Postcolonial, Neo-imperial, or a Little Bit of Both? Reflections on Museums in Lebanon

It is gratifying and enlightening to read these three quite different perspectives on museum practice in Lebanon. This journal will continue to benefit from ever-greater attention to political and social contexts of archaeological work and its cultural by-products, not merely as "popularization" or "outreach" but as essential outcomes of scholarly activity. For while research reports and historical monographs reach at most a few hundred readers, public representations of the past in museums, school textbooks, and "official" national histories-further echoed in the subtle imagery of postage stamps, political speeches, and public commemorations-move millions. They move them to war, peace, xenophobia, or peaceful co-existence. Institutions such as those described in the preceding articles are nothing less than the modern machinery of collective identity.