Thomas E Levy
Thomas Evan Levy is Distinguished Professor of the Graduate Division and inaugural holder of the Norma Kershaw Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Neighboring Lands at the University of California, San Diego. A fellow of 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 Neolithic period to medieval Islamic times. Since 2016, Tom's research has focused on marine archaeology off the Carmel coast in Israel with the University of Haifa and the Aegean with the University of Patras in Greece. Tom has led numerous archaeological expeditions in the deserts of Jordan and Israel. He has also co-directed field projects in Cameroon, Cyprus, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Levy co-directs the Center for Cyber-archaeology and Sustainability at the Qualcomm Institute - California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and Levantine Archaeology Laboratory on the main campus. He is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and an adjunct professor at the University of Cyprus. Tom received an honorary doctorate from Charles University in the Czech Republic.
Supervisors: PhD supervisor - Prof. Robin Dennell, University of Sheffield, UK
Supervisors: PhD supervisor - Prof. Robin Dennell, University of Sheffield, UK
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Papers by Thomas E Levy
Copper Production and Social Complexity in Iron Age Faynan, Jordan
Matthew D. Howland, Brady Liss, Mohammad Najjar, and Thomas E. Levy
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/b441a28ea5844d7bafbd47d3471166c9
2008 Masters of Fire - Hereditary Bronze Casters of South India. German Mining Museum, Bochum.
This is the first ethnoarchaeological study of the more than 1,000 year old hereditary bronze casting community of Swamimalai, Tamil Nadu, south India. It is a full collaboration between academic researchers (Tom and Alina Levy) and the craftsmen - the Devasenapathy Sthapathy brothers - Radhakrishna, Srikanda and Swaminathan. Accordingly, the craftsmen are co-authors of this book. The study examines the organization of contemporary traditional bronze production, the complexities of the 'lost-wax' method of casting, kinship, ritual, and other aspects related to the production of sacred icons.
The site of Habonim North, a recently discovered submerged Pottery Neolithic site, was chosen as a case study to thoroughly investigate, through archaeological excavations, questions of human adaptation to coastal condition as well as to climate change during the Holocene. This site is situated on the eastern slope of a submerged Kurkar ridge ca. 150 meters west of the current coastline at a depth of ca. 2.5 -3 meters sea water (msw). The first season of excavation was conducted in 2020 as part of the collaboration between the Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies of the University of Haifa and The Scripps Center for Maritime Archaeology, University of California San Diego supported by the Koret Foundation. In order to retrieve as much information as possible the excavation combined methods from stratigraphic land excavations, underwater excavation, manual sediment coring and 3D photogrammetry. The materials retrieved were analyzed with a variety of methods including micro-geoarchaeology, ceramic typology and petrography, archaeobotany, radiocarbon dating, palynology, and archaeozoology. Here we present preliminary results of the first season of excavations and offer initial insights about the ancient coastal environment, Pottery Neolithic human subsistence practices and human utilization of coastal resources.
Here we present new evidence found underwater at Dor for the maritime transport of quarried stone along the Levantine coast, and related harbor infrastructure. A concentration of newly hewn stones has been documented resting on the seafloor, inside the Dor harbor basin. This deposit likely originated from an overturned barge used to ferry the stones. In addition to this a mooring installation, which may have been used by such barges and other vessels, was also excavated within the same harbor. These new data point to the extensive framework within which the complex enterprises of quarrying, transport, supply, use, and re-use of stone successfully operated along the Levantine coast.
This introductory chapter sets the stage for the chapters that follow. It opens with a description of recent advances in cyber-archaeology—defined, in the context of this volume, as “the integration of the latest developments in computer science, engineering, science, and archaeology” (following Levy 2013: 28)—as well as problems that remain to be solved. One lingering problem is the difficulty of bringing disparate datasets together into digital databases, and this is explored using an example from the Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land (DAAHL). This limitation suggests that while cyber-archaeology is not applicable to some archaeological questions, it is particularly well suited to questions concerning long-term change, or “grand narratives.” Following this example is a theoretical introduction to grand narratives in archaeological theory. While long-term change fell out of fashion several decades ago, it has returned to the theoretical forefront, particularly in Mediterranean archaeology. The chapter ends with a brief introduction to each of the chapters in the volume.