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Prof. Gideon Shelach-Lavi is the Louis Freiberg Professor of East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In recent years he has held various positions at the Hebrew University, including the Chair of the Asian Studies Department, the Chair of the Institute of African and Asian Studies, and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. Prof. Shelach-Lavi received a Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of Pittsburgh (1996) and since 1995 he has conducted archaeological fieldwork in North China and in Mongolia. In addition of being the PI of The Wall project, he recently completed the Fuxin Regional Archaeological Project in Liaoning province, China and has started a new regional project in Shandong province. Prof. Shelach-Lavi has published 9 books and more than 70 papers in leading academic journals (among them Science, Antiquity, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Journal of Archaeological Science, Current Anthropology and more, including academic journals in China). Among his recent books are: The Archaeology of China: From Prehistory to the Han Dynasty (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Prehistoric Societies on the Northern Frontiers of China: Archaeological Perspectives on Identity Formation and Economic Change during the First Millennium BCE (Equinox, 2009); Chifeng International Collaborative Archaeological Project (co-author, Pittsburgh 2011), Animals and Human Society in Asia: Historical, Cultural and Ethical Perspectives (co-editor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), The Birth of Empire: The State of Qin Revisited (co-editor, University of California Press 2013).
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Dr. Ido Wachtel is a post-doctoral fellow at the Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies, Tel Aviv University, and a Martin Buber fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (from October 2020). He received his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University (2018). Ido is an archaeologist specializing in spatial archaeology and settlement patterns analysis. His recent work focuses on GIS applications and locational/predictive modeling. His research aims to analyze regional and interregional dynamic processes of settlement growth, urbanization, and decline, with a systematic analysis of human-environment interactions through time. Ido's work focuses on the Southern Levant and on the proto-historical and early historical periods. He also participates in regional studies and conducts spatial analyses in North-East China and Mongolia. Ongoing projects
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Dr. Yoni Goldsmith is a Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University. He received his PhD from Columbia University (Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, 2017) and his postdoc was at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech). Yoni is a geochemist and geomorphologist. His work is aimed at quantifying past changes in rainfall and evaporation around the world (China, Mongolia, western US, Middle East) in order to understand the natural variability of rainfall and evaporation and the processes that govern this variability. In addition, he studies how human societies have responded to climate change throughout history. For this he combines geomorphology with isotope geochemistry (compound specific stable isotopes [dD, d13C], traditional stable isotopes [dD, 18O, d13C], clumped isotopes and U/Th dating) to investigate how the status of lakes has changed through time. In addition, he uses hydrological models and outputs of climate models to quantify and evaluate the empirical data collected. Ongoing projects
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Dr. Michael Storozum is a post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in 2017 and since then has held post-doctoral research fellowships at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, Fudan University, and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Michael is an anthropological geoarchaeologist who is interested in using geoarchaeological research to extend scientific and policy perspectives on environmental issues relevant to changing climatic regimes and natural hazards. Recent work of his includes geoarchaeological analyses of human-caused environmental transformations in China that often led to large-scale disasters, like the mega-flood that destroyed Kaifeng in 1642 CE. Michael aims to place modern environmental challenges within a deep time perspective through his geoarchaeological research. Ongoing projects
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Dr. Johannes Lotze is a post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester in 2017 and has been a Teaching Fellow in Medieval Chinese History at the University of Birmingham from 2018 to 2020. Johannes is a historian of East Asia with a focus on the nature and impact of ‘non-Chinese’ empires in ‘China’; on sedentary/nomadic cooperation and conflict; and specifically on the Mongols and their predecessors. In particular, he investigates the history of linguistic landscapes and language policies in Chinese empires against the backdrop of wider global trajectories of multilingualism and translation. On a methodological level, Johannes is interested in promoting more interaction between History and other disciplines, such as Linguistics/Translation Studies (current book project) or Archaeology/Palaeoclimatology (The Wall project). Ongoing projects
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HUJI email address Johannes.Lotze@mail.huji.ac.il |
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Tiki Steiner is a doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received her M.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2016. Tiki is a zooarchaeologist whose work aims to reconstruct faunal exploitation patterns, economic activity related to animals and investigate taphonomic signals on bone surfaces to better understand modes of consumption. Tiki has analyzed multiple faunal assemblages from salvage excavations in Israel, ranging from the Chalcolithic through the Byzantine periods, as well as being an excavation area manager at the Nesher-Ramle quarry salvage excavations from 2016-2020. Her Master’s thesis was a faunal analysis of a complete, water-logged Epipaleolithic brush hut from Ohalo II (c. 23kya) encompassed identification, measurements, taphonomic observation and spatial analysis and examination of possible burnt bones using FTIR. She is interested in the connection between climatic fluctuation and subsistence choices and the human ability to adapt in different ways to different ecosystems. The Wall project will focus on zooarchaeology of pastoral nomads in medieval Mongolia and China, combining “classic” zooarchaeological techniques with micro-archaeological analyses to identify signatures of herd management and climatic, ecological and social data. Ongoing project: A detailed faunal analysis of Nahal Mahanayim Outlet (NMO), a Middle Paleolithic (c. 60 kya), open-air hunting site in the Hula Valley, Israel, characterized by the presence well preserved, complete aurochs bones. |
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Tal Rogovski is a graduate student at the Hebrew University, Institute of Archeology, focusing the classical period. His thesis focuses on the underground complexes of Horvat Midras, a key site in the Judean lowlands (Shfela). He is writing his MA thesis under the guidance of Dr. Orit Peleg-Barkat and Prof. Boaz Zissu. As an independent archaeologist, Tal conducted in the recent years various selvage excavations (in Rehovot, Tiberias and Jerusalem) and was a field manager in academic excavations (Horvat Midras, Khirbet el-'Eika). In addition to his work as an archaeologists Tal also specializes in archaeological photography, photography of archaeological artifacts and drone photography. As part of The Wall project Tal is developing tools for the documentation of excavations with the help of three-dimensional models based on aerial and ground photographs, and the use of various software that help us with research and documentation of wall-lines and associated sites. His role is also to identify other technologies that will be useful for our flied work as well as with the analysis of data from the field Tal participated in the preliminary season of "The Wall" (2019) in which we test excavated a section of the wall as well as a cluster of associated structures. |
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Tal Ulus is a doctoral student in the Geography Department and the Advanced School for Environmental Studies at the Hebrew University. Her dissertation examines climate anomalies and their impact on large-scale food crises as a possible explanation for the mass movement of people from Africa’s Horn and Sahel regions to the European continent and Israel during the last two decades. Another aspect of her study examines the attempts made to block these waves of immigration and refugees by enforcement of strict policies and the construction of walls and fences. The latter aspect of her study closely examines the discourse relating the "blocking policy" taken by Israel and Sicily in attempt to prevent the arrival of refugees/immigrants into the country. Ongoing projects:
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