Walking through the hills around Ramallah, where I live, I have often come upon archeological ruins and remnants: Byzantine tombs, Ottoman olive presses, pottery shards. They lie there, scattered among stone walls and olive trees, unmarked and unstudied. I often wondered, with no small degree of vexation, why, in a land like Palestine that has long been subject to historical challenge, so little attention is given by the Palestinian Authority to archeological excavations.