Jacob Kaplan’s Excavations of Protohistoric Sites, 1950s-1980s

Jacob Kaplan was a dynamic field archaeologist and an original researcher of the Pottery Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in the Levant. This volume contains a selection of Kaplan’s unpublished fieldwork as well as a broad survey of the thoughts, theories, and considerations that have placed his work at the forefront of Israeli archaeology.

Kaplan played an important role in shaping the archaeological sequence of the late prehistory of Israel, especially due to his discovery and description in the early 1950s of the Wadi Rabah culture-a major entity in the late Pottery Neolithic period. On a broader scale, Kaplan incorporated the Pottery Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in Israel into the sequences of the late prehistory of the Levant and touched on the question of the end of the Neolithic period-one of the most intensive, creative, and transformative eras in human history. His views on some of the basic chronological and cultural issues of these periods endure to this very day.

This two-volume collection accords Kaplan the full recognition he deserves as an original, leading investigator of the late prehistory of Israel.