Archaeology in Israel is truly a national obsession, a practice through which national identity and national rights have long been asserted. But how and why did archaeology emerge as such a pervasive force there? How can the practices of archaeology help answer those questions? In this stirring book, Nadia Abu El-Haj addresses these questions and specifies for the first time the relationship between national ideology, colonial settlement, and the production of historical knowledge. She analyzes particular instances of history, artifacts, and landscapes in the making to show how archaeology...

"The Genealogical Science"analyzes the scientific work and social implications of the flourishing field of genetic history.A biological discipline that relies on genetic data in order to reconstruct the geographic origins of contemporary populations their histories of migration and genealogical connections to other present-day groups this historical science is garnering ever more credibility and social reach, in large part due to a growing industry in ancestry testing.In this book, Nadia Abu El-Haj examines genetic history s working assumptions about culture and nature, identity and biology,...