Jake Hill

Jake Hill is a PhD student in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. He earned a BA in anthropology and religion from Baylor University (2025). He is interested in social identity, political economy, state formation, and the intersection between archaeology and texts in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Levant. His doctoral research examines the political economy of pastoralism and wool production in Iron II Transjordan, reconstructing the political strategies and administrative practices that Transjordanian kingdoms (such as Ammon, Moab, and Edom) employed to acquire and manage pastoral production. For the 2026 field season, he will be working at Khirbat al-Balu‘a with the Balu‘a Regional Archaeological Project, serving as an area supervisor of a possible “Moabite administrative structure.” This season, he will work to identify Iron Age levels at the administrative structure and elucidate the practices occurring at Balu‘a, as part of his larger doctoral research. Prior to his work at Balu‘a, he worked as an excavator with the San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project at the site of San Giuliano (Barbarano Romano, Lazio, Italy) during the 2024 and 2025 field seasons.