Occupying the past: The carceral archaeology of the Israel antiquities authority

The State of Israel utilizes a range of complex tools in its project of reterritorializing Palestine. One of these tools is the field of archaeology, and the state apparatus tasked with overseeing the work of excavating material remains and exploiting the uncovered resources toward a settler-colonialist and anti-Palestinian carceral control, cultural dispossession, and narrative capture. The Israeli Antiquities Authority is the agency responsible for these functions, utilizing an expansive antiquities law which allows the agency to seize land that it believes to be important to the cultural interests of the state, subsequently securitizing the territory and policing the antiquities markets, and dominating geography through the construction of an historical narrative that erases Palestinian past and present. This contention articulates the mechanics of erasure and dispossession that characterize the work of the IAA through an explanation of the law it enforces, engagement with the testimonies of agency members and Palestinians, and an analysis of the military-carceral dimensions of the extractive process, and a description of the ways Palestinians resist these enclosures.