At the 2019 Annual Meeting, Amnon Ben-Tor was awarded The P. E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award. This award honors an archaeologist who, during their career, has made outstanding contributions to ancient Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology.
Amnon Ben-Tor, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, has been at the forefront of both research and field archaeology in Israel for over 50 years. Throughout his career, he participated in several important excavations, such as Masada, and directed excavations at numerous sites, among them Atheniou, Tel Yarmuth, Tel Yoqne’am, Tel Qashish, Tel Qiri and, most notably, Tel Hazor. At Hazor, he worked with Yigael Yadin beginning in the 1950s and has directed the “Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in Memory of Yigael Yadin” since the 1990s, and is currently still working in the field at the age of 84. His research interests and expertise span the Early Bronze to the Iron Ages, with particular focus on the Late Bronze Age in Canaan and its relationship to Egypt and Syro-Mesopotamia. His excavations have cumulatively served as a foundation for understanding the chronology, history, and developmental patterns of material culture for the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Southern Levant. Furthermore, he has trained and mentored a generation of Israeli and foreign archaeologists and the results of his fieldwork have proved to be an inspiration and an exemplar for both his colleagues and his students.