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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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Angaragdulguun Gantumur is a doctoral student at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. I received my B.A. (2012) and M.A. (2016) degrees from the National University of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar. He is an archaeologist and a researcher employed at the Institute of Archaeology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences. worked on archaeological sites dating from Paleolithic through the Medieval and historic periods. His specialization is the stone tool technology of the Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic periods and he have worked for a number of field projects as an assistant researcher and crew member doing surveys in Mongolia. For The Wall project he is conducting GIS analysis, remote sensing, and drone imaging in order to study the surrounding areas near long wall sections located in Inner Mongolia and Mongolia. |
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Ying Tung Fung (Brianne) is a post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received her Ph.D from the University of Oxford in 2021. She has been tutoring undergraduate students in Chinese archaeology on occasion during her doctoral studies. Brianne is an archaeologist who specializes in Chinese archaeology, mainly in late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, and interested in topics related to cultural interaction, stone fortification, subsistence practices, urbanism and climate change. Her Ph.D thesis considered the settlements especially stone fortification in the North Loess Plateau during the period 2800-1600 BC. The aim was to better understand how climate, demographic, economic and material culture factors together contributed to the rise of the extraordinary site of Shimao and the surrounding sites in that region. She will work on remote sensing imagery, GIS analysis and historical texts for the research carried out in The Wall project.
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Dor Heimberg is a graduate student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, focusing on Chinese Archaeology. He is conducting his studies and writing his thesis as part of the Mandel MA Honors program and under the supervision of Prof. Gideon Shelach-Lavi and Dr. Uri Davidovich. His research deals with the archaeology of mobility and rivers in Ancient China and their effects on processes of cultural change. He wishes to delineate the ways in which different cultural groups moved around the Chinese landscape amidst the height of the formation processes of the empire, from the Warring States period to the Han Dynasty, while emphasizing the crucial role of rivers as spheres of multi-cultural interactions. Within The Wall project, Dor has been working as field supervisor in the 2022 and 2023 excavation seasons |
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Jingchao Chen (Christy) is a PhD candidate at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She acquired her master’s degree in Ancient Near East History and Archeology at Tel Aviv University, where she gained field experience and developed interest in archeological science. Having received organic residue analysis training in the laboratory at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, she did her MA thesis on “Tracing Household Behavior in Iron Age IIC Tel Hadid and Tel Beth-Shemesh: A Pilot Study with Organic Residue Analysis on Pottery Assemblages.” She will contribute to “The Wall” project by analyzing the potteries from Mongolia Expeditions using ORA: check the condition of lipid preservation, identify biomarkers and further understand the foodways and consumption behavior of the “Wall People”. Additionally, she will collaborate with archaeologists from China and analyze potteries from contemporaneous Liao-Jin sites. These day-to-day aspects will enable a better understanding of daily life at the Wall: What did the "Wall people" eat and use? What was daily life like associated with the MWS? Can the food habits identified reflect certain ethnic groups? Are there differences between the food consumed by people that worked and lived near the wall and those living in contemporaneous cities? All of these will assist in tackling main issues of the Wall project such as who built the Medieval Wall System, the function of the system, how it was maintained, operated and its final abandonment etc. |
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Zhidong Zhang works together with Dr. Johannes Lotze. As historians, they participate in the Wall project from the historical perspective. They work mainly with but not limited to primary Chinese sources, and are building a historical database about the Medieval Wall system (MWS) in China and Mongolia. The entries in the database cover the reasons, court debates, construction, and other wider historical context of the MWS. They also actively participate in academic research under the umbrella of the Wall project. They presented a talk about the guardians of the Jin walls in December 2022 in the Humanities and Social Sciences Fund Conference: Walls, Borders, and Frontier Zones in the Ancient and the Contemporary World. Zhidong worked further on this topic, and gave a talk on the Ma family: their Sogdian origin, migrations and identities in the 7th Salzburg International Conference on Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia in September 2023.
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Itay Lubel is am starting my M.A in archaeology this year, research is focusing on the spatial relations between the Iron Age sites in the Negev highlands and the environment. The aim is to clarify the set of considerations that led the users of these sites to place them in the unique spatial layout as it is seen today. In order to do so, a big spatial database is gathered with accurate information that is lacking today. The analysis will examine the affinity to different environmental components and other sites in the vicinity |
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Or Fenigstein is an M.A. student at the Archaeology Institute of the Hebrew University in the biblical department. She is specializing in spatial archaeology and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and her thesis is about road systems in the Judean Desert. In The Wall Project, she is responsible for the spatial measurements and GIS outputs during the excavations. |
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Daniela Wolin will start a Post-doctoral Fellowship at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2024. She is currently a Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies Early Career Fellow (2023) and a Research Affiliate at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (2020-2026). She received her PhD from Yale University in 2018. Since graduating, she has taught at several universities, including New York University, Yale University, and Southern Connecticut State University. As a bioarchaeologist, Daniela specializes in the study of human skeletal remains from archaeological contexts. She has over a decade of archaeological experience in East Asia and is currently involved in several ongoing international projects in China and Mongolia. Daniela will serve as the lead bioarchaeologist on The Wall project. Her analysis of human remains uncovered in burials and structures associated with the wall will help provide more information about the lived experiences of people in this region. |
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Dr Lance Pursey starts a postdoctoral research fellowship at HUJI in late 2024 to 2025. He has previously held postdoctoral research fellowships at the University of Birmingham (UK) and University of Aberdeen (UK) as part of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project ‘Understanding cities in the premodern history of Northeast China, c. 200-1200’; and at Waseda University (Japan) with a project funded by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). He attained his PhD from the University of Birmingham in 2020, with his thesis: “The Necropolitan Elite of Northeast China in the Long Eleventh Century: A Social History of Liao Dynasty Epitaphs (907-1125)”, in which he collated epigraphic sources to identify patterns in epitaph production and correlate them to political events and broader social changes in the two centuries of Liao rule in Northeast Asia. He is currently investigating social stratification and population distributions in 10th to 12th century Northeast Asia, using a methodology that incorporates archaeological sources and fieldwork, close reading of textual sources, GIS and DH prosopography. His BA was in Chinese studies with Japanese at the University of Sheffield, and his MA was in Daoist Studies at Sichuan University in the PRC. His general research interests include: Kitan studies, Medieval Chinese religion, National Identities in Asian History, Japanese Sinology, Landscape Archaeology, Prosopography and Chinese Historiography. Ongoing projects
Publications "Courting Capitals: Imperial Itinerance and Urban Ambivalence in the Kitan Liao Dynasty (916-1125)", British Journal of Chinese Studies 13.1(2023): 63-83. DOI:10.51661/bjocs.v13i1.152 “Tents, Towns and Topography: How Chinese-Language Liao Epitaphs Depicted the Moving Court” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 48 (2019): 177-206. DOI:10.1353/sys.2019.0004
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