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David Schloen
Associate Professor of Syro-Palestinian Archaeology

David Schloen specializes in the archaeology and socioeconomic history of the Bronze and Iron Age Levant (Syria-Palestine). He is involved in archaeological excavations in Turkey and Israel. One of his long-term research interests is the structure and operation of the "palace economies" that flourished in the Levant from ca. 3000 to 1200 B.C. He is interested in the interaction between day-to-day social and economic practices, especially at the local household level, and the ideological symbolism of social order that sustained, and was sustained by, these practices. His book The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol (2001) focuses on Bronze Age kingdoms. A second volume is currently in preparation on the economic and ideological changes that took place during the first millennium B.C., in ancient Israel and elsewhere, as the Bronze Age palace economies gave way to multinational empires.

Because of his background in computer science, another of Prof. Schloen's projects is the development of an online database system (http://ochre.lib.uchicago.edu ) for studying and publishing cultural heritage information drawn from many different research projects. The goal is to integrate archaeological and geographical data, ancient texts, and other aspects of cultural heritage as an aid to interdisciplinary research.

Education:
B.Sc. University of Toronto (Computer Science), 1983.
Ph.D. Harvard University (Syro-Palestinian Archaeology and Hebrew Bible), 1995.

Selected Publications:

• The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2001).
• "Archaeological Data Models and Web Publication Using XML," Computers and the Humanities 35 (2001): 123-152.
• "William F. Albright and the Origins of Israel," Near Eastern Archaeology 65/1 (2002): 56-62.
• "The Iron Age State as a State of Mind," in One Hundred Years of American Archaeology in the Middle East., ed. D. R. Clark and V. H. Matthews. Boston, Mass.: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2003.