Erez Ben-Yosef
Erez Ben-Yosef studied archaeology and geology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (B.A., B.Sc., M.Sc.) and archaeology and anthropology at the University of California, San Diego (M.A., Ph.D.). His doctoral dissertation, entitled Technology and Social Process: Oscillations in Iron Age Copper Production and Power in Southern Jordan was published in 2010 and presents results of six years of field and laboratory research on the copper mines of the southern Levant (Jordan and Israel). During 2010-2011 he carried out postdoctoral research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, focusing on the ancient copper mines of Cyprus and the application of slag material in geomagnetic research. Since 2011 he teaches at the department of archaeology and the graduate program in archaeology and archaeomaterials at Tel Aviv University.
Ben-Yosef has authored multiple research papers on archaeometallurgy, archaeomagnetism and Iron Age archaeology. He is currently directing the Central Timna Valley (CTV) Project – a multidisciplinary research into Iron Age copper production in the southern Levant. The project, supported by the Yad Hanadiv Foundation's Yizhar Hirschfeld Memorial Fellowship in Archaeology and the Marie Curie PEOPLE grant, includes new excavations and surveys, as well as laboratory analyses at TAU and abroad, aimed at elucidating various aspects of ancient human exploitation of a limited natural resource.
Presenter at
Spring Bible & Archaeology Fest 2023
“King Solomon’s Mines” Revisited: 10 Years of Excavations in Timna Valley
The new excavations of Tel Aviv University in Timna Valley resulted in a dramatic change to the chronological of copper production there, demonstrating that the peak of industrial activities occurred during the 10th c. BC and not at the time of the Egyptian New Kingdom as suggested by the previous excavator. This brings back to the scholarly discussion the question of who was responsible to the vast mining activities, and if the Aravah copper could have been the source of wealth of David and Solomon in Jerusalem. In this lecture we will review the finds from 10 years of excavations and try to address these questions.
