Nessana Expedition
Director
Yana Tchekhanovets
Yana (PhD, Hebrew University) specializes in late antique archaeology, Caucasian Christian communities of Byzantine Palestine, and archaeology of pilgrimage. After many years of field work in Jerusalem, Yana is now a senior lecturer at the Department of Archaeology at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
Area Supervisor
Anat Rasiuk
Anat received her B.A. in Archaeology and Jewish Thought and her M.A. in Archaeology from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She is currently a PhD student at the BGU, working on research of The Churches of Nessana: Structure, Function and Identities. Anat works in the Southern District of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Area Supervisor
Ari Levy
Ari received his B.A. and M.A. in Archaeology from Haifa University. He is an archaeologist in Israel Antiquities Authority, excavating in Jerusalem and the Negev. Recently, Ari completed his thesis at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, dedicated to the Byzantine metal assemblage from the church of the Glorious Martyr in Ramat Bet Shemesh.
Area Supervisor
Assaf Peretz
Assaf received his B.A. in Archaeology and History and M.A in History from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is an archaeologist and field photographer of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Assaf’s main research interest is the archaeology of the WWI battlefields in Israel.
Assistant Area Supervisor
Nikita Saveliev
Nikita received his archaeological degrees and field experience in Moscow, and since 2003 works on the problematics of medieval cities, historical topography, and the archeology of the Golden Horde.
Assistant Area Supervisor
Omer Zeira
Omer received his BA in history and archaeology at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and currently works on his MA thesis on the Roman legionary kilns in Jerusalem.
Assistant Area Supervisor
Liav Yekutiel
Liav received his BA in history and archaeology at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and currently works on his MA thesis dedicated to the social and gender aspects of archaeological finds from Aelia Capitolina.
Epigraphy
Ofer Pogorelsky
Ofer received his B.A. and M.A. in History from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and iscurrently a PhD student of HU, working on aspects of Christianization of the Negev and theadjacent desert regions of southern Palestine. He is a research assistant at the CorpusInscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, a multi-lingual corpus of the inscriptions from Alexanderto Muhammad, a joint project of the Hebrew University and the University of Cologne.
Archaeobotany
Daniel Fuks
As an archaeobotanist, Daniel studies past human-plant interaction, with a primarygeographic focus on the southern Levant. He conducted his PhD on the archaeobotany ofthe Byzantine-Islamic transition in the Negev. Currently Daniel is a Marie S. CuriePostdoctoral fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, U. Cambridge.His research project, “The flowering desert”, aims to reconstruct first millennium CEagricultural developments in the Negev desert and beyond.
GIS and survey
Yakov Shmidov
Received his B.A. in Fine Arts from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and his M.A. in Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing from the University of Haifa. He is currently working as a surveyor in the Israel Antiquities Authority.
GIS and survey
Alexander Wiegman
Received his B.A. in Archaeology and Jewish History and his M.A. in Archaeology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is currently a PhD student at BGU, working on the research of agricultural systems in the Negev Highlands in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods. Alexander works as the head of the field technologies branch at the Israel Antiquities Authority.