Jodi Magness is the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA). Her research interests, which focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, and Diaspora Judaism in the Roman world, include ancient pottery, ancient synagogues, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Roman army in the East. Magness' book, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Eerdmans 2002) won the 2003 Biblical Archaeology Society’s Award for Best Popular Book in Archaeology in 2001-02 and was selected as an “Outstanding Academic Book for 2003” by Choice Magazine. The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine (Eisenbrauns 2003) was awarded the 2006 Irene Levi-Sala Book Prize in the category of non-fiction on the archaeology of Israel. Magness’ other books include The Archaeology of the Holy Land from the Destruction of Solomon's Temple to the Muslim Conquest (Cambridge University Press 2012); Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Eerdmans; 2011); and Jerusalem Ceramic Chronology circa 200-800 C.E. (Sheffield Academic, 1993).  Since 2011 Magness has been directing excavations in the Late Roman and Byzantine village of Huqoq in Israel's Galilee.