Boulos el-ʿAraj: A Palestinian Quaker Archaeologist of the British Mandate Era (1926–1936)

Until recently, the work of Middle Easterners on archaeological projects in Palestine, and southwestern Asia and Egypt more broadly, during the period of colonialist control between the World Wars (1918–1939) has largely gone unnoticed, undocumented, and uncelebrated. However, over the last decade scholars have begun to take a long overdue interest in this subject, resulting in the appearance of an increasing number of publications addressing archaeology’s colonialist past. Egyptians, working both in Egypt itself and on projects in the Levant, have received the most attention so far. However, more work is now appearing on the roles of Palestinians during this turbulent time. This article documents and contextualizes the career of Boulos el-ʿAraj, a young Palestinian man active in British Mandate-era archaeology from ca. 1926–1936. Despite the number of excavations on which he worked, and his reputation at the time, he remains a mostly unknown figure, often going unmentioned in even recent articles dealing with Palestinian archaeologists of that era (for example, Abu Alsaud 2022, 2024), which makes documenting his career especially important.