Archaeology, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt

This chapter looks at how the timely development of an interdisciplinary archaeology (modern conflict archaeology) of the First World War from the late 1990s offered a comprehensive and nuanced way of investigating the many interlocking military and cultural aspects of the Arab Revolt and its aftermath. Ephemeral archaeological traces in the sands of southern Jordan, it was hoped, would speak to the origins of modern guerrilla warfare which itself contributed to the shaping of the Middle East after 1918. The new approach showed the power of objects to create and transmit impressions and evaluations of the Revolt and its personalities—not least by the catalysing effects of finding similar items during excavations of the original landscapes whence all such objects derived their historical significance. The desert, so apparently empty of information and insight, would prove to be full of both. The key to deciphering its archaeological message lay in understanding the landscape, its layers and its objects—a quest which began with the largest artefact of all, the Hejaz Railway.