Abstract
Historical archaeology is delineating the impact of Western European influence and imperialism on the Middle East, particularly the period the Ottoman Empire ruled over the eastern Mediterranean (1516–1917). Material assemblages from the Ottoman period illustrate the global connections that entangled the eastern Mediterranean with Western European capitalism after the 16th century. Other categories of material culture illustrate such global interactions: the accounts of travelers to the Holy Land in the form of books, paintings, and photographs. These accounts have been understood as part of the Western domination of the Middle East. Orientalist paintings as artifacts of Ottoman Palestine are the focus here, complex interventions in the assumptions about the Holy Land that can be appropriated for archaeological understandings of Palestine’s past. The paintings of landscape artist David Roberts (1796–1864) are used as an example. He traveled through Palestine in the late 1830s and created an unparalleled collection of images.
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Baram, U. Images of the Holy Land: The David Roberts Paintings as Artifacts of 1830s Palestine. Hist Arch 41, 106–117 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376997
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376997