Thomas Levy
Thomas Levy is Distinguished Professor and holds the Norma Kershaw Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Neighboring Lands at the University of California, San Diego. He is a member of the Department of Anthropology and Judaic Studies Program, and leads the Cyber-archaeology research group at the Qualcomm Institute, California Center of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Levy is a Levantine field archaeologist with interests in the role of technology, especially early mining and metallurgy, on social evolution from the beginnings of sedentism and the domestication of plants and animals in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (ca. 7500 BCE) to the rise of the first historic Levantine state level societies in the Iron Age (ca. 1200 – 500 BCE). A Fellow of the Explorers Club, Levy won the 2011 Lowell Thomas Award for “Exploring the World’s Greatest Mysteries.”
Presenter at
Bible & Archaeology Fest XXV, October 8 & 9, 2022
Archaeological Science and Biblical Edom
Eighteen years of fieldwork in the Faynan copper ore region of southern Jordan has produced an unprecedented dataset concerning the Iron Age (c. 1200–586 B.C.E.). In this relatively unexplored region of the southern Levant, archaeologists and scientists with the Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project continue to produce new research on data retrieved spanning the Neolithic to Islamic periods. However, it is the biblical Iron Age that has left the most extensive record of copper production, dwarfing even the later Roman occupation. In this lecture, these new data from the lowlands of Edom provide insights concerning the historicity of biblical and other ancient texts that discuss Edom, ancient Israel, and their neighbors.
Selected Articles by Thomas Levy
Selected Books by Thomas Levy
- New Insights into the Iron Age Archaeology of Edom, Southern Jordan (Monumenta Archaeologica)
- The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land
- Journey to the Copper Age: Archaeology in the Holy Land
- Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture, and Geoscience (Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences)
