One would be hard-pressed to find a career journey quite like that of Tom Levy. It spans his early adventures as a teenage archaeology volunteer; decades of groundbreaking excavation across Israel, Jordan, India and beyond; and now a new chapter of academic collaboration.
Levy — distinguished professor and inaugural holder of the Norma Kershaw Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Neighboring Lands at UC San Diego, as well as a member of the Israeli University of Haifa’s board of governors — discussed his new book The Boomer Archaeologist – A Graphic Memoir of Tribes, Identity and the Holy Land in a campus talk on Jan. 21.
He worked on this newly released book during the COVID-19 pandemic in collaboration with his niece and illustrator, Lily Almeida, a London-based graphic artist. Levy designed each scene like a storyboard, built from his own photographs, field notes, drawings and even reconstructed moments where no camera had been present.
But as Levy reflects on the many chapters of his career, one current initiative rises quickly to the surface—a project that directly connects his UC San Diego work, his lifelong commitment to Israel, and University of Haifa’s future role on the world stage.
In helping the university establish the Israel National Center of Marine Archaeology in the Port of Haifa, Levy is at the forefront of an ambitious venture to create a unique international hub that links Israel with research partners around the Mediterranean and beyond.
He speaks of the center not only as a scientific institution, but as a catalyst for the city itself: revitalizing the Haifa waterfront, inviting international collaboration, and expanding Israel’s ability to explore and preserve its underwater cultural heritage. It represents an extension of Levy’s lifelong belief that archaeology can do more than study the past — it can serve the future.
A career shaped by curiosity
Levy’s career, as he puts it, has spanned “40 years in the deserts of the Holy Land in Israel and Jordan.” Then, in the past decade, he found a new way to “cool off:” marine archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially in Israel and Greece.
That transition reflects a hallmark of Levy’s work: the ability to explore ancient history through the most advanced tools of the present. As founder and co-director of UC San Diego’s Center for Cyber-Archaeology and Sustainability at the Qualcomm Institute, Levy has long been an innovator in applying high-tech methods to archaeology, advancing the field’s ability to “control time” through high-precision dating and “control space” through digital mapping and data systems.
Levy traces his earliest inspiration back to childhood. When he was 12, his mother returned to college and encountered an extraordinary anthropology professor, Councill (Count) Taylor (1918-1999), a pioneering Black American anthropologist, whose storytelling captivated Levy’s imagination. His father, mother, and Taylor would become close friends.
By age 14, Levy was already volunteering on archaeological excavations. His first dig was in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in Los Angeles. “That was it,” he says. “I was hooked.”
A turning point came during a field experience in New Mexico, when a Native American youth told him, “Tom, this is not your archaeology. You should work on your own culture.” That moment helped focus Levy’s path toward the Mediterranean world — and ultimately, toward Israel.
As a teenager, Levy joined excavations at Tel Gezer, one of the most significant sites connected to the biblical era. He then volunteered on a kibbutz for six months. These early experiences became the foundation for a life spent studying the ancient Levant with both intellectual rigor and personal connection.
Over time, Levy would become one of the field’s most respected voices — known not only for discovery, but for building interdisciplinary projects, training new generations of scholars, and expanding how archaeology is practiced in the 21st century.
Primary sources of pride
Looking back, Levy highlighted three projects that stand out as defining achievements.
Shiqmim is a Chalcolithic (Copper Age) settlement that Levy discovered during a bicycle survey across the northern Negev desert. Research there helped him explore a timeless human question: Why did people give up freedom to live under social hierarchy and leadership?
Wadi Faynan in Jordan is a long-running research focus in one of the region’s richest copper zones, where Levy, and Jordanian archaeologist Mohammad Najjar, examined the relationship between ancient technology, copper production and social organization during the biblical era.
Finally, Tom conducted ethnoarchaeology fieldwork in India with his wife Alina Levy — exploring traditional metalworkers who produce sacred bronzes using ancient methods, resulting in the book Masters of Fire (co-authored with the craftspeople themselves, who workshop their studies).
Each project is deeply scientific, yet Levy speaks about them with warmth and humanity, emphasizing partnership, long-term collaboration, and what archaeology teaches us about who we are.
Archaeology as bridge-building
Another prominent focus for Levy — and one that resonates strongly for University of Haifa’s community — is his conviction that archaeology can serve as a form of diplomacy, what he calls “archaeo-diplomacy.”
He describes archaeologists as representatives of the best of their home institutions when working abroad and as storytellers when they return, sharing lived experience across borders.
Levy’s work is grounded in bridge-building, and he believes scholars must resist the urge to isolate, boycott, and retreat from engagement. Instead, he argues, when people have “skin in the game,” they find ways to cooperate — and archaeology can be part of that solution.
“This is the best way to bring people together,” he says. “We should be in the business of bridge-building, and not building walls and borders around our people and the scholarly community.”–
