Benjamin W. Porter is Associate Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology in the University of California, Berkeley’s Near Eastern Studies Department and Acting Director of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Porter is a Near Eastern archaeologist who investigates how past Middle Eastern and Mediterranean societies built resilient communities and institutions in arid and semi-arid zones. He directs field archaeology projects in Jordan at the Iron Age capitals of Dhiban and Busayra. He also co-directs a museum collections project at the Hearst Museum that is researching evidence from Peter B. Cornwall’s 1941 expedition to Bahrain and Eastern Saudi Arabia.
PUBLICATIONS
- Porter, Benjamin (2016) “Assembling the Iron Age Levant: The Archaeology of Communities, Polities, and Imperial Peripheries” Journal of Archaeological Research 24(4): 373-420.
- Porter, Benjamin and Alexis Boutin (2014) Remembering the Dead in the Ancient Near East: Recent Contributions from Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Archaeology. Boulder: University of Colorado Press (refereed edited volume).
- Porter, Benjamin (2013) Complex Communities: The Archaeology of Early Iron Age West-Central Jordan. Tucson: University of Arizona Press (refereed monograph). Winner of the 2014 G. Ernest Wright Publications Award from the American Schools of Oriental Research.
- Porter, Benjamin, and Alexis Boutin (2012) “The Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project: A first look at the Peter B. Cornwall Collection at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology,” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 23: 35-49.
- Porter, Benjamin (2012) “Dry Dig: Ethics and Alcohol in Middle Eastern Archaeological Practice” Society for American Archaeology’s Archaeological Record 10(5): 7-11.
Keywords: Archaeology; Middle East and North Africa; Jordan
