UNEARTHING THE PAST SINCE 1900
  • BECOME A MEMBER
  • RENEW
  • GIVE NOW
  • SEARCH
  • ONLINE PORTAL
  • American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR)American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR)
  • About
    • WELCOME FROM ASOR OFFICERS
    • FACTS & FIGURES—ASOR
    • MISSION, BYLAWS, & STRATEGIC PLAN
    • HISTORY OF ASOR
    • COMMITTEES
    • POLICIES
    • FINANCIAL DOCUMENTS
    • ASOR’s Honors and Awards
    • AFFILIATED RESEARCH CENTERS
    • CONTACT US—ASOR
  • INITIATIVES
    & PROJECTS
    • ASOR CULTURAL HERITAGE INITIATIVES
    • ASOR-AFFILIATED ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECTS
    • ASOR ARCHIVES
    • ONLINE RESOURCES
    • ASOR PUBLICATIONS
    • LEVANTINE CERAMICS PROJECT
    • WOMEN OF ASOR MAP
  • ANNUAL
    MEETING
    • REGISTRATION
    • HOTEL RESERVATIONS
    • Annual Meeting Schedules
    • SPONSOR & EXHIBIT
    • ASOR Online Library
    • HONORS & AWARDS
    • ANNUAL MEETING SCHOLARSHIPS
    • PAST & FUTURE ANNUAL MEETINGS
  • MEMBERSHIP
    • INDIVIDUAL MEMBERSHIPS
    • INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
    • ONLINE RESOURCES
    • MEMBER DIRECTORY
    • FY24 HONOR ROLL OF DONORS
    • ASOR LEGACY CIRCLE
    • FRIENDS OF ASOR
    • Friends of ASOR Webinars
  • FELLOWSHIPS
    & GRANTS
    • SCHOLARSHIPS FOR FIELDWORK PARTICIPATION
    • GRANTS FOR ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECTS
    • RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS FOR MEMBERS
    • MEMBERSHIP & ANNUAL MEETING SCHOLARSHIPS
    • ASOR-AFFILIATED RESEARCH CENTERS FELLOWSHIPS
    • OTHER FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMS
  • PUBLICATIONS
    & RESOURCES
    • BULLETIN OF ASOR
    • JOURNAL OF CUNEIFORM STUDIES
    • NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY
    • MAARAV
    • NEWS@ASOR
    • THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY
    • ASOR Online Library
    • LEVANTINE CERAMICS PROJECT
    • BOOK SERIES & MONOGRAPHS
    • EARLY CAREER MEMBER RESOURCES
  • NEWS &
    EVENTS
    • PAST ASOR NEWS, MONTH BY MONTH
    • NEWS@ASOR
    • THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY
    • LIFETIME HONOR ROLL OF DONORS
    • FY24 HONOR ROLL OF DONORS
  • WAYS TO
    DONATE

 SHARE

 
 
 
 
 

ASOR BLOG

NEWS@ASOR

ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY

PAST ASOR NEWS, MONTH BY MONTH

FY17 HONOR ROLL OF DONORS

ASOR ANNUAL MEETING

IN MEMORIAM—LAWRENCE STAGER (1943-2017)

Lawrence (“Larry”) Stager was born January 5, 1943, on a farm near Dunkirk, Ohio. He was the first in his family to go to college. He chose Harvard College, graduating in archaeology and history of the Ancient Near East with a B.A. magna cum laude in 1965. He continued his studies there under the tutelage of G. Ernest Wright and Frank Moore Cross, among others, earning his M.A. in 1972 and his Ph.D. (‘with distinction”) in 1975, with a dissertation dealing with desert farming. He went on to teach Syro-Palestinian Archaeology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago from 1973-1985, before returning to Harvard to an endowed chair, as the inaugural Dorot Professor of the Archaeology of Israel, and Director of the Semitic Museum. He retired in 2012, after 40 years of teaching, and serving as primary director of over fifty doctoral students and their dissertations.

Stager’s field research and writing focused on Canaanites, Phoenicians, Philistines, and Israelites. Since 1965 Stager was active in archaeological fieldwork in the the Levant and the Mediterranean: he was co-director with Anita Walker of the excavations at Idalion, Cyprus. He then turned his attention farther west, directing the Punic Project at Carthage from 1975-1980, with excavations at the Commercial Port and in the Tophet. And starting in 1985, he directed and recently co-directed with Daniel Master the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, Israel.

Among his popular works is the award-winning Life in Biblical Israel (co-authored with Philip King) and Ashkelon Discovered (from the Bronze Age through the Medieval Period). Ashkelon 3: The Seventh Century B.C. won the Levi-Sala Book Prize, for best final excavation report on a site in Israel. This is one of a projected twelve-volume series of technical reports.

In 1999 Stager teamed up with Robert Ballard on a seaborne excursion that discovered by remote sensing and robotics two Phoenician shipwrecks, swamped in the deep-sea ca. 750 B.C., carrying cargo of over 800 wine amphoras being shipped from Tyre to Egypt. This amazing discovery appears as a National Geographic Society video entitled “Lost Ships of the Mediterranean.”

Stager elaborated an economic model for commercial maritime kingdoms in contrast to the land-based agrarian ones in a paper entitled “Port Power in the Early and the Middle Bronze Age,” and has successfully applied it to later periods, including Phoenician ports in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. In his synthesis of Israelite society, he studied this land-locked culture in its physical setting in the highlands, its livelihood as kin-based agro-pastoral villages, its houses and family structures, and its demographic features in a pioneering article entitled “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” the most frequently cited and downloaded article published by the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

Stager gave the Schweich Lectures; his subject, “Ashkelon: Seaport of the Canaanites and the Philistines.” He was named a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 2008 he was honored with a Festschrift of 50 essays, Exploring the Longue Durée (ed. J. David Schloen; Eisenbrauns, 2009). The essays cover an array of topics reflecting the wide range of Stager’s intellectual interests, especially ancient economies and societies.

This notice is adapted from here, posted in September 2014.

BROWSE THE NEWS ARCHIVE

  • 2025 Call for Vice President
  • Fieldwork Report: Christos Theodorou
  • Message from ASOR’s Board Chair
  • Fieldwork Report: Ofelia Tychon

Tweets by ASOResearch

American Society of Overseas Research
The James F. Strange Center
209 Commerce Street
Alexandria, VA 22314

E-mail: info@asor.org

© 2023 ASOR
All rights reserved.
Images licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Contact Us
Membership
Give
Friends of ASOR
ASOR Cultural Heritage Initiatives
Terms of Use

COVID-19 Update: Please consider making payments or gifts on our secure Online Portal. Please e-mail info@asor.org if you have questions or need help.

Follow us on:
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
LinkedIn