The project "In Search of a Lost History" was conceived some years ago during long discussions with friends and colleagues who were all involved in cultural work and living and working across borders. All of us were confronted with various examples of stereotypical thinking in our daily lives and all of us were seeking a way to dismantle these pre-conceived ideas. Since my training is in fields strongly related to the past (archaeology and art history), it seemed natural to start looking for the roots of these thinking patterns in the past and maybe find a way to counter its contemporary forms (I will not say “try to find out where the road took the wrong turn”…)

"In Search of a Lost History" wants to explore how history is constructed and how the perception of the historical "other" influences us in our daily interactions. I am not too fond of the word "intercultural" because it seems to convey the idea of cultures as fixed entities that leave no space for flux and in-between stages. But since the word is so common and most people seem to know more or less what is meant by it, the project could be described as investigating intercultural coexistence in history and how the concepts developed through these experiences have influenced the way we interact today.

It is also a very personal project, since it has much to do with my own training as an archaeologist and cultural historian. Near Eastern archaeology is a field with a slightly spotted past. It was heavily involved with the European colonial project and only recently has an awareness of this problematic history begun to play a role in the way archaeology is studied.

Often there has been a tendency to study the past glorious periods, preferably the high cultures of the Ancient Near East as if this was entirely disconnected to anything in the present. Especially the Arab Muslim conquests of the 7th century was long viewed as devastating to the refined culture of the Eastern Mediterranean (till then part of the Byzantine Empire). The urban tradition of Arabia was ignored as was the wide interregional contacts of the Arabian peninsula at the time of the Prophet Mohammad. The "Arabs" were portrayed in history books as wild and uncivilized hoardes falling into Byzantium and leaving a trail of destruction behind.

War is never peaceful and conquests can never happen without bloodshed but the picture is not as black and white as our old history books presents it. Often the inhabitants welcomed the Muslims since they offered a more lenient regime and a break from the religious strife of various parties of Byzantium. New archaeological evidence show a vibrant commercial life and cultural blossoming after the Muslim conquests.

What is strange is that this evidence, although it is only recently that it has been fully acknowledged, is not new. But whenever excavations came up with such results in the past, it was deemed unworthy of notice. Apparently it did not fit into the once and for all established picture of the wild, untamed conquerors from the Arabian lands. And reviewing history would maybe have necessitated a reviewing of present time stereotypes? This might be speculation but it is interesting to follow this line of though a bit. The Western image of the Arabs seems to be eternal and unchanging. Flowing robes, wild beards and dark flashing eyes on horse back or camel - the prototype of the Bedouin warrior. The contemporary version of this is the fanatical terrorist (also complete with wild beards and dark flashing eyes). The New York based Palestinian video maker Jacqueline Salloum has in her 9 min. video "Planet of the Arabs" (2005) compiled clips from Hollywood mainstream cinema, all demonstrating the stereotypical images of Arabs in Western popular imagination (the video can be downloaded from Salloum's website and is in fact a great piece of art: www.jsalloum.org). It seems we still need some way before these old images have changed and we start seeing the Other as full individuals.

Since we are getting more and more connected in our contemporary world it seems vital that we overcome such stereotypical thinking. We need to break out and see each other from diverse angles. My work attempts to do just this.