Dwelling with the Dead in Ancient Israel and Beyond

Melissa S. Cradic is an archaeologist and museum curator. Her research focuses on ancestor lineages, rituals of commemoration, and mortuary practices in households of ancient Israel. At the Katz Center, she will work on an archaeological field report as well as a book project connected to her doctoral dissertation, "Transformations in Death: The Archaeology of Funerary Practices and Personhood in the Bronze Age Levant."

Cradic received her PhD in ancient history and Mediterranean archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has previously held fellowships at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department at Harvard University. She has also held museum appointments at the Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion as well as at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California.