Book Review, World Archaeological Bulletin

ARCHAEOLOGY UNDER FIRE. NATIONALISM, POLITICS AND HERITAGE IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND MIDDLE EAST. Lynn Meskell (ed.) 1998. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-19655-8 (pb.). Pp.x + 251. Price

Pedro Paulo Funari (Campinas State University, Brazil).

     Lynn Meskell has edited a fine volume on a most sensitive subject: the political foundations of academic disciplines. Meskell acknowledges in the introduction that “perhaps academic disciplines, like archaeology, still remain the stepchildren of imperialism” (p.3). For all those practising archaeology in the periphery of the Western World, this is crystal clear, and the book is a very adequate introduction to some of the issues relating to the invention of some archaeologies, egyptology, assiriology, biblical archaeology, to name some of them. The familiar postmodern project of deconstruting master narratives is the main thrust of the volume, even if not the only one, as the editor tried to enact what she calls real pluralism, with conflicting chapters.

You can read the entire text on: World Archaeological Bulletin, 13, 2001, 82-88.