Benjamin W. Porter is an Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Archaeology. An archaeologist and anthropologist, Porter studies the Bronze and Iron Age societies of the Middle East and Mediterranean, with a particular focus on the Levant. Porter conducts field archaeological research in Jordan at the Iron Age capital settlements of Dhiban and Busayra. A full list of Porter’s publications can be read here.
Professor Porter does not accept media requests nor signs or endorses petitions and statements, including those issued by the Berkeley campus and his department.
Fall 2024/Spring 2025 Drop-In Office Hours
Professor Porter is on sabbatical during during 2024-2025 academic year. Please e-mail him to schedule a meeting.
RECENT & UPCOMING COURSES
MELC 10 Middle Eastern Worlds: Egypt and Mesopotamia
MELC 124 Archaeology of the Levant
MELC C120B Art of Mesopotamia
MELC 223 Middle Eastern Archaeology Graduate Seminar: Cultural Heritage and Museums in the Middle East
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Porter, Benjamin (Under review) "Two Karstologies of the Iron Age Levant." The Routledge Handbook of Rural and Landscape Archaeology in Western Asia. London: Routledge.
Porter, Benjamin (2025) Against Moab: Interrogating the Archaeology of Iron Age Jordan. Cambridge Elements Series on the Archaeology of Ancient Israel. Cambridge University Press (refereed) (Link).
Porter, Benjamin (2025) "Digging on Borrowed Time: The Climate Crisis, Cultural Heritage, and the Future of Middle Eastern Archaeology." S.K. Costello and S. Lepinski, eds. Ethics in Archaeological Practice, 169-184. Alexandria: American Schools of Overseas Research (Preprint).
Porter, Benjamin (2024) “Levantine Archaeology.” Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology. Oxford: Oxford University Press (refereed).
Alan Farahani, Melissa Kutner, Danielle Steen Fatkin & Benjamin W. Porter (2024) "High-Resolution Spatial Analysis of Archaeobotanical Remains from a Kitchen Context in Imperial Late Antique (ca. a.d. 600) Dhiban, Jordan." Journal of Field Archaeology 49: 42-58. (Link)
Farahani, Alan, Melanie J. Miller, Benjamin Porter, Todd Dawson, and Bruce Routledge (2023) “Stable Isotopes of Archaeological and Modern Semi-Terrestrial Crabs (Potamon potamios) Provide Paleoecological Insights into Brachyuran Ecology and Human Resource Acquisition in Late Holocene Jordan.” Quaternary International (Link)
Lercari, Nicola, Willeke Wendrich, Benjamin Porter, Margie Burton, and Thomas E. Levy (2022). Preserving Cultural Heritage in the Digital Age: Sending out an S.O.S. Sheffield: Equinox Press.
Jacobs, Jordan and Benjamin W. Porter (2021) “Repatriation in University Museum Collections: Case Studies from the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology” International Journal of Cultural Property 28(4): 531-550. (Link)
Porter, Benjamin and Alexis Boutin (2014) Remembering the Dead in the Ancient Near East: Recent Contributions from Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Archaeology. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Porter, Benjamin (2016) “Assembling the Iron Age Levant: The Archaeology of Communities, Polities, and Imperial Peripheries” Journal of Archaeological Research 24(4): 373-420. (Link)
Porter, Benjamin (2013) Complex Communities: The Archaeology of Early Iron Age West-Central Jordan. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Winner of the 2014 G. Ernest Wright Publications Award from the American Society of Overseas Research.
