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Life of Kathleen Kenyon
Famous for her excavations at Jericho and muddying of the biblical record. She proved that the city of Jericho was already destroyed by the time Joshua and the Israelites supposedly conquered it. To do this, she perfected a method now known as the Wheeler-Kenyon Method, where you dig in a series of squares to leave a freestanding wall of earth called balk. After her retirement in 1973, Kenyon was named Dame of the British Empire. -
Ian Hodder PhD
Ian Hodder was one of the first proponents of Post-Processualism, and focused on the subjectivity of archaeology based on the present. He also focused on the tendency of western historians to write and rewrite the history of the ancestors of other ethnic groups, arguing that the facts should instead be presented to these groups for their interpretation. He is famous for his excavations at Çatalhöyük, Turkey, where he works closely with the Turkish government, local groups, and archaeologists. -
Rosemary Joyce PhD
Rosemary Joyce’s research is focused in Mexico and Central America, Honduras in particular, where she studies gender roles, Mesoamerican societies, and more. She is particularly well known for her discovery of the chemical signature of cacao within ancient beer pots, which points to the early development of chocolate. She was recognized for her scientific talent in 2011, as President Obama appointed her to the Federal Cultural Property Advisory Committee. -
Micheal Parker Pearson PhD
Micheal Parker Pearson is a British archaeologist whose primary work focuses on the Neolithic history of the British Isles. He got his Ph.D from Cambridge in 1985 and is a current professor at University College London. Since then, he's studied primarily the archaeology of death and burial customs. He's studied sites like Stonehenge in-depth and was a leading member of the Stonehenge Riverside Project which helped uncover a new 'henge' site called Bluestonehenge in Wiltshire, the UK. -
Julia Hendon PhD
Known for her work in gender and social identities in central America, Hendon has written two award-winning books about pre-hispanic Honduras society. Her interests also lie in figurines and how they communicate people’s values in marriage and other social constructs. -
Matthew Johnson PhD
Matthew Johnson’s primary field of study is medieval and landscape archeology, and he is recognized for his work at Bodiam Castle in England. He famously challenged the belief that castles were built to serve as military posts, and proposed that more important were the interactions of various social groups inside of these castles. Today, he is a professor at Northwestern University, where he urges students to adopt a detail-focused approach to landscape archeology. -
Meredith Chesson PhD
Meredith Chesson is known for her work in analyzing how household maintenance and organization represent changes in politics, society, or gender roles in Ancient cultures. She is famous for her excavations at the Dead Sea Plains, and for her ideas on how urbanization affected the development of cultures. She is currently researching historical changes in farming techniques and culture in Calabria, Italy during the 19th and 20th centuries. -
Tiffiny Tung PhD
Tiffiny Tung is a bioarchaeologist and current professor at Vanderbilt University. Her primary focus has been the decline of the Wari Empire, a society that lived in what is now the Peruvian Andes. She is investigating the effect of imperialism and the war and disease associated with it on their cultural practices. Currently, she's heading up the Beringa Bioarchaeology and Archaeology Project and continuing that research.
