About Us
Director: Prof. Yuval Gadot
Administrative Manager: Nirit Kedem
The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology was founded in 1969 by the late Professor Yohanan Aharoni. It is a self-sufficient research facility that provides administrative and scientific assistance as well as the technical support necessary to carry out archaeological field projects.
Since its creation, the Institute has been intensively involved in many major interdisciplinary archaeological field projects. Each summer students and scholars from Israel and around the world participate with TAU faculty in university-accredited, Institute-sponsored excavations.
Past excavations include Tel Aphek-Antipatris, Tel Beer-sheva, Tel Bet-Shemesh, 'En Besor, Horvat 'Uza, Tel 'Ira, Jaffa, Jerusalem (City of David), Tel Jezreel, Tel Kabri, Kiriath-jearim, Tel Lachish, Tel Malhata, Tel Masos, Nahal Qanah, Nahal Zehora, Tel Qadesh, Ramat Rahel and Yavneh-Yam. The studies that have resulted from these field researches have contributed to a better understanding of the archaeology and history of the Southern Levant in its prehistorical and historical periods.
The Institute’s research facilities include petrography, archaeobotany, palynology, archaeozoology, computational archaeology, ancient DNA and metallurgy laboratories. These analyse and evaluate non-artefactual data that supplement the socio-economic picture of ancient communities provided by artefactual records. In addition, the services of a metal and organic conservation lab, a pottery restoration workshop, a photography studio and a graphics department are available to the archaeologists.
The Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology was established in 1973 to enable in-house publication of this journal as well as the results of field research carried out under the auspices of the Institute. The publications department produces the editorial content of Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University. It also co-publishes, together with Penn State University Press, the Monograph Series, a platform for the publication of final reports of the Institute’s major archaeological projects, as well as multi- disciplinary investigations in Near Eastern archaeology and civilisations carried out by the Institute's faculty members. In addition, it publishes Salvage Excavation Reports and Tel Aviv Occasional Publications and has recently initiated two series: Mosaics: Studies on Ancient Israel, a co-publication with Penn State University Press, and In Centro: Collected Papers, in collaboration with the Central Region of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Institute of Archaeology of Bar-Ilan University.
The Friends of the Institute of Archaeology is a non-profit organization established in 1978 with the purpose of supporting the activities of the Institute. It now focuses on providing generous scholarships for students.
While digging for riches buried deep in Israel’s past, the Institute looks to the future by supporting multi-disciplinary graduate programs—including the International MA Program in Ancient Israel Studies—that educate and train a new generation of archaeologists uniquely suited to 21st-century methodologies.
