Haskel Greenfield - Biography#

Born 1953, M. Phil. and PhD (CUNY, 1980, 1985). In 1989, he joined the University of Manitoba where he is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Co-Director of the Near Eastern and Biblical Archaeology Lab, and Coordinator of the Judaic Studies Program at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. He is an anthropological archaeologist with a specialty in zooarchaeology. His research extends across vast parts of the Old World and significantly increased our understanding of the foundations of how the earliest farming and urban cultures developed, how they produced their food and organized their societies, and how they laid the foundations for modern lifestyles.

Since 1977, he conducted research on the origins and nature of early food producing communities in Europe. Since 1995, he investigated of the organization of early Black farming communities as they entered South Africa. Since 1999, he investigated the origins and spread of metallurgy from the Near East to Europe. Since 2003, he investigated the social and economic organization of early urban households in the Near East. Since 2016, he is reconstructing early urban provisioning systems and mobility of people and animals during the Bronze Age of Jordan and Israel through isotopic analysis.

Greenfield has made important contributions to understanding major innovations that transform ancient societies: A ) organization of earliest food producing societies; B ) domestic livestock for their secondary products (milk, wool, traction); C ) origins of transhumant pastoralism; D ) advent of metal technology for daily life; E ) organization of early households; F ) provisioning of early urban societies; and G ) the mobility and migration of people and animals across the landscape. His publications are extensively cited and unequivocally recognized to be at the forefront of the discipline. He has received many grants from numerous agencies and institutions, has educated many students and supervised dozens of post-graduate students in 43 years of university teaching.