The Al-Haditha Project:
A Historical–Archaeological Study of a Depopulated Arab Village
Israel Science Fund research grant no. 1316/22
The study of al-Ḥaditha began with a simple but striking realization: despite its recent past and substantial size, the village had never been studied in a systematic way. Like hundreds of depopulated villages in the region, it remained largely absent from both historical and archaeological scholarship. At Tel Ḥadid, where the ruins of the village are still visible among olive orchards, collapsed walls, and scattered installations, this absence was particularly evident. The project, launched in 2022 with the support of the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), was therefore initiated to address this gap and to bring into focus a community whose history had long remained fragmented and only partially documented.
The central goal of the project is to reconstruct the history, landscape, and social fabric of al-Haditha from its emergence in the Ottoman period to its destruction in 1948. This includes fundamental questions that were initially unanswered: when the village was founded, how it was organized spatially and socially, how its inhabitants made a living, and how they interacted with neighboring villages and nearby urban centers such as Lydda, Ramla, and Jaffa.
To address these questions, the project adopts an interdisciplinary methodology that combines archaeology, historical research, and oral history. Extensive archival work has been carried out in Israeli and international collections, including Ottoman and British Mandate records, maps, and administrative documents. At the same time, interviews conducted with former inhabitants and their descendants (now living primarily in the West Bank and Jordan) provide invaluable insights into daily life, social relations, and memory. Archaeological fieldwork, including survey and excavation, complements these sources by documenting the material remains of the village and its surrounding landscape. The close integration of these approaches allows each line of evidence to inform and refine the others, producing a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the site.
Recent work has already begun to yield significant results. The survey of the site, supported by aerial photography and GIS analysis, has enabled the reconstruction of the village’s layout, revealing clusters of houses, courtyards, paths, and agricultural installations distributed across the summit and slopes of the tell. Excavations in selected areas have provided “windows” into daily life, uncovering architectural remains, activity surfaces, and a rich assemblage of finds, including pottery, tobacco pipes, and imported wares. At the same time, the integration of historical aerial photographs has made it possible to trace the village’s growth, its spatial organization, and the processes of destruction that followed 1948. Together, these strands of evidence are beginning to illuminate both the physical environment and the lived experience of the village.
The project is co-directed by Prof. Yoav Alon, a historian, and Prof. Ido Koch, an archaeologist, and brings together a multidisciplinary team.
Permanent project staff
Rami Abu-Hamed, oral history
Yuval Amir, excavation area supervisor
Stav Bartel, spatial analysis
Sagi Freiman, survey and spatial documentation
Netanel Rinon, research coordinator
Ofir Elyahu Gal-Ezer, archival research
Israa Sheikh Yosef, spatial documentation
Dana Shraga, excavation area assistant supervisor
Omer Ze’evi-Beger, survey, spatial documentation, and Ottoman-period material culture
