Preoccupations: Whatever Happened to Prehistory in Palestine?
In February 2025, Columbia Global Center Amman hosted Dr. Brian Boyd, Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University, for a public talk titled Preoccupations: Whatever Happened to Prehistory in Palestine?
Dr. Boyd examined the near-total absence of prehistoric research in contemporary Palestinian archaeology and how “prehistory” was introduced during the British Mandate, embedding frameworks that continue to shape archaeological narratives, public perceptions, and higher education today.
During this event, in partnership with the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia, he explored how archaeologists (primarily British and French) during the Mandate classified prehistoric material remains by cultural and ethnic groups, an approach fundamental to early Western archaeology but still pervasive in 21st-century studies of the area. The imposed framework of “Palaeolithic-Mesolithic-Neolithic,” developed for Europe’s past, remains dominant, shaping interpretations of social and ethnic development. While much has been written on archaeology’s influence on historical narratives, the lasting impact of European prehistory, introduced in the 1920s, remains under-examined. Revisiting these frameworks reveals archaeology’s role in shaping our understanding of history and consider its obligations in the present.
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Speaker Spotlight
Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, Director of Museum Anthropology and Co-Chair of the Seminar on Human-Animal Studies at Columbia University, New York City.
He works on the later prehistory and politics of archaeology in southwest Asia, with a focus on Palestine. His current fieldwork takes place in the West Bank, where he co-directs (with Dr. Hamed Salem, Birzeit University) a community archaeology/museum project in the landscapes of the village of Shuqba, northwest of Ramallah. Brian co-chaired the Anthropology Division of the New York Academy of Sciences (2013-2017), and he currently serves on the board of the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), and the Theoretical Archaeology Group Committee in both the UK and North America.