The advanced abilities of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to host, query and analyze spatial data provide the modern archaeologist with new possibilities and new tools for archaeological spatial analysis. This course presents advanced GIS-based tools and applications for archaeological research, as well as the wider theoretical framework of Spatial Archaeology. It is run as a workshop, incorporating theoretical and practical study.

Lithic tools represent one of the main (and at times – only) artefactual find in prehistoric and proto-historic sites, and our main source of information as to the human activities performed in them. This course explores the typological and technological aspects of flint tools throughout the human evolution in the southern Levant. The course provides basic skills in the analysis of lithic assemblages, from the Lower Paleolithic through the Chalcolithic periods.

The Early Neolithic is one of the most substantial periods in human evolution, a period that witnessed the culmination of the Neolithization process – as human populations shifted from a mobile way of life, based on hunting and gathering, to sedentary farming communities, based on animal husbandry and plant cultivation.   This course explores the archaeological record from the period in the southern Levant, discussing the social and economic process taking place in this important time frame. We discuss changes in social structure and make, diet, human-environment relations, death and burial customs, and of course, related archaeological and environmental theory.

The BA seminar at the Archaeology Department at BGU covers main issues and questions in the Prehistoric periods of the land of Israel. This year, the subject matter is death, burial and related ritual as seen in the archaeological record of the prehistoric periods, from the Lower Paleolithic to the Neolithic periods. These, within the theoretic framework of death and burial in archaeology and anthropology.