The Participants

    • bar yosef
Anthropology
Harvard University

 From 1968 I have been teaching various courses in archaeology in the two universities. Organized several international conferences on the Natufian culture (Valbonne 1989, Paris 2010), on the Levallois Technique (Philadelphia 1995), the Aurignacian culture (Lisbon 2003), Neolithic demographic transition (Harvard, 2007). Since 1959, I worked as an archaeologist and participated actively in a wide range of excavations of prehistoric sites illuminating human cultural evolution. The sites are located in Israel, Sinai (Egypt), Turkey, Czech Republic, Republic of Georgia, and the People’s Republic of China. My work added evidence for early human dispersals from Africa to Eurasia at the site of ‘Ubeidiya (ca. 1.5 Ma) in the Jordan Valley. More recently, as a co-director of a large Israeli-French-American research program, I spent two decades of field and laboratory research in Kebara, Qafzeh, and Hayonim caves in Israel (with B. Vandermeersch, L. Meignen, P. Goldberg, A. Belfer-Cohen and others) demonstrating the early arrival of Modern humans in the Levant and the late appearance of Neanderthals in the Near East. I studied Upper Paleolithic assemblages from Sinai, Israel, Czech Republic, Georgia, and currently in China. I co-directed the excavations at Netiv Hagdud, an early Neolithic settlement in the Jordan Valley with Prof. Gopher. In 2004-5 co-directed the excavations at Yuchanyan cave (Hunan Province) with Prof. J. Yuan . Currently I am involved in field programs in Georgia and China. I co-edited 16 volumes (including four major site reports) and authored, or co-authored over 300 papers and book chapters.