The French École Biblique et Archéologique in Jerusalem excavated at Tell el-FarCah (1946– 1960), Qumran (1951–1956), Munhata (1962– 1967), and Tell Keisan (1971–1976). Preliminary reports appeared in the “Chronique Archéologique” of the Revue Biblique. The Dutch, although without an in-country institute, carried out important excavations somewhat later at Tell Deir CAlla in the Jordan Valley (1976–1978).

The 1967 Arab-Israeli war had a considerable impact on archaeology, at least in Palestine if not in Syria. In effect, Palestine was now repartitioned, and the West Bank now fell under Israeli control. The Israelis initiated a surface survey of this area almost immediately as well as launching a large-scale clearance around the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and somewhat later in the restored Jewish Quarter in the Old City. Following the Israeli takeover of the Old City, the British, French, and German schools in Jerusalem maintained a nominal presence, but in practice they transferred their field operations to Jordan, where in time they opened new institutes in Amman. Only the Americans aligned themselves with the Israeli authorities, reconstituting the old American Schools of Oriental Research by changing its name in 1968 to the William Foxwell Albright Institute while at the same time opening a new branch in Amman under the name American Center for Oriental Research.

The result of the shifts was to leave archaeology in “Palestine” after 1967 in the hands of the Israelis, with some American participation; in the occupied territories on the West Bank (now called “Samaria” and “Judea”) in the exclusive hands of the Israelis; and in Jordan in the hands of the foreign archaeologists but with growing Jordanian control. In Syria and Lebanon, most foreign work diminished as political instability increased, and at the same time, the nascent national schools found themselves beleaguered.

The Maturation of the Discipline: The 1970s–1980s

In the development of archaeology in Palestine we have noted two parallel streams, as it were, sacred and secular, particularly as the discipline(s) evolved in the United States. Beginning about 1970, however, the new archaeology began to eclipse the old-style biblical archaeology. The latter had always been merely an enterprise, a kind of “applied” archaeology, or what Wright called “armchair archaeology,” but it had never evolved into a profession or an academic discipline. Indeed, biblical archaeologists had often resisted specialization, apparently cherishing their amateur status and content for their work to remain an adjunct of biblical studies. By the 1970s, however, both the internal weaknesses of biblical archaeology and the challenge of the new archaeology and other external threats resulted in a separation of the “two archaeologies,” gradual at first, but soon virtually complete. And with the ascendancy of Syro-Palestinian archaeology, more in the style of the 1920s and 1930s, biblical archaeology was soon passé. Even the name was largely abandoned, Albright’s original term Syro-Palestinian archaeology now being generally preferred.

The debate that continued throughout the 1970s was not, as some thought, merely a semantic quarrel. What really happened was the separation of Syro-Palestinian archaeology from its parent, biblical studies, so that the entire enterprise became, for the first time, an independent academic discipline with its own methods and specific aims. This discipline was no longer just a branch of biblical history (much less theology) or even the “handmaiden of history” generally. Syro-Palestinian archaeology now began to be considered as a regional-cultural branch of Near Eastern archaeology, like Anatolian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or Iranian archaeology. Its adherents also wished, without denying the natural connections with the history of the ancient Near East, including the biblical period, to allay themselves more with other disciplines. Paramount was anthropology, for its more sophisticated theory and use of cross-cultural comparisons. But the natural sciences were also seen as valuable allies for their analytical methods, even if archaeology, still a discipline within the humanities, could not attain the precision of the so-called hard sciences.

The newer theoretical approaches first began