Nationalism and archaeology

Nationalism and archaeology have been closely related since at least the nineteenth century.[1] Nationalist ideologies frequently employ results of archaeology and ancient history as propaganda, often significantly distorting them to fit their aims, cultivating national mythologies and national mysticism. Frequently this involves the uncritical identification of one's own ethnic group with some ancient or even prehistoric (known only archaeologically) group,[1] whether mainstream scholarship accepts as plausible or rejects as pseudoarchaeology the historical derivation of the contemporary group from the ancient one. The decisive point, often assumed implicitly, that it is possible to derive nationalist or ethnic pride from a population that lived millennia ago and, being known only archaeologically or epigraphically, is not remembered in living tradition.

Examples include Kurds claiming identity with the Medes,[2] Albanians claiming as their origin the Illyrians,[3] Iraqi propaganda invoking Sumer or Babylonia,[4] Hindu nationalists and Tamils claiming as their origin the Indus Valley civilisation[5] —all of the mentioned groups being known only from either ancient historiographers or archaeology. In extreme cases, nationalists will ignore the process of ethnogenesis altogether and claim ethnic identity of their own group with some scarcely attested ancient ethnicity known to scholarship by the chances of textual transmission or archaeological excavation.

See also

References
  1. Kohl, Philip L. (1998). "Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Constructions of Nations and the Reconstructions of the Remote past". Annual Review of Anthropology. 27: 223–246. ISSN 0084-6570. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
  2. van Bruinessen, Martin (9 July 2014). "The Ethnic Identity of the Kurds in Turkey Martin van Bruinessen" (PDF). Universiteit Utrecht. pp. 1–11. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 October 2017.
  3. Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie; Fischer, ernd Jürgen (2002). Albanian Identities: Myth and History. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. pp. 73–74. ISBN 9781850655725.
  4. Harkhu, Umangh (2005). Scholtz, Leopold; Pretorius, Joelien; N'Diaye, Boubacar; Heinecken, Lindy; Gueli, Richard; Neethling, Ariane; Liebenberg, Ian (eds.). "Does History Repeat Itself? The Ideology of Saddam Hussein and the Mesopotamian Era" (PDF). South African Journal of Military Studies. 33 (1): 47–71. ISSN 1022-8136. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 October 2005. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  5. Etter, Anne-Julie (14 December 2020). "The Hindutva Turn: Authoritarianism and Resistance in..." South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (24/25). doi:10.4000/samaj.6632. ISSN 1960-6060. Retrieved 23 January 2022.

Further reading

Nationalism in general
  • Díaz-Andreu, Margarita. A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology. Nationalism, Colonialism and the Past. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-19-921717-5
  • Díaz-Andreu, Margarita and Champion, Tim (eds.) Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe. London: UCL Press; Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1996. ISBN 1-85728-289-2 (UCL Press); ISBN 0-8133-3051-3 (hb) & 978-0813330518 (pb) (Westview)
  • Kohl, Philip L. "Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Constructions of Nations and the Reconstructions of the Remote past", Annual Review of Anthropology, 27, (1998): 223–246.
  • G. Fagan (ed.), Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public Routledge (2006), ISBN 0-415-30593-4.
  • Kohl, Fawcett (eds.), Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology, Cambridge University Press (1996), ISBN 0-521-55839-5
  • Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, University of Chicago Press (2000), ISBN 0-226-48202-2.

Specific nationalisms
Celtic
  • Chapman, Malcolm. The Celts: The Construction of a Myth. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. ISBN 0-312-07938-9
  • Dietler, Michael. "'Our Ancestors the Gauls': Archaeology, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Manipulation of Celtic Identity in Modern Europe". American Anthropologist, N.S. 96 (1994): 584–605.
  • James, Simon. The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention? London: British Museum Press, 1999. ISBN 0-7141-2165-7
Israeli
  • Abu El-Haj, Nadia. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0226001951
Spanish
  • Díaz-Andreu, Margarita 2010. "Nationalism and Archaeology. Spanish Archaeology in the Europe of Nationalities". In Preucel, R. and Mrozowksi, S. (eds.), Contemporary Archaeology in Theory and Practice. London, Blackwell: 432–444.
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