...Abu El Haj attributes extraordinary powers of creativity to the archaeological profession. Archaeologists have “created the fact of an ancient Israelite/Jewish nation,” where none actually existed, all those city walls and bullae with impressions written in paleo-Hebrew are “pure political fabrication.”...

...The archaeology of ancient Israel is hotly contested terrain, with pitched battles currently raging over such issues as whether a centralized Israelite kingdom emerges in the tenth century or the ninth, and weather or not Eilat Mazar has uncovered a tenth-century royal Judean building. I am not, however, aware of a single archaeologist or historian who would support Abu El Haj’s contention that the Israelite kingdoms are mere fiction constructs, the Jewish “nation’s origin myth,” comparable, that is, to the Aeneid, or the founding of Japan by the sun goddess.

This sort of silliness would ordinarily be dismissed as mere crank writing – heaven knows no academic discipline is subject to a greater output of crank scholarship than archaeology – except for the fact that this book is published by the University of Chicago Press and based on a PhD dissertation accepted by Duke University. We are forced to conclude that theories historians and archaeologists regard as daft are actually seen as plausible by at least some anthropologists.

Amusingly, Abu El Haj is something of a positivist when it comes to the myths of Palestinian nationhood. All Israelis are part of a definitionally illegitimate “settler colonial society;” strident nationalism drives Israelis to commit every kind of crime including the destruction of non-Jewish artifacts; this contrasts with the ethical archaeological stewardship displayed by Palestinians, especially the Waqf, held up here as the embodiment of best practice; and when Palestinians do deliberately venerable sites - “looting (Joseph’s Tomb) and setting it alight” – their actions are to be “understood” and excused...

...I think I mentioned in previous posts on this that large earth-moving equipment is not unknown archaeologically, though not often used for obvious reasons. It could feasibly start an urban legend of heinous archaeologists ripping up valuable archaeological remains. But, you know, that's the danger when you throw out "I heard from someone that. . . ." as part of an academic treatise.