versus new archaeology, which raged for a decade or more in the United States, was not replicated in Europe.

The situation in Israel is in many ways unique and thus deserves separate comment. The Israelis claim that they connect with the biblical past not necessarily by means of formal religion and certainly not theologically, since most of the archaeologists are neither personally observant nor academically trained in the Bible and religion, but emotionally and directly. They maintain that the Hebrew Bible is, after all, the virtual constitution of the modern state of Israel and, furthermore, that for Jews displaced for centuries, even secular Jews, digging for their past in the soil of the Holy Land and searching for their roots is a vital matter of identity, an existential quest that no one has the right to deny them. They have a point, although the argument is somewhat disingenuous and can lead to nationalist extremes. In any case, Israeli archaeologists who use the phrase “biblical archaeology” for popular consumption, or for an English-speaking audience, do so with a meaning that differs from typical American usage, and partly to avoid the awkward term “Palestinian.” (In Hebrew, the common designation is simply “the archaeology of Eretz Israel,” or the state of Israel, exactly parallel to the archaeology of Jordan or Syria.)

National Schools Come to the Fore

The 1970s and 1980s saw not only the maturation of Syro-Palestinian archaeology as an overall discipline but also the ascendancy of national schools in the Middle East, the Israeli school being the prime example. This school, which had its roots in Jewish archaeology in mandatory Palestine in the 1930s, was rooted in the European academic tradition of ancient Near Eastern studies in history, philology, and art but also deeply influenced by Albright and his long years in Palestine. It is grounded in the realia of the landscape, sites, material culture, and long history of the country and is pragmatic in approach, with scant use for theory, including that of the new archaeology. It is characterized less by stratigraphic detail than by large-scale architectural exposure and stress on assemblages of pottery from living surfaces. It is, and always has been, secular and professional, largely separated from other departments in universities and organized in institutes of archaeology, and often in conflict with the religious establishment rather than allied with it. In recent years, surface surveys and regional projects have become prominent emphases.

The Israeli school really grew out of Yigael Yadin’s excavations at Hazor in 1955–1958, where the first generation of Israeli archaeologists was trained. In the 1960s and 1970s, many large projects were carried out, producing another new generation of archaeologists. Archaeological enterprise in Israel is well supported by the Israel Antiquities Authority, institutes of archaeology at four universities, the Israel Exploration Society, many publication series, including the periodicals Israel Exploration Journal and Tel Aviv, and the national Israel Museum as well as dozens of municipal and regional museums. Not surprisingly, the Israeli school dominates the local scene and has done so almost from the beginning. American field projects (often joint projects) still continue under the auspices of the American school in Jerusalem, but the British, French, German, and other schools transferred most of their operations to Jordan after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. The latest syntheses by Israeli archaeologists are Amihai Mazar’s Archaeology of the Land of the Bible 10,000– 586 b.c. (1990) and Amnon Ben-Tor’s edited volume The Archaeology of Ancient Israel (1992).

In the modern Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, which inherited eastern Palestine or Transjordan after the end of the British Mandate, another national school flourishes. There is a vigorous Department of Antiquities, which publishes annually; programs of archaeology at the University of Jordan and Yarmuk University; a large group of professional archaeologists, most with doctorates from European universities; and dozens of field projects. Foreign archaeological work is much more prominent here than in Israel and is sponsored chiefly by American, British, German, and other institutes in Amman. Although the archaeology of Jordan still lags somewhat behind archaeology in Israel, some idea of its rapid progress may be gleaned