Introduction. Digging in the Eastern Mediterranean: antiquities, workforce and identities in Ottoman and post-Ottoman times

In the last decades, archaeology has become an important tool for shedding light on the cultural nature of imperialism and colonialism. The interdisciplinary approach to the vestiges of the past has paved the way for research that, on the one hand, has further highlighted the political value of the discipline and, on the other, has read through archaeology some of the processes of identity differentiation underlying imperial hierarchies. The review paper focuses on research that has investigated the production of archaeological knowledge, introducing the two topics to which the Special Issue is devoted: the locally recruited workforce in some Eastern Mediterranean countries; and the narratives produced about antiquities in Ottoman and post-Ottoman times.