Dawn and Descent

The development of ancient Near Eastern archaeology, especially that of the southern Levant, is usually presented through several standard narratives. For American scholars it frequently begins with William F. Albright, who is often referred to as “the father of biblical archaeology.” We undertook to test this narrative by surveying current scholars and using three separate metrics of social network analysis (SNA) on the resulting academic genealogies. Our preliminary results indicate that while a portion of active American archaeologists and biblicists do indeed trace their academic lineage back to Albright, an even larger portion, including Israeli archaeologists and various American Egyptologists and Assyriologists, are scholarly descendants of Albright’s academic cousins, all of whom can trace themselves back to the German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch, who seems to have been the real father of the discipline, genealogically speaking. We also determined that academic lineage does not inhibit intellectual diversification

Ancient history · Genealogy · Geography · Meteorology · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Ancient Near East History · Globalization, Historical Perspectives, and International Relations · History

• Geschichte der Altertumswissenschaften

  Open Access•Peter Kuhlmann, Helmuth Schneider•Geschichte der Altertumswissenschaf…•2012

  Incluir item

• A Sketch of C. C. Torrey's Career

  Millar Burrows•Bulletin of the American Schools…•1953

  Incluir item

• American Jewish History

  Jonathan D Sarna•Modern Judaism - A Journal of…•1990

  Incluir item

• American Archaeology in the Mideast

  Bob Brier, Philip J King•Journal of the American Research…•1985

  Incluir item