Timothy P. Harrison

Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology

Campus

Fields of Study

Areas of Interest

  • Bronze and Iron Age Levant
  • Small-scale complex societies and early urbanism
  • Archaeological method and theory
  • Ceramic analysis

Biography

Professor Harrison has conducted over thirty-five years of archaeological field research in the Middle East, primarily around the Eastern Mediterranean littoral (the Levant), in the countries of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. He has directed excavations at the Bronze and Iron Age site of Tall Madaba, in Jordan, and he is currently directing the Tayinat Archaeological Project on the Plain of Antioch in southeastern Turkey. These projects form part of a regional research effort that seeks to shed light on the rise of early complex societies in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 2012, he launched the CRANE Project, an international consortium of researchers and projects conducting research in the Orontes Watershed and Eastern Mediterranean. Professor Harrison has published extensively on the Bronze and Iron Age cultures of the Levant, including four monographs and more than 140 articles and papers. He served as President of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), the leading international professional association dedicated to the study of the cultures and history of the Middle East, between 2008 and 2013, and he served as Chair of the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto for two terms (2011-2022), and as Co-Chair of the Humanities Chairs Group (2014-2016) in the Faculty of Arts and Science. 

Education

PhD, University of Chicago

Publications