university of texas press reclaiming a plundered past archaeology and nation building in modern iraq jan 2006

[...]... political and nationalistic agenda In recent years, there has been a growing academic interest in the connection between nationalism and archaeology. 14 As several studies have demonstrated, nationalism influences the kinds of questions archaeologists have been willing to ask and determines what sort of historical sites to excavate and uncover Nationalist ideologies can lead and have led archaeologists... education of Iraq, observed that during the Baghdad-based Abbasid Caliphate in the eighth and ninth centuries 6 RECLAIMING A PLUNDERED PAST the Caliphs al-Ma’mun and Haroun al-Rashid ruled over 200 million people all across the Middle East For Shawkat, the lessons of the past were clear and had obvious contemporary implications regarding Iraq s role in the world He stated that the spirit of al-Rashid and al-Ma’mun... Chapters 4 and 5, I examine the increasing Iraqi involvement in the archaeological enterprise and the ensuing negotiations to gain full control of the nation s antiquities The transformation of archaeology from being primarily a Western affair to one that Iraqis felt that they should dominate was drastic Furthermore, the accompanying nationalism and the critical reassessment of the history of Iraq s relationship... phase, that of removal, was an “international” stage, and characterized by Western domination in which the Iraqis played a limited role—primarily supplying the manual labor at various excavation sites Western archaeologists and institutions, not the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, sought to claim Mesopotamian antiquities as theirs The second stage, during the interwar years, was a transitional period marked... strategy, links of Husayn’s regime to al-Qaida, and the presence of weapons of mass D 2 RECLAIMING A PLUNDERED PAST destruction were all temporarily swept aside and instead Iraqi antiquities took center stage Eventually, archaeological artifacts became intrinsically linked to the execution of the war and perhaps symbolic of the difficulties ahead in the reconstruction of Iraq This sudden interest in Iraqi... general populace for not only their monetary value but also because of their links to 18 RECLAIMING A PLUNDERED PAST governmental policy Archaeology, therefore, played a significant role in helping promote nationalism in the age of decolonization of Iraq and provided tangible objects for defining the nation in the era of a strong, centralized nation- state The political and cultural history of archaeology. .. is a critical ingredient in any nationalist discourse In such narratives, the selective utilization of archaeology often serves important functions in articulating a conscious and deliberate national history In twentieth-century Iraq, archaeology and ancient history has been intimately intertwined with the state -building process For most of the twentieth century, fashioning a distinct Iraqi national... the nascent state, including those related to archaeology Chapter 3 describes the beginning of the hybrid stage of archaeological excavations, when foreign archaeologists were operating under prime conditions in Iraq and the Iraqi political establishment had only a passing interest in this archaeology The final two chapters focus on the development of the “national” period in Iraqi archaeology In Chapters... and 1941 and 1963 and 1968 emphasized archaeology and history connected to Iraq s pan-Arab and pan-Islamic ties, particularly its role as the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate Others, in particular that between 1958 and 1963 and the government under the leadership of Saddam Husayn between 1979 and 2003, have stressed Iraq s particularism based on its unique pre-Islamic history, such as being the home of. .. are easily packaged For example, at a celebration to mark the first year of the Iran -Iraq War in 1981, the Iraqi vice president Taha al-Din Ma’ruf gave a fiery speech in which he led listeners back on a journey a few thousand years, stating that “when the mighty kingdom of Akkad and Sumer was founded, as an expression of the first Iraqi patriotic [wataniyya] unity in history, the unity of the homeland . plundered. The Iraqi National Library and Archives (Dar al-Katub wa al-Watha’iq) and the Ministry of Holy Endowments and Religious Affairs (al-Awqaf) were set on fire and/ or looted during this same time. class="bi x0 y0 w0 h0" alt="" RECLAIMING A PLUNDERED PAST i-xiv_bernhardsson_1570 9/6/05 7:40 PM Page i THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK RECLAIMING A PLUNDERED PAST Archaeology and Nation Building. political purposes to foster national unity, and archaeological artifacts inspired Iraqi poets and artists. But in April of 2003, during chaotic and violent days, when Iraq was united only in its anarchy,