Life on the Farm in Late Medieval Jerusalem
The Village of Beit Mazmil, its Occupants and Their Industry over Five Centuries
Edited by
Bethany J. Walker [+–]
University of Bonn
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Prof. Dr. Bethany J. Walker (PhD 1998, University of Toronto, Islamic art and archaeology) – Co-Director of the Khirbet Beit Mazmīl excavations and Co-PI of the Medieval Jerusalem Hinterland Project. Research Professor of Mamluk Studies and Director of the Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology at the University of Bonn (Germany). Author of Jordan in the Late Middle Ages: Transformation of the Mamluk Frontier (Chicago, 2011), editor of Reflections of Empire: Archaeological and Ethnographic Studies on the Pottery of the Ottoman Levant (Boston, 2009), and author of 65 scholarly articles. Founding editor of the Journal of Islamic Archaeology (Equinox) and Co-editor of Equinox’s Monographs in Islamic Archaeology. In 2023 the American Schools of Overseas Research awarded her the P. E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award for her career-long outstanding contributions to ancient Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology.
Studies of Jerusalem in the post-classical periods have traditionally centered, unsurprisingly, on the Old City, isolating it from the regional setting in which it operated on a daily basis. The agricultural hinterland of Jerusalem – comprising a network of smaller settlements, agricultural terraces, fields, cisterns, watch towers, and local marketplaces that together fed the city – have not been a focus of archaeological research until very recently.
Life on the Farm in Late Medieval Jerusalem offers a rare glimpse into the daily life of a single rural household and its intimate, but ever-evolving, relationship with Jerusalem from the 14th through the early 20th centuries. It does so through a tightly integrated, multi-disciplinary study of the astonishingly well-preserved remains of a village in its agricultural setting, showing how both settlement and farmland developed together over time, and how these changes impacted the socio-economic development of Jerusalem during the Mamluk and Ottoman Sultanates. The life history of this place is thus written on the basis of archaeological, botanical, and geological data, all interpreted against a rich textual record of land sales, field development, conflict, and cooperation.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
University of Bonn
Prof. Dr. Bethany J. Walker (PhD 1998, University of Toronto, Islamic art and archaeology) – Co-Director of the Khirbet Beit Mazmīl excavations and Co-PI of the Medieval Jerusalem Hinterland Project. Research Professor of Mamluk Studies and Director of the Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology at the University of Bonn (Germany). Author of Jordan in the Late Middle Ages: Transformation of the Mamluk Frontier (Chicago, 2011), editor of Reflections of Empire: Archaeological and Ethnographic Studies on the Pottery of the Ottoman Levant (Boston, 2009), and author of 65 scholarly articles. Founding editor of the Journal of Islamic Archaeology (Equinox) and Co-editor of Equinox’s Monographs in Islamic Archaeology. In 2023 the American Schools of Overseas Research awarded her the P. E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award for her career-long outstanding contributions to ancient Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology.
This introductory chapter briefly surveys the origins and general history of project, and situates the project in the larger fields of Mamluk Studies and Islamic archaeology.
Chapter 2
Tel Aviv University
Prof. Dr. Yuval Gadot (PhD 2004, Tel Aviv University, Archaeology/Jewish Studies) – Professor of Archaeology; Director of Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University. Director of the terrace component of the Medieval Jerusalem Hinterland Project. Co-author of 5 monographs, editor of 4 published works, and author of 72 scholarly articles.
Hebrew University and Israel Antiquities Authority
Prof. Dr. Gideon Avni (PhD 1997, Hebrew University, Institute of Archaeology) – Professor of Archaeology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Director of Excavations and Surveys of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Co-PI of the Medieval Jerusalem Hinterland Project. Author of The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach (Oxford, 2014) and Nomads, Farmers and Town Dwellers, Pastoralist – Sedentist Interaction in the Negev Highlands, 6th -8th Centuries CE. Jerusalem, 1996), two edited and several collaboratively written monographs, and 37 scholarly articles.
This chapters sets the language of the rest of the volume, introducing key concepts related to the decision-making process behind historical land use and “reading” the archaeological record in this regard.
Chapter 3
Independent Scholar
Dr. Benjamin Dolinka (PhD 2007, Archaeology, University of Liverpool) – formerly Jerusalem District Ceramics Specialist, Israel Antiquities Authority; currently Independent Scholar. Author of Nabataean Aila (Aqaba, Jordan) from a Ceramic Perspective (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 2003) and 7 scholarly articles.
