Ofer Bar-Yosef is an Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i archaeologist whose main field of study has been the Palaeolithic period.

He was Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the institution where he originally studied archaeology at undergraduate and post-graduate levels in the 1960s. In 1988, he moved to the United States of America where he became Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 as well as Curator of Palaeolithic Archaeology at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, and is particularly strong in New World ethnography and...

.

He has excavated widely on prehistoric Levant

Levant

The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...

ine sites including Kebara Cave

Kebara Cave

Kebara Cave is an Israeli limestone cave locality of the Wadi Kebara, situated at 60 - 65 metres ASL on the western escarpment of the Carmel Range, some 10km north-east of Caesarea...

, the early Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

 village of Netiv HaGdud

Netiv HaGdud

Netiv HaGdud is a moshav and Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Located in the Jordan Valley around twenty kilometres north of Jericho, it falls under the jurisdiction of Bik'at HaYarden Regional Council...

, as well as on Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites in China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 and the Republic of Georgia

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

.

Selected bibliography

• The Natufian Culture
  Natufian culture
  The Natufian culture was a Mesolithic culture that existed from 12,500 to 9,500 BC in the Levant, a region in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was unusual in that it was sedentary, or semi-sedentary, before the introduction of agriculture...
  
   in the Levant (Ed), International Monographs in Prehistory, 1992.
• Late Quaternary Chronology and Paleoclimates of the Eastern Mediterranean. Radiocarbon, 1994.
• Seasonality and Sedentism: Archaeological Perspectives from Old and New World Sites, (Ed), Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 1998.
• (with Belfer-Cohen, A) From Africa to Eurasia - Early Dispersals. Quaternary International 75:19-28, 2001.

External links

• Ofer Bar-Yosef at Harvard's website