2025 STAFF
YIFAT THAREANI
Director of Excavations
Dr. Yifat Thareani is a Research Archaeologist at the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at the Jerusalem campus of the Hebrew Union College and current co-director for the excavations at Achziv. Dr. Thareani has served on the Tel Dan excavation staff as co-director from 2006 and is responsible for the final publication of the Iron Age II remains at the site. Her recent research explores questions related to cultural responses to various control strategies (empires and local kingdoms) and their reflection in the archaeological record. The material culture from Tel Dan serves as a case study for the examination of the relationships between the Northern Kingdom of Israel, Aram-Damascus and the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the region.
JONATHAN GREER
Associate Director of Excavations and Staff Zooarchaeologist
Dr. Jonathan Greer (Ph.D. The Pennsylvania State University) is an archaeologist and biblical scholar with research interests in ancient Israelite religion, sacrifice, and feasting. He is Visiting Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at Grand Valley State University and has published a number of works on the relationship of the Bible to the ancient world.
LEVANA ZIAS
Excavation Registrar
Levana Zias is an administrator and Research Archaeologist at the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at the Jerusalem campus of the Hebrew Union College. In addition to serving as the registrar for the site, Ms. Zias is responsible for the analysis of the Hellenistic and Roman Period remains.
MARK SCHWARTZ
Research Associate
Prof. Mark Schwartz, Professor of Anthropology at Grand Valley State University, received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Northwestern University. His research focused on trade between the early city-states of Mesopotamia and the emerging complex societies of Anatolia in the fourth millennium B.C. He has worked on various excavations in the Middle East. As assistant director of the Hirbemerdon Tepe Archaeological in Diyarbakir, Turkey he involved students in research and is currently working on the final publication of the excavations. At present he is involved in inter-departmental collaborative work using ROVs to study shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. At Grand Valley, he teaches courses on the archaeology of the Near East as well as general courses concerning anthropology and archaeology.
ELIZABETH ARNOLD
Research Associate
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Elizabeth R. Arnold is an associate professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, USA. She is an environmental archaeologist specializing in zooarchaeology and isotope analyses and has collaborated on projects in Canada, the United States, Sudan, South Africa. Her research in Israel focuses on how human cultural behavior both affects and is affected by the natural environment in the Early Bronze Age and the Iron Age periods.
JASON KALMAN
Director of the Pre-Excavation Jerusalem Study Program
Prof. Jason Kalman is Associate Professor of Classical Hebrew Literature and Interpretation and the Gottschalk-Slade Chair in Jewish Intellectual History at the Cincinnati School of HUC-JIR. He received his Ph.D. in 2005 from the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University and is a research fellow affiliated with the University of the Free State, South Africa. He also holds a degree in education and MA from McGill. He specializes in the history of Jewish biblical exegesis and his specific research interests include Dead Sea Scrolls reception history, rabbinic anti-Christian polemic, medieval intellectual history as reflected in biblical commentary, and biblical interpretation after the Holocaust.