University of Bonn
Dr. Nicolò Pini (PhD in Classical Archaeology at the University of Cologne, (Germany) is an archaeologist, specialized in ancient urbanism, architecture, and social structures in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Over the last years he has ventured into the Early, Middle, and even Late Islamic periods. He currently conducts a postdoctoral research project at the CReA-Patrimoine, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), funded by the
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
Israel Antiquities Authority
Zubair ʿAdawī is an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, operating in the Jerusalem area, and has conducted a number of development surveys and participated in and led dozens of small- and medium-scale excavations, both independently and together with his colleagues from the Jerusalem Regional Department–and from other divisions of the Antiquities Authority–in coordination with development work. He has been involved with many notable excavations including: Roman and Byzantine burial caves on the Mount of Olives; a Roman cemetery on Salah a-Din Street near the Old City; Khirbet Umm Tuba, at the foot of the Tel of Ramat Rachel, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem–a rural settlement that originated during the Iron Age and was continually occupied through almost all subsequent periods; and the tomb of a monk, discovered bound in iron rings, below the church at Ramat Shelomo in northern Jerusalem.
Pulling on the results of a single season of salvage excavations at the base of the hill in 2017, Chapter Three recreates the form and function of the monumental, multi-level complex of the Byzantine period that formed the foundation of the current site.
Chapter 4
Independent Scholar
Dr. Benjamin Dolinka (PhD 2007, Archaeology, University of Liverpool) – formerly Jerusalem District Ceramics Specialist, Israel Antiquities Authority; currently Independent Scholar. Author of Nabataean Aila (Aqaba, Jordan) from a Ceramic Perspective (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 2003) and 7 scholarly articles.
University of Bonn
Dr. Nicolò Pini (PhD in Classical Archaeology at the University of Cologne, (Germany) is an archaeologist, specialized in ancient urbanism, architecture, and social structures in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Over the last years he has ventured into the Early, Middle, and even Late Islamic periods. He currently conducts a postdoctoral research project at the CReA-Patrimoine, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), funded by the
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
University of Bonn
Prof. Dr. Bethany J. Walker (PhD 1998, University of Toronto, Islamic art and archaeology) – Co-Director of the Khirbet Beit Mazmīl excavations and Co-PI of the Medieval Jerusalem Hinterland Project. Research Professor of Mamluk Studies and Director of the Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology at the University of Bonn (Germany). Author of Jordan in the Late Middle Ages: Transformation of the Mamluk Frontier (Chicago, 2011), editor of Reflections of Empire: Archaeological and Ethnographic Studies on the Pottery of the Ottoman Levant (Boston, 2009), and author of 65 scholarly articles. Founding editor of the Journal of Islamic Archaeology (Equinox) and Co-editor of Equinox’s Monographs in Islamic Archaeology. In 2023 the American Schools of Overseas Research awarded her the P. E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award for her career-long outstanding contributions to ancient Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology.
Israel Antiquities Authority
Benyamin Storchan is a PhD candidate of the Department of Bible Studies, Archaeology and the Ancient Near East at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His dissertation, “The Metamorphosis of Holy Land Churches During the Early Islamic Period”, examines the processes of change and continuity as seen from the archaeology of Byzantine churches in the Holy Land during and after the Islamic transition. Storchan completed his MA at Bar Ilan University and BA from Michigan State University. He has been employed at the Israeli Antiquities Authority for over 15 years as a research excavation archaeologist for the Jerusalem Region, and has directed a number of large-scale excavations, including the Glorious Martyr Excavation Project and the Early Bronze Age settlement at Eshta’ol. He has also published a number of final excavation reports and research articles. Storchan is currently a board member for The Israel Archaeological Association, research fellow at the Center for the Study of Conversion & Inter-Religious Encounters, and has been recently awarded the David Amit Prize for Archaeological Research and a Humanities Faculty Scholarship from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
This chapter is based on the results of the first season of fieldwork at the site in 2012 and 2013, interpreting the results in light of what has been discovered in subsequent excavations. It focuses on the southern half of the site, which has been identified as the “outbuildings” of a Mamluk-era (13th-15th c.) amiral estate.
Chapter 5
University of Bonn
Prof. Dr. Bethany J. Walker (PhD 1998, University of Toronto, Islamic art and archaeology) – Co-Director of the Khirbet Beit Mazmīl excavations and Co-PI of the Medieval Jerusalem Hinterland Project. Research Professor of Mamluk Studies and Director of the Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology at the University of Bonn (Germany). Author of Jordan in the Late Middle Ages: Transformation of the Mamluk Frontier (Chicago, 2011), editor of Reflections of Empire: Archaeological and Ethnographic Studies on the Pottery of the Ottoman Levant (Boston, 2009), and author of 65 scholarly articles. Founding editor of the Journal of Islamic Archaeology (Equinox) and Co-editor of Equinox’s Monographs in Islamic Archaeology. In 2023 the American Schools of Overseas Research awarded her the P. E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award for her career-long outstanding contributions to ancient Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology.
