Posted on Wednesday, 23 April 2025 Posted by krindor

I’m partial to looking at how ethnic identities form (a process known as ethnogenesis), and trying to see if we can see evidence of ethnogenisis or external pressure on a culture to develop a new cultural identity in the archaeological record. I’m also fascinated with ancient religions and love looking at what we can find about them in archaeology.

But those are both very ephemeral. In practical terms I’m a zooarchaeologist so I look at animal bones to try and identify patterns in the diets of ancient peoples, which is often tied to both identity and religion (which also often overlap but that’s besides the point).

In terms of location I’m partial to studying the Southern Levant (modern day Israel, Palestine, Jordan, southern Lebanon and southern Syria), and while the whole history of the region is fascinating the Bronze Age Collapse is really cool in this region in particular because the Canaanite City States enter a dark age, and when the dust clears there are several new cultural groups (Israelites, Philistines, Phoenicians), some of whom really seem to dislike one another. It’s a very interesting time for the region.

A time period I’d like to look at in the future is the early days of the Second Temple Period in Judea, which usually gets overlooked for the more shiny Maccabean and Iron Age I (the Kingdom of David) periods.

Tangentially to all this, I’m (extremely infrequently) looking at First Temple Israelite Culture and making posts about topics that interest me [x].