People: Yorke Rowan

Affiliated Researcher, and the University of Notre Dame Adjunct Professor

Yorke M. Rowan is currently teaching at the University of Notre Dame, after completing an Albright Fellowship and termas Research Associate at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. He also taught asa Lecturer at Pennsylvania State University, Erie. After earning his B.A. in Anthropology at the University of Virginia in 1982, he traveled throughout Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Turkey and other countries, working on archaeological projects in Israel and Italy. Returning to graduate school, he received his Master’s degree in 1990 and Ph.D. in 1998 in Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. During graduate work, he participated in various archaeological projects and developed expertise in the analysis of prehistoric and proto-historic flint and ground stone artifacts. His Master’s degree was a study of flint tools from the Chalcolithic (4500-3600 BCE) site of Shiqmim, Israel. Funded by grants from the US Information Agency, Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and the University of Texas at Austin, his doctoral thesis, Ancient Distribution and Deposition of Prestige Objects: Basalt Vessels During Late Prehistory in the Southern Levant, was an examination of prestige objects manufactured by craft specialists. During 1999-2000, Yorke was the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the W.F. Albright Institute in Jerusalem conducting a study titled, Cult, Cache or Commodity? Ritual Deposits as Symbolic Practice(s) During Late Prehistory in the Southern Levant. With Dr. Gus Van Beek, Yorke was recently awarded a three year grant from the Shelby White-Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications for the publication of Tell Jemmeh, an ancient site excavated by Dr. Van Beek under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution during the 1970s and early 1980s.