Katharina Galor

Who is Katharina Galor?

Katharina Galor is a German-born Israeli archaeologist specializing in ancient Israel-Palestine and Syria, mainly focusing on the Roman and Byzantine periods. She currently teaches at Brown University, affiliated with the Artemis A.W. and Martha Sharp Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World and the Program in Judaic Studies. Exploring the connections between the material record, ethnicity, and religious affiliation, she has worked on excavations within the Levant at Qumran, Sepphoris, Tiberias, and Jerusalem. Her publications entail topics ranging from the archaeological context of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, the successive stages of habitation in ancient Jerusalem, town planning, water installations, mosaics, as well as sacred, civic and domestic architecture.

She also currently serves as the President of the American Institute of Archaeology, Narragansett Society. Galor has also directed major conferences that have sparked much controversy among both the archaeological community and the wider world. Taken from a news article on the mysterious Dead Sea Scrolls: "It was in the caves of Qumran in 1947 that two Bedouin shepherd boys discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. While the mysteries of the scrolls have been largely resolved, numerous mysteries surrounding the settlement of Qumran remain. A group of the world’s leading archaeological scholars will gather at Brown University Nov. 17-19, 2002, to examine those unanswered questions. The Center for Old World Archaeology and Art will host “Qumran: The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” the first international conference on the settlement". In 2006, Galor coordinated '"The Jerusalem Perspective: 150 Years of Archaeological Research", an international conference in which both Palestinian and Israeli archaeologists participated, putting aside the politics of the region to discuss the eternal city of Jerusalem.