Digging in the Past, Building for the Future

August 31, 2015
Gabrielle Goodman
Gabrielle Goodman received the 2015 Greeley International Internship award from the CSWR.

Last summer I was incredibly fortunate to be the recipient of the 2015 Greeley International Internship award, offered through the Center for the Study of World Religions. The award enabled me to work as the community engagement program developer for the Jezreel Valley Regional Project (JVRP) in Israel. 

The JVRP is an archaeological organization that is committed to investigating the history of human activity in the Jezreel Valley from the Paleolithic through the Ottoman period. Last season, the JVRP excavated at Legio, a site that the sixth Roman Ferrata Legion called home during the second and third centuries CE. This is the first Roman military base of that period to be excavated in what was the eastern part of the empire!

Apart from volunteering throughout the excavation of Legio, my role in working with the JVRP was to conduct research toward implementing greater engagement programs with the local populations. The people who live nearby archaeological sites are the ultimate bearers of the responsibility to decide what the fate of the site will be, and meaningful programming enables them to be intimately involved in discovering their own cultural heritage.

The JVRP also has much to learn from those who live by their work sites year-round. Collecting knowledge from personal narratives and about settlement histories and modern land-use practices adds invaluable detail to the team's understanding of the way the landscape has changed over the last several generations. The historical and archaeological narrative reconstructed by the project can also have a profound impact on local populations' perceptions of themselves and the places they inhabit.

I have learned that the cultural exchange that happens through archaeology has enormous potential to build trust between disparate communities. As people work together to discover the past, they learn about each other in an intimate way that goes deeper than stereotypes or media coverage.  

Local student groups, families, and individual adults joined our excavation. For two weeks, we worked with students from the villages of Yodfat and Ram-On, and for many of them this was the first time they had taken part in an excavation.  When I talked to them, they often commented on how hard the work was, but also how satisfying it was at the end of the day to see how much more they had learned about the area in which they were digging—a sentiment I think most of the team shared. I instructed a group of girls who were proud to teach me Israeli songs to inspire us as we worked!

We wanted to learn as much as we could about the communities with which we engaged, but we wanted to learn on their own terms. To that end, I designed questionnaires that focused on the archaeology projects and on the fact that we were a mostly North American team. The responses we received would serve as the first stage as we began to experiment with appropriateness of language and the frameworks we employ to describe our purpose.

Dr. Robert Homsher, a college fellow in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard and a director of the JVRP, worked closely with me to formulate these questions. Dr. Yotam Tepper, the team's Israeli director, then helped me edit my translations into Hebrew. 

We were staying at Kibbutz Mizra, and organizing a visit to the kibbutz museum allowed me to start an exciting friendship with Tzvi Harel, who introduced himself as Chibbi, the ambassador for the kibbutz. He gave a presentation for a number of the team members at the museum one evening after dinner, giving us a picture of the early history of the state of Israel from his perspective, illustrated with photographs and artifacts from its earlier days. 

A few days later, over wine, coffee, cheesecake, and cherries at his house, a few friends and I talked with him and his wife about their own personal connections to the kibbutz, and the relationship between the U.S. and Israel.

Last summer taught me more than I could have ever imagined about the simultaneous power and sensitivity involved when cultures come together. I feel inspired to continue to work towards a career in education, and I am compelled to discover more about the field of heritage studies, as well as to improve my Modern Hebrew!

I hope to continue working with this amazing team, and I have so much gratitude for Matthew Adams, Jonathan David, Yotam Tepper, Robert Homsher, Melissa Cradic, and everyone on the staff who supported me the whole way through the summer!

I am also overwhelmed with gratitude for the CSWR and to the Rev. Dana Greeley. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to start this journey!

 —Gabrielle Goodman, is a 2016 MTS candidate

See also: Archaeology, Israel, No