Independent Scholar
Dr. Benjamin Dolinka (PhD 2007, Archaeology, University of Liverpool) – formerly Jerusalem District Ceramics Specialist, Israel Antiquities Authority; currently Independent Scholar. Author of Nabataean Aila (Aqaba, Jordan) from a Ceramic Perspective (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 2003) and 7 scholarly articles.
University of Bonn
Dr. Nicolò Pini (PhD in Classical Archaeology at the University of Cologne, (Germany) is an archaeologist, specialized in ancient urbanism, architecture, and social structures in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Over the last years he has ventured into the Early, Middle, and even Late Islamic periods. He currently conducts a postdoctoral research project at the CReA-Patrimoine, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), funded by the
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
Tel Aviv University
Roy Marom is Dan David Postdoctoral Fellow at Tel Aviv University.
Israel Antiquities Authority
Benyamin Storchan is a PhD candidate of the Department of Bible Studies, Archaeology and the Ancient Near East at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His dissertation, “The Metamorphosis of Holy Land Churches During the Early Islamic Period”, examines the processes of change and continuity as seen from the archaeology of Byzantine churches in the Holy Land during and after the Islamic transition. Storchan completed his MA at Bar Ilan University and BA from Michigan State University. He has been employed at the Israeli Antiquities Authority for over 15 years as a research excavation archaeologist for the Jerusalem Region, and has directed a number of large-scale excavations, including the Glorious Martyr Excavation Project and the Early Bronze Age settlement at Eshta’ol. He has also published a number of final excavation reports and research articles. Storchan is currently a board member for The Israel Archaeological Association, research fellow at the Center for the Study of Conversion & Inter-Religious Encounters, and has been recently awarded the David Amit Prize for Archaeological Research and a Humanities Faculty Scholarship from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
This chapter is the longest of the monograph, covering four seasons of survey and excavations. The bulk of the ceramic and architectural analysis will be found here. The excavations of these seasons were not salvage, but a purely research-based study of the northern half of the site on the summit of “Telegraph Hill”, which has been identified as the residential component of the Mamluk estate, subsequently resettled as a family farmstead and remaining in this form through the Ottoman era. Its occupation extends from the 14th through the early 20th centuries.
Chapter 6
University of Bonn (PhD student)
Omer Zeʿevi-Berger is a PhD candidate in the University of Bonn’s Islamic Archaeology Research Unit. Currently, his research centers on landscape archaeology and human-environment interactions, with a focus on terraced agriculture. His dissertation deals with the meshwork of relationships among cities, villages, and landscapes around Jerusalem and the Shephelah during the Middle and Late Islamic periods. In addition to the Medieval
Jerusalem Hinterland Project, Mr. Ze’evi-Berger is affiliated with the Tel Hadid excavation
project, and the “TERRSOC – Reading Ancient Landscapes” project, funded by the German Research Foundation.
Jerusalem Hinterland Project, Mr. Ze’evi-Berger is affiliated with the Tel Hadid excavation
project, and the “TERRSOC – Reading Ancient Landscapes” project, funded by the German Research Foundation.
Tel Aviv University (PhD student)
Nitsan Ben-Melech is a PhD candidate in the school of Jewish studies and archaeology at Tel Aviv University. Nitsan’s primary focus is on landscape archaeology, specializing in OSL dating of archaeological materials. Her dissertation deals with chronological aspects of the landscape in the Jerusalem highlands.
Several seasons of excavations in what were the cultivated lands of medieval Beit Mazmīl and Ein Kerem are presented in this chapter. It centers on the results of the OSL dating of the agricultural terraces, creating a map of land and field development contemporary with the occupation of the farmstead.
Chapter 7
Ministry of Education, Greece
Dr. Sofia Laparidou is a secondary teacher working at the Ministry of Education, within the Ministry of Culture, Greece. She is an environmental archaeologist interested in the changing nature of human-environment relationships as shaped by climate, cash cropping, and the expansion of intensive agricultural production into semiarid regions and has used microbotanical analysis to investigate ancient agricultural and pastoral economies. Dr. Laparidou obtained a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Texas; an MSc in GIS at the University οf Greenwich; and an MSc in Environmental Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. She has published her research on the political ecology and microbotanical methods of medieval Jordan in the Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Her paper, entitled “Intensification of production in Medieval Islamic Jordan and its ecological impact: Towns of the Anthropocene,” has been published in The Holocene (2015).
