year 70 is "but one possible interpretation," but it is a very particular interpretation, one that "links knowledge production with material-cultural objects and Jewish nationhood."
In other words, those politicized Zionist archaeologists interpret the extensive and well-dated evidence of a very large, destructive fire that occurred shortly after the year 69 (as dated by coins) as being the fire of the year 70 not because, following Occam, it is the parsimonious explanation, but because it is the one that lends support to the national narrative of the Jews.
I say, horsefeathers.
Update: Jim Davila has a post responding to some of this, here.
Update2: Archaeologist David Ussishkin Responds to El Haj Accusations.
Every Intellectual knows that Ed Said wrote the terrorist constitution when Orientalism was published. What leftist academics ignore is that Said plagiarized an earlier work titled Orientalism written by a French Jew. (Don't take my word for it, go research for yourself) As an archaelogist, (yes I am) I say that Abu Haj is nothing more than a big fat political liar. Just another one of those so-called 1964 palestinians sowing a cancer of lies because they have no sources from which to draw the truth. Will good people please step forward and stop this creepy person? Keep up the good work Solomon
"the destruction you see here was not done by Romans but by Jews themselves."
Abu Eh-Haj blames the Jews for the Roman destruction of Jerusalem?
Is she daft?
Maybe or maybe not, but any committee that would vote to recmmend tenure surely is.
Great post, and telling of a broader set of phenomena as well, I'm thinking of Tariq Ramadan and others who variously seek to coopt the very fundaments upon which truth and knowledge are based. Ramadan is in a different academic and public diplomacy arena, but this case serves as analogy for that broader set of phenomena, by decidedly interested Muslims, not avowed jihadists/salafists.