Alexander H. Joffe (born 1959) Alex Joffe is an archaeologist and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

of the Near East. Joffe graduated from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in 1981 with a B.A in History and received a Ph.D. in

Near Eastern Studies Oriental studies is the academic field that studies Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years, the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Middle Eastern studie ...

from the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

in 1991. From 1980 to 2003 he participated in and directed archaeological research in

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...

and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

.Jewish National Fund Speakers Bureau
He participated in fieldwork at Tel Miqne,

Tel Dor Tel Dor ( he, דוֹר or , meaning "generation", "habitation") or Tell el-Burj, also Khirbet el-Burj in Arabic (lit. Tell, or Ruin, of the Tower), is an archaeological site located on the Israeli coastal plain of the Mediterranean Sea next to ...

, Tel Yaqush, Tel el-Hammeh, Beersheva, Tel Rekhesh,

Megiddo Megiddo may refer to: Places and sites in Israel * Tel Megiddo, site of an ancient city in Israel's Jezreel valley * Megiddo Airport, a domestic airport in Israel * Megiddo church (Israel) * Megiddo, Israel, a kibbutz in Israel * Megiddo Junctio ...

, Ain Ghazal, and elsewhere. He has written extensively on

Near Eastern archaeology Near Eastern archaeology is a regional branch of the wider, global discipline of archaeology. It refers generally to the excavation and study of artifacts and material culture of the Near East from antiquity to the recent past. Definition The ...

. He has been an associate at the

Harvard Semitic Museum The Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (HMANE, previously the Harvard Semitic Museum) is a museum founded in 1889. It moved into its present location at 6 Divinity Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1903. Description From the beginning, ...

in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

, as well as the Department of Archaeology at

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...

. Joffe has taught at Pennsylvania State University and SUNY Purchase. From 2012 to 2022 Joffe was the editor of ''The Ancient Near East Today'', the weekly web magazine of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). Joffe married Rachel S. Hallote, the daughter of writer

Cynthia Ozick Cynthia Ozick (born April 17, 1928) is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist. Biography Cynthia Ozick was born in New York City, the second of two children. She moved to the Bronx with her Belarusian-Jewish parents from Hlusk, ...

, in 1992. With Hallote and JP Dessel he hosts the podcast
This Week in the Ancient Near East
'.

Ethnic state

Joffe is noted for using evidence from archaeology and epigraphy to propose an "ethnic state" model to explain the rise of petty kingdoms in the southern

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is ...

in the 10th century BC. He describes

, Judah,

Ammon Ammon ( Ammonite: 𐤏𐤌𐤍 ''ʻAmān''; he, עַמּוֹן ''ʻAmmōn''; ar, عمّون, ʻAmmūn) was an ancient Semitic-speaking nation occupying the east of the Jordan River, between the torrent valleys of Arnon and Jabbok, in ...

, Moab and

Edom Edom (; Edomite: ; he, אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and east.N ...

as "ethnic states": "Politics integrated by means of identity, especially ethnicity, which are territorially based... they are novel and historically contingent political systems which appear in the Levant during the first millennium BCE thanks to the confluence of several factors, not least the collapse of imperial domination and the longstanding city-state system."

Books

* ''Settlement and society in the early Bronze Age I and II, southern Levant : complentarity and contradiction in a small-scale complex society'', Sheffield Academic Press, 1993. * ''Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. * ''Operation Crusader and the Desert War in British History and Memory. “What is Failure? What is Loyalty?”'' Bloomsbury, 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Joffe, Alexander H. 1959 births People from Newton, Massachusetts American archaeologists Cornell University alumni University of Arizona alumni Jewish historians Living people State University of New York at Purchase faculty Pennsylvania State University faculty Boston University people