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Organized by the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, the UCLA Cotsen Institute for Archaeology, the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, and the UCLA Center for Middle East Development.

About the Event

Professor William Schniedewind's talk situates the remarkable archaeological site at Tell Shaddud at the crossroads of history—Armageddon, the strategic gateway of the Jezreel Valley. Excavations reveal fortresses that mark shifting powers: an Egyptian stronghold, an early Israelite administrative center, a neo-Assyrian fortress, and later a Jewish village from the Roman period, living in the shadow of the Roman legionary camp at Legio. The story continues into modern times, with traces of a British Mandate army trench and defenses of the Haganah. This lecture demonstrates how Tell Shaddud’s layers embody the enduring relationship between the land and its people, showing archaeology’s power to illuminate resilience, identity, and continuity across millennia and into modern times.

 About the Speakers

William Schniedewind is Professor of Biblical Studies at UCLA, and the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University, has been a Visiting Scholar at the Hebrew University and a Research Fellow at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, and is the Associate Director of the excavations at Tell Shaddud. He served for many years as the Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. He is the author of numerous articles and seven books including How the Bible Became a Book (Cambridge University Press, 2004), A Social History of Hebrew (Yale University Press, 2013), The Finger of the Scribe: How Scribes Learned to Write the Bible (Oxford University Press, 2019), and Who Really Wrote the Bible: the Story of the Scribes (Princeton University Press, 2024).

Aaron A. Burke (moderator) is Professor of the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and the Levant, and the Kershaw Chair in the Archaeology of the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. He is a member of UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, serving as its editor-in-chief since 2016. His research addresses the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze and Iron Ages with a particular interest in social identity and contexts of cultural transformations including warfare, forced migration, and long-distance exchange. Since 2007, he directs The Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project, leading excavations of a New Kingdom Egyptian fortress from 2011 to 2014 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2017, expanding upon this research, he inaugurated Turning Points, an initiative aimed at exploring the transition between the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (ca. 1300–900 B.C.) in the southern Levant out of which ancient Israel emerged. He edits the Cambridge University Press Elements series on The Archaeology of Ancient Israel.

DISCLAIMER: The views or opinions of our guest speakers and the content of their presentations do not necessarily reflect the views of the UCLA Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Hosting speakers does not constitute an endorsement of the speaker's views or opinions.

Sponsor(s): Center for Middle East Development, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies