The Old City of Acre (‘Akka) is home to a predominantly Palestinian community within the larger Israeli municipality of Acre. Bounded by late eighteenth and early nineteenth century land and sea walls, the Old City's dense mix of Ottoman and Crusader‐era architecture sits on a peninsula less than one square kilometer in area on the Mediterranean coast. In 2001, the World Heritage Committee designated the Old City as a UNESCO World Heritage site, intensifying the Israeli state project of developing the city as an international tourist attraction. This chapter examines contemporary interventions on the surfaces of the Old City by way of photographic surface survey. Documented surface interventions include residents’ deposition of bread for animals to eat and fishermen to use as bait and surface adornments that reflect local aesthetic values. An archaeological analysis draws attention to an expansive repertoire of local care practices. Residents selectively appropriate the language and work of “heritage” to represent their own histories and serve their own aspirations against the grain of the state project, offering an alternative theorization of heritage that insists on maintaining ‘Akka as at once a historic and livable space.
This chapter opens an analytic space to consider the resonance of “old places” in the contemporary moment through the lens of archaeology. Borrowing the term used by some of our interlocutors, old places are places that bear memory, that have accrued emotional attachment, and that intervene in the present as reminders of things that have happened before. Through these qualities, old places sustain life and relations. We adopt an expansive view of site formation processes that extends into the present and future and argue that studying contemporary site formation can unleash insights into the multi‐temporal constitution of the world we inhabit. We do not insist on a single approach to studying these processes, but rather suggest that the methodological and theoretical diversity that archaeologists and local communities bring together is key to studying and knowing old places in the present. We draw connections between a contemporary archaeology of old places and the emergent fields of contemporary archaeology and critical heritage studies, but also argue for retaining and fully incorporating the political and activist orientations of historical, feminist, African Diaspora, and Indigenous archaeologies—fields that have long centered the knowledge and concerns of contemporary communities—into this work.
The international significance of Akko's heritage is best illustrated by the inscription of two UNESCO World Heritage sites in this town of just over 55,000 people. This article describes three projects that focus on the concept of a shared heritage at a World Heritage site in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, diverse town situated in a region that continues to experience ongoing religious and ethnic conflict. The most recent, and still ongoing, effort to balance archaeology and community interests is the Tel Akko Total Archaeology Project. While attempting to incorporate community building through archaeology and dialog, the Total Archaeology approach described here aims for a socially just and inclusive archaeology that will benefit local community stakeholders rather than disenfranchise them. It also emphasizes the need for local perspectives and experiences to play an active role in the interpretation of the past.
In addition, I would also like to thank my friends, colleagues, the department faculty and staff for consistently being a source of inspiration to me and making my time at Iowa State University a wonderful experience. Finally, thanks to my girlfriend, Hannah, for her hours of patience, respect, love, and the occasional backrub. v ABSTRACT "Artistic (Mis)representation and Commodity Culture in The Picture of Dorian Gray and The House of Mirth" attempts to establish a transAtlantic connection between authors Oscar Wilde and Edith Wharton by considering the manner in which each author's respective protagonist relates to art, commodities, and the society in which he or she lives. By reading
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