A City Buried by Its Past: The Late Ottoman Settlement at Caesarea Maritima (20 min)
Presenters
Isaac T. Lang, Florida State University
Abstract
In 1884, a contingent of
Bosnian Muslims arrived in the mostly abandoned city of Caesarea Maritima.
These newcomers were refugees, relocated by the Ottoman government after the
Bosnia Vilayet was occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1878. Prior to the
arrival of the fifty Bosniak families at Caesarea, the city was described as
nothing more than a ruin inhabited only by fishermen. With no alternative, the
refugees built a new settlement from the recycled materials of Caesarea’s
earlier phases of habitation. Sixty-three years later, the Bosnian population
was forcibly removed by the Baron Edmond Rothschild and, in the following year,
their fate was sealed by the creation of the Israeli state. These families were
relocated to the West Bank, where many of their descendants still reside.
But how is the Bosnian
settlement at Caesarea Maritima remembered? How do museums portray the people
in conjunction with their material goods—much of which is ancient and medieval
spolia? The answer to these questions is disappointing. Israeli nationalism and
the persistent notion that the Late Ottoman period is not yet ancient enough to
warrant archaeological excavation have greatly apprehended a comprehensive
study of Caesarea’s Bosnian settlement.
This project is twofold. Much
of this phase of the city's history is ignored and unacknowledged and, as such,
part of this paper seeks to analyze the material culture of the Bosnian
settlement at Caesarea, which, as a mixture of ancient spolia and modern
materials, can better help us understand the afterlife of earlier phases in
Caesrea’s history. The second part of this project seeks to acknowledge the
history of the Bosnian settlement and its premature conclusion by analyzing the
treatment of this site by three local museums: the Caesarea National Park, the
Caesarea Museum in the Sdot Yam kibbutz, and the Ralli Museum. By conducting
such analyses, researchers are able both to better their understanding of an
ancient city as well as confront the city’s modern human circumstances.
AIA-2J