Thesiss

This study presents the results of an analysis of mortuary practices as reflected in 637 burials from 19 Natufian and Pre-pottery Neolithic sites in the southern Levant. The analysis focuses on selected dependent variables such as primary or secondary state, position, orientatio…

This dissertation describes the way in which ancient Near Eastern kingdoms practiced the art of warfare from the middle of the second millennium B.C. to the end of the united Israelite monarchy. It does so by studying the records of nations located within the Fertile Crescent an…

In April 1960 the British daily The Manchester Guardian had accused Israel's prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, of “plunging the new nation into Levantinism.” Ben-Gurion himself promised his supporters during an election rally that he would “prevent the Levantinization of Israel!…

This research addresses the emergence and evolution of fodder provisioning in the southern Levant during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. As a human modification of animal dietary intake, foddering likely increased the reliability, predictability, and accessibility of animal resources…

In this dissertation, I analyze post-dispersion literary texts--writings by and about Egyptian Jews composed in Hebrew, Arabic, and English between the 1950s and the 1990s--to show how "Levantine" Egyptian Jews disrupt the local/foreign and colonizer/colonized binaries that have…

The vocal practice commonly known as zaghareet 'ululation' within Levantine communities is an ephemeral but widely-recognized affective display which has escaped focused documentation and description. This work investigates zaghareet along several important dimensions: (1) its h…