Matthew Adams
Matthew Adams is Dorot Director of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. He earned his Ph.D. in History from the Pennsylvania State University in 2007, specializing in Egyptology and Near Eastern Archaeology. He has more than 25 seasons of excavation experience at sites in Egypt and Israel. While he has broad interests in space and time throughout the ancient world, his primary research focus is on the development of urban communities in 3rd Millennium Egypt and Levant. In addition to directing the Jezreel Valley Regional Project, he is also a member of the Penn State excavations at Mendes, Egypt, and the Tel Aviv University Megiddo Expedition. He is also President of the non-profit organization, American Archaeology Abroad.
Presenter at
Bible & Archaeology Fest XXI, November 16 – 18, 2018
Q&A panelist
Bible & Archaeology Fest XVII, November 21 – 23, 2014
Archaeology: The Future of the Ultimate Discipline
What is “archaeology?” It’s the study of the human past through the excavation of its physical remains, right? Does this adequately describe what archaeologists do? BAR readers will probably find this common definition woefully lacking, as, especially in Biblical archaeology researchers often make use of textual sources as well as material remains. But the archaeologist makes use of all sorts of other disciplines, such as geology, anthropology, and even chemistry and physics. In this lecture, the new Dorot Director of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, Matthew J. Adams, makes a case for archaeology as the ultimate academic discipline, integrating tools, methods, and theories from many other disciplines to reconstruct and understand the past. Adams discusses the unique properties of archaeology that make it the “ultimate discipline” and how the pioneering efforts of Biblical archaeologists who integrated Biblical studies and archaeology were part of its foundation. Citing examples of current scholarship in the ancient Near East, Adams goes further to discuss the future of archaeology, and the increasing integration of multiple vectors of research in reconstructing the past.