Vrije Universiteit
Annette M. Hansen, MSc (Oxon.) is an agricultural and food historian, and ethno-archaeobotanist specializing in the Islamic world. She is a senior archaeobotanist on different archaeological projects in Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and Sudan, and is also involved in historical and traditional farming experiments in the Netherlands and Belgium. She is the manager and co-founder of FOST-lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where she is also research associate at the Interdisciplinary Historical Food Studies (FOST) research group. She has published in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences and in monographs in Routledge, Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, and Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies.
University of Sheffield
Chiara A. Corbino is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Heritage Science (ISPC-CNR) based in Naples and senior zooarchaeologist of the Pompeii Archaeological Park. Her
research is focused on human-animal interactions through time. She investigates animal
management and exploitation, ritual activities, biometry, taphonomy and environmental
changes. Particular attention is dedicated to the study of human-animal interactions from the Classical period to the Middle Ages in Europe and, since 2005, from the Ayyubid-Crusader to the Ottoman period in the Levant. She cooperates with national and international archaeological teams as senior zooarchaeologist in Italy, England, Greece, Jordan, and Israel.
research is focused on human-animal interactions through time. She investigates animal
management and exploitation, ritual activities, biometry, taphonomy and environmental
changes. Particular attention is dedicated to the study of human-animal interactions from the Classical period to the Middle Ages in Europe and, since 2005, from the Ayyubid-Crusader to the Ottoman period in the Levant. She cooperates with national and international archaeological teams as senior zooarchaeologist in Italy, England, Greece, Jordan, and Israel.
Aristotle University
Georgia Kasapidou (MSc) is a researcher with a focus to archaeobotany. Her dissertation was based on the analysis of plant micro-remains, such as phytoliths and starch grains, from grinding stone tools. She has taken part in various archaeological projects analyzing microbotanical remains from artifacts in prehistoric contexts.
The final results of the botanical and faunal studies are presented here, in three separate sub-sections (as below). If needed, some of the larger charts, which comprise a reference archive of macrobotanical finds, will be relegated to the online supplement for the sake of space. 7.1: Evidence from Phytoliths – Sofia Laparidou and Georgia Kasapidou – phytoliths from site and terraces 7.2: The Macrobotanical Record – Annette Hansen – macrobotanical analysis from site 7.3: The Zoorarchaeological Remains – Chiara Corbino – zooarchaeological analysis from site
Chapter 8
University of Bonn
Prof. Dr. Bethany J. Walker (PhD 1998, University of Toronto, Islamic art and archaeology) – Co-Director of the Khirbet Beit Mazmīl excavations and Co-PI of the Medieval Jerusalem Hinterland Project. Research Professor of Mamluk Studies and Director of the Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology at the University of Bonn (Germany). Author of Jordan in the Late Middle Ages: Transformation of the Mamluk Frontier (Chicago, 2011), editor of Reflections of Empire: Archaeological and Ethnographic Studies on the Pottery of the Ottoman Levant (Boston, 2009), and author of 65 scholarly articles. Founding editor of the Journal of Islamic Archaeology (Equinox) and Co-editor of Equinox’s Monographs in Islamic Archaeology. In 2023 the American Schools of Overseas Research awarded her the P. E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award for her career-long outstanding contributions to ancient Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology.
Chapter Eight is a survey of the textual record on this site and the villages and farmland in its vicinity, providing the historical backdrop for the archaeological, botanical/faunal, and terrace studies (and simultaneously interpreting their collective results in a historical perspective). The textual record includes a wide range of largely unpublished documents – in the form of court and tax registers, endowment records, legal and agrarian manuals – and the more familiar genres of chronicles, geographies and travelers’ accounts. These texts together allow for an assessment of the political, economic, and social factors behind the development of the farmstead and its fields, from the 14th through 19th centuries. The chapter then culminates with a new assessment of the relationship of medieval Jerusalem with its rural hinterland and the role of commercialization of agriculture in this regard.
