Heartbreaking exhibition shows how Israeli archaeologists helped identify remains from Oct. 7 massacre

There are many archaeologists in Israel, a country rich with history buried beneath the surface, but some offered their expertise to help identify remains from much more recent events: the Hamas invasion of Oct. 7, 2023.

ALL ISRAEL NEWS correspondent, Oriel Moran, reports on an Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) exhibition entitled “Rising from the Ashes” which documents the devastating process of examining the charred remains of Oct. 7 victims using archaeological techniques.

Hosted at the Alejandro Weinstein Crenovich Center near the Israel Museum, the multi-layered exhibition presents the horrors of Oct. 7th as seen through the eyes of archaeologists.

The search for missing people from the kibbutz communities of the Gaza Envelope and from the Nova Music Festival went on for months, with some only identified by teeth or jewelery. For some, the identification process was even more difficult.

“As archeologists, we have been trained to search for the most minute details in discovering human activity, human presence, using those tools and applying them to a modern situation, as difficult as that may be, became crucial in identifying people in specific contexts,” Dr. Joe Uziel of the IAA explained to ALL ISRAEL NEWS.

“It seems like all of our training came into this one moment where it had much, much more  I'd say, power to it than excavating something that occurred hundreds or thousands of years ago,” he reflected.

Dr. Uziel recalls the terrible day of the massacre itself: “At around 6:30 in the morning or so, you could hear the booms of the iron dome and you knew something was going on. But as someone who's been living in Israel for many, many years now, it's sort of run of the mill. You don't think of anything unusual – or not too unusual, I should say. Very quickly, it became very clear that this was a totally different situation, a situation of uncertainty, of not knowing,  not knowing who was killed, who was kidnapped, that it became very, very difficult to get exact numbers and exact identifications for many of the people who were missing.”

Describing the feelings of being at the sites themselves he says, “It was a little bit surreal in a sense of walking into these kibbutzim, these villages, and sort of seeing this a pastoral environment that seemed so peaceful, and then just turning your head left or right and seeing the level of destruction with the houses burnt and collapsed and the signs of violence. There's no doubt that being exposed to that level of violence and that level of evil is something that I will take with me for the rest of my life,” he said.

Moran expressed appreciation for the professionals who put themselves into the thick of the most horrific circumstances to help people in Israel identify their lost loved ones. “This is their work, this is their job, this is what they do on a daily basis,” she said, recognizing the sacrifices they have made. “They're trained to identify the remains of history, archaeology, but for them to be on the ground in the land of Israel and to have to find the remains of missing people.” 

“These people did such an incredible and respectful job of collecting the pieces… so that the families can have some kind of peace of mind,” she concluded.

The Rising from the Ashes exhibition tells the stories of Oct. 7 from the point of view of the Israel Antiquities Authority using audio-visual media, interactive displays, and personal stories. The IAA describes it as a “personal and collective journey of documentation and remembrance.”

Now open at the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel in Jerusalem, the exhibition welcomes visitors both in Hebrew and in English.