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Aaron A. Burke

Professor, Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies

E-mail: aaburke@ucla.edu Phone: 310-206-7218 Office: 382 Kaplan Hall

Aaron A. Burke 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 The University of California, Los Angeles (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.

Education

PhD, Near Eastern Archaeology, University of Chicago (2004)
MA, Near Eastern Archaeology, University of Chicago (2000)
BA, Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies, Wheaton College (1996)

Research

- Editor, Cambridge University Press Elements in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel
- Director, Turning Points Project
- Director, The Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project

Publications

Books

The History and Archaeology of Jaffa 2

Monumenta Archaeologica

The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, November 2017
Walled Up to Heaven

The Evolution of Middle Bronze Age Fortification Strategies in the Levant

Eisenbrauns, 2008
The History and Archaeology of Jaffa 1

Monumenta Archaeologica 26

The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, June 2011
The Amorites and the Bronze Age Near East: The Making of a Regional Identity.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 2021

Honors & Awards

Guest Researcher, Österreiches Akademie der Wissenschaften (2022–2023)
Getty Villa Scholar, Getty Villa (Fall 2020)
Visiting Research Associate, School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico (Sept. 2013)
Fellow, Near Eastern Studies Department, The Johns Hopkins University (2012‒2013)
G. E. Wright Award from American Schools of Oriental Research for best archaeological publication (2011)
Faculty Summer Research Program, UCLA (2010)
UCLA Vasa Cube Award for Fiat-Lux Seminars (2006–2010)
Faculty Career Development Award, UCLA (2007–2008)

Courses

Undergraduate

- First Civilizations (ANE/MES M50A)
- Archaeology of Ancient Israel (ANE 164)
- Archaeology of the Levant (ANE 162)

Graduate

- Levant archaeology seminars (ANE 230) on Prehistory to Early Bronze Age; Middle to Late Bronze ages; Early Iron Age and Israel; Problems in Late Iron Age; Phoenicians, etc.

Affiliations

- Center for Digital Humanities
- Center for Near Eastern Studies
- Center for the Study of Religion
- Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
- Department of Classics
- Global Antiquity
- International Institute
- Leve Center for Jewish Studies
- Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World
- Urban Humanities Initiative