Chapter 9
University of Bonn
Prof. Dr. Bethany J. Walker (PhD 1998, University of Toronto, Islamic art and archaeology) – Co-Director of the Khirbet Beit Mazmīl excavations and Co-PI of the Medieval Jerusalem Hinterland Project. Research Professor of Mamluk Studies and Director of the Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology at the University of Bonn (Germany). Author of Jordan in the Late Middle Ages: Transformation of the Mamluk Frontier (Chicago, 2011), editor of Reflections of Empire: Archaeological and Ethnographic Studies on the Pottery of the Ottoman Levant (Boston, 2009), and author of 65 scholarly articles. Founding editor of the Journal of Islamic Archaeology (Equinox) and Co-editor of Equinox’s Monographs in Islamic Archaeology. In 2023 the American Schools of Overseas Research awarded her the P. E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award for her career-long outstanding contributions to ancient Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology.
This concluding chapter extracts “lessons learned” about the ways local communities have historically participated in market agriculture, their reasons for developing the land, and how they came to control, in modest but important ways, food production. It is theory-based and connects to contemporary scholarship on food security and sustainable agriculture.
Appendices
University of Bonn
Dr. Nicolò Pini (PhD in Classical Archaeology at the University of Cologne, (Germany) is an archaeologist, specialized in ancient urbanism, architecture, and social structures in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Over the last years he has ventured into the Early, Middle, and even Late Islamic periods. He currently conducts a postdoctoral research project at the CReA-Patrimoine, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), funded by the
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
University of Bonn
Dr. Nicolò Pini (PhD in Classical Archaeology at the University of Cologne, (Germany) is an archaeologist, specialized in ancient urbanism, architecture, and social structures in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Over the last years he has ventured into the Early, Middle, and even Late Islamic periods. He currently conducts a postdoctoral research project at the CReA-Patrimoine, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), funded by the
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
University of Bonn
Dr. Nicolò Pini (PhD in Classical Archaeology at the University of Cologne, (Germany) is an archaeologist, specialized in ancient urbanism, architecture, and social structures in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Over the last years he has ventured into the Early, Middle, and even Late Islamic periods. He currently conducts a postdoctoral research project at the CReA-Patrimoine, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), funded by the
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
University of Bonn
Dr. Nicolò Pini (PhD in Classical Archaeology at the University of Cologne, (Germany) is an archaeologist, specialized in ancient urbanism, architecture, and social structures in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Over the last years he has ventured into the Early, Middle, and even Late Islamic periods. He currently conducts a postdoctoral research project at the CReA-Patrimoine, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), funded by the
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
University of Bonn
Dr. Nicolò Pini (PhD in Classical Archaeology at the University of Cologne, (Germany) is an archaeologist, specialized in ancient urbanism, architecture, and social structures in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Over the last years he has ventured into the Early, Middle, and even Late Islamic periods. He currently conducts a postdoctoral research project at the CReA-Patrimoine, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), funded by the
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
University of Bonn
Dr. Nicolò Pini (PhD in Classical Archaeology at the University of Cologne, (Germany) is an archaeologist, specialized in ancient urbanism, architecture, and social structures in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Over the last years he has ventured into the Early, Middle, and even Late Islamic periods. He currently conducts a postdoctoral research project at the CReA-Patrimoine, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), funded by the
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
University of Bonn
Cologne AMS
University of Bonn
Prof. Dr. Bethany J. Walker (PhD 1998, University of Toronto, Islamic art and archaeology) – Co-Director of the Khirbet Beit Mazmīl excavations and Co-PI of the Medieval Jerusalem Hinterland Project. Research Professor of Mamluk Studies and Director of the Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology at the University of Bonn (Germany). Author of Jordan in the Late Middle Ages: Transformation of the Mamluk Frontier (Chicago, 2011), editor of Reflections of Empire: Archaeological and Ethnographic Studies on the Pottery of the Ottoman Levant (Boston, 2009), and author of 65 scholarly articles. Founding editor of the Journal of Islamic Archaeology (Equinox) and Co-editor of Equinox’s Monographs in Islamic Archaeology. In 2023 the American Schools of Overseas Research awarded her the P. E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award for her career-long outstanding contributions to ancient Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology.
University of Bonn
Dr. Nicolò Pini (PhD in Classical Archaeology at the University of Cologne, (Germany) is an archaeologist, specialized in ancient urbanism, architecture, and social structures in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Over the last years he has ventured into the Early, Middle, and even Late Islamic periods. He currently conducts a postdoctoral research project at the CReA-Patrimoine, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), funded by the
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (CR – Chargé de recherches). He was previously awarded a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the same institution. He collaborates on several projects in the Near East, in particular with the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn and is also external research associate of the Panorama Platform (based at the Universitè libre de Bruxelles), specialized in acquisition and digitization of objects and architectural surveys.
