Kathleen Bennallack

Kathleen Bennallack is a ACOR–CAORC Pre-Doctoral fellow at ACOR in the 2015-2016 academic year.  Her research focuses on the Late Neolithic Era in the Southern Levant (6400-5000 BCE). These were early human societies engaged in both farming and nomadic herding and it was long thought they left behind only the faintest traces of their existence on the landscape of the Levant.  Her theory is that human society in the Late Neolithic (LN)  Era was significantly more complex and resilient than previously thought, and more widespread, diverse, and interconnected as well.

Kathleen will work with collections held by the Department of Antiquities (pottery, stone tools, faunal and botanical remains) of other LN excavations done in the Feynan region in Jordan over the years.  She will compare these materials to specimens from a LN site in the same region that she excavated in 2012 under the auspices of the Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeological Project, which was directed by Dr. Thomas Levy of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). 

Kathleen Bennallack has participated in seven seasons of archaeological excavations and surveys in Jordan.   Now a Ph.D. candidate in Archaeology at UCSD, she has an M.A. in Anthropological Archaeology (2012) and a B.A. in Literature and Writing (2007) also from UCSD.