Lisa Maher
Halbert Post-doc, 2003-4

Biography
Lisa Maher is a PhD. Candidate in the Department of Anthro-pology, University of Toronto, specializing in the Epipalaeolithic Period (ca. 20 000 – 10 000 BP) of the Near East. I am presently completing a SSHRC-funded doctoral project on prehistoric settlement and land-use in north-western Jordan. My research interests include the contributions of geoarchaeology (landscape reconstruction and micromorphology), landscape archaeology, and lithics analysis to understanding the important economic, technological, and social changes associated with the emergence of social complexity and an agriculturally-based village life.
Some of my other qualifications include an Honour Bachelor of Science from Lakehead University, where my thesis involved the archaeomagnetic dating of Romanesque friezes from Lincoln Cathedral, England. I have also participated in projects in the Northwest Coast of British Columbia and in northern Ontario. However, my current interests lie in the Near East. In Jordan, I have worked on University of Toronto projects at a Natufian site in Wadi Mataha, the acropolis of Madaba, and in Wadi Ziqlab, where I have co-directed the last three field seasons. I have also conducted geomorphological survey in the Dead Sea Plain in association with University of Notre Dame/CBRL excavations at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Dhra’.

Research Project
“Small Tools, Big Changes”
The Transition from Forager to Farmer in the Southern Levant
During the Late Pleistocene, the Near East was occupied by groups of seasonally mobile hunter-gatherers. Between 20 000 and 10 000 years before the present, sites in Israel and Jordan indicate that these groups shifted from life in small foraging camps to aggregated farming villages, paralleling regional climatic changes. These changes were marked by the onset of new developments in the realms of tool technology, artistic expression, status differentiation, and semi-permanent architecture. This period of Levantine prehistory is called the Epipalaeolithic and it is recognised archaeologically by the sudden presence and abundance of very small stone tool elements (microliths), which were formed into distinct geometric shapes and hafted into composite hunting and harvesting tools. Also, appearing for the first time in the Epipalaeolithic were changes in settlement, economy, and social organisation – necessary pre-conditions for an agricultural economy and village life. These gradual changes did not occur synchronously throughout the southern Levant. Furthermore, the impetuses for these changes, and why only some groups adopted them, are poorly understood.

Recent work at a substantial Epipalaeolithic encampment in northern Jordan (‘Uyyun al-Hammâm, Maher 2002) has raised a number of questions about the nature of this site and how it fits into our current understanding of the variability in Epipalaeolithic settlement and mobility. The site is most similar to other culturally contemporary sites in Israel, particularly those in the Jordan Valley, while, in contrast, it has no parallels in Jordan. The main objective of this research is to examine the relationships between this site and other similar ones in Israel in order to offer a cohesive picture of the changing hunter-gatherer landscape of the southern Levant during the Epipalaeolithic. Thus, understanding the dynamic relationship between Epipalaeolithic groups and their surroundings is critical to explaining the emergence of fully Neolithic communities.

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Barry Dov Walfish
Halbert Network Fellow, 2003-6

Biography
Barry Dov Walfish is the Judaica Specialist at the University of Toronto Library and a faculty member of the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Among his publications are Esther in Medieval Garb (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1993), the Frank Talmage Memorial Volume (ed.) (Haifa: Haifa University Press, 1992-93), Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver: the Collected Essays of Frank Talmage (ed.) (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1999), and With Reverence for the Word: Scriptural Interpretation in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (ed.)(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). His research interests include Medieval scriptural interpretation and Jewish sectarianism, especially Karaism.

Research Project
“ A Bibliography of Medieval Jewish Biblical Exegesis”

The project involves creating a bibliographic database of primary source material in print and manuscript on Medieval Jewish biblical exegesis. The final product, which will be mounted on a website, should prove to be a valuable research tool for scholars in Jewish Studies, both those interested in biblical exegesis per se, and those interested in mining biblical commentaries for historical information, or philosophical, exegetical, or philological material. The first part of this long-term project will cover the Prophets and Writings, the last two sections of the Hebrew Bible. The material in manuscript is potentially of greatest interest, since it is the least known and should prove to have the greatest research potential. Bringing this material to the attention of scholars, in an organized fashion, should definitely stimulate and facilitate research in this relatively neglected field.

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Tal Dingott Alkopher
Halbert Post-Doc, 2003-4

Biography
In 1992 I finished my military service as an officer in the Gadna Project and started my Undergraduate Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Department of French Language and Literature as well as in the Department of International Relations. In 1995 I continued my advance studies at the Department of International Relations. I finished my MA studies with excellence. My MA thesis dealt with the way medieval Mentalité shaped and constituted the Crusades to the Holly Land. In 2001 I presented a paper based on my MA’s thesis at the International Studies Association’s Conference in Chicago.

In 2000 till 2003 I dedicated to my doctoral studies under the supervision of Prof. Emanuel Adler—again at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My thesis examined theoretically and empirically the constitutive relationships between, on the one hand, collective conceptions of rights at the international level and, on the other, wars as a kind of practice. It focused on three distant historical epochs: the medieval epoch stretching from the eleventh till the thirteen century, characterized by conceptions of divine and natural rights and by institutionalized practices of crusades to the Holy Land; the eighteenth century characterized by the institutionalization of the right of absolute territorial sovereignty and by territorial wars—the Spanish, Polish and Austrian wars of succession, and the seven years war between France and England; and finally the late Westphalian epoch, that is, the late twentieth century, which witnessed the rise and institutionalization of human rights as an international norm alongside the formation of a new practice of humanitarian wars.

Research Project
The Project’s main topic is international interventions in regional and domestic conflicts: the case of the EU’s intervention in the Balkans as compared to its intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East. The question raised is that of the impact of the relationship and interaction between the identities of the parties to the intervention on the success of the intervention. The assumption to be examined is that during an intervention in a conflict, an interaction evolves between different components of the two parties’ identities, such as, the perception of rights, of security etc’. The claim is that in a case where the perceptions are totally different, and where the process of interaction reveals an exclusion of the intervening party’s perceptions by the region, the intervention is doomed. However, when the perceptions are in harmony or when a diffusion occurs during the intervention, that is, there is a process of learning or changes in understanding on the part of the region regarding all or some of the intervening party’s perceptions, then the intervention is successful. Finally, the Project intends to show that EU’s intervention in the Balkans can so far be characterized as more successful than that in the Middle East, because of the resemblance in perceptions and the process of diffusion of perceptions and learning on the part of the Balkans, occurring during the intervention, as opposed to the clash of perceptions, and different perceptions of the EU versus those of the Middle East’s actors. In light of this, recommendations regarding future EU’s attitudes and activities towards the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict will be suggested.

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