Gideon Shelach is the Louis Freiberg Professor of East Asian Studies at The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He is the current chair of The Louis Frieberg Center for East-Asian Studies, at the Hebrew University and among other positions he held are the chairmanship of the department of East Asian Studies and vice Dean of the Faculty of Humanities.

Prof. Shelach is an expert on the Archaeology and Early History of China. He earned his PhD from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh in 1996 and has been engaged, since 1994, in archaeological fieldwork projects in the Chifeng area of northeast China. His current field project, “The Origins of Agriculture and Sedentary Communities in Northeast China”, is funded by the National Geographic Society and the Israel Science Foundation. His recent book, Prehistoric Societies on the Northern Frontiers of China: Archaeological Perspectives on Identity Formation and Economic Change during the First Millennium BCE is published by Equinox. Other publications and academic papers by Gideon Shelach address the archaeology of northeast China from the Neolithic to the end of the Bronze Age as well as other topics of Chinese archaeology and history such as the formation of the Qin state in Northwest China. For a list of publication and a full CV please see: http://www.eacenter.huji.ac.il/?id=1176