The Stranger at Emmaus: Recognition, Remembrance, and Community Activism

Remembering is a crucial undertaking of modern cultural heritage studies. Preserving, restoring, respecting, recognizing — however we frame our activities, all of these infer that our major responsibility to communities both living and dead as heritage professionals is to assure that some aspect of their lives survive them to attest to their presence on the globe. In recent years this obligation has been translated into archaeological activism — a field that has only just begun to make a difference in the Middle East. I discuss one project that took place over a decade ago to commemorate the Palestinian villages at Imwas/Emmaus, from which hundreds were forcibly evacuated during the 1967 Israeli-Arab War. While the effort itself cannot be counted as a success, it was unique at the time and represents something of a ‘gray beginning’ for what has become a decade of archaeological activism in the region. This article discusses the struggle to obtain recognition for the three villages of Imwas, Yalou and Beit Nouba, the results of the struggle, and the lessons it represents for similar undertakings that have followed it.