Ofer Bar-Yosef (יוסף-בר עפר) was born on 29 August 1937 in Jerusalem in what is today Israel, but at the time was the British mandate of Palestine. His father, Israel (sometimes spelled Yisrael) Bar-Yosef was born in Palestine when it was still under Ottoman rule. Yisrael Bar-Yosef had studied at the American School of Archaeology in Jerusalem but he took a job in the Treasury Department of the British Mandate Government despite being offered an opportunity to participate in archaeological excavations at Megiddo. Ofer Bar-Yosef’s mother, Lea (sometimes spelled Leah) Lerman, was born in Palestine but her parents immigrated to Palestine from Riga, Latvia. Ofer Bar-Yosef’s childhood interest in archaeology led him to excavate a Byzantine cistern when he was only eleven years old and as a teenager he attended meetings of the Israel Exploration Society. After graduating from Bet Ha-Kerem High School in Jerusalem he fulfilled his compulsory military service with the Israel Defense Forces from 1955 to 1958 (he remained in the reserve service from 1958 to 1988).

In 1957, Bar-Yosef was able to participate in excavations at Kebara Cave, located on the western escarpment of Mount Carmel in Israel, as a soldier-volunteer. These excavations were led by Israeli archaeologist Moshe Stekelis, and this experience paved the way for Bar-Yosef to join Stekelis’ excavations at the site of Nahal Oren in 1959. Stekelis had studied prehistoric archaeology with the French prehistorian Henri Breuil, and this connection to French archaeology would prove important for Bar-Yosef’s future career. Bar-Yosef entered Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1960, and he received a B.A. degree in Archaeology and Geography in 1963, followed by a M.A. in Prehistoric Archaeology in 1965. He completed his Ph.D. in Prehistoric Archaeology at the university in 1970 studying under Moshe Stekelis for most of this time. His dissertation, titled “The Epi-Paleolithic Cultures of Palestine,” dealt with Epipaleolithic sites throughout Israeli, and this began his lifelong interest in the Epipaleolithic period. As part of his graduate training, Stekelis sent Bar-Yosef to study lithic typology and classification, as well as flint knapping techniques, with French Paleolithic archaeologist François Bordes at the University of Bordeaux for about six months. He also spent another few months studying at the Institute of Archaeology in London. In 1969 Bar-Yosef attended a Wenner-Gren Foundation symposium on Levantine Upper Paleolithic stone tool typology. These experiences gave him a valuable understanding of archaeological methodology and theory as well as familiarity with the French Paleolithic. These influenced his future research interests and methods.

When Moshe Stekelis unexpectedly died in March 1967, Bar-Yosef was made an instructor in the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew University. He taught prehistoric archaeology first as an Instructor from 1967 to 1970, then as a Lecturer from 1970 to 1973, as Associate Professor from 1973 to 1979, and he was promoted to Full Professor in 1979. However, in 1988 he accepted an offer to become George G. and Janet G. B. MacCurdy Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Harvard University. At Harvard, Bar-Yosef also served as Curator of Palaeolithic Archaeology at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and became the head of the Peabody Museum’s Stone Age Laboratory. He retired from his position at Harvard in 2013 and returned to Israel, although he remained active in fieldwork until shortly before his death.

Bar-Yosef was involved in many important archaeological excavations during the course of his long career. When he was a graduate student, Bar-Yosef worked alongside Moshe Stekelis in 1959 and 1960 excavating the Natufian and Neolithic site of Nahal Oren, at Mount Carmel. This was followed by seven seasons at ‘Ubeidiya, in the Jordan Valley, from 1960 to 1966. He participated in the survey work and emergency excavation of the Epipaleolithic sites located near Ashdod, along the coastal plain, in 1965 and 1966. He assisted Stekelis during work at Ein Gev I, an Epipaleolithic site in the Jordan Valley, in 1963 and 1964. In the course of the excavations in 1964 they unearthed a human skeleton lying in a shallow pit. They also found animal bones and stone artifacts attributed to the Kebaran culture. These finds were dated to approximately 15,700 years old. Baruch Arensburg, professor of anatomy at Tel Aviv University, undertook the examination and description of the human skeleton (Arensburg and Bar-Yosef 1973).

 

Bar-Yosef was part of the research team along with Baruch Arensburg and Eitan Tchernov, professor of zoology at Hebrew University, who excavated Hayonim Cave in the Western Galilee from 1965 to 1979. Bar-Yosef and French archaeologist Liliane Meignen later co-directed a second round of excavations at the cave from 1992 to 2000. These investigations revealed a sequence of Mousterian and Aurignacian deposits as well as Early Epipaleolithic (Kebaran) and Late Epipaleolithic (Natufian) deposits. These contained hearths, artifacts, plant remains, Natufian occupation sites, and a number of Natufian graves containing human remains (Bar-Yosef and Tchernov 1967; Bar-Yosef and Goren 1973; Cohen and Bar-Yosef 1981; Bar-Yosef 1991). The excavations initiated in 1992 were conducted by a multidisciplinary team of researchers, many of whom had previously worked on the excavations of Kebara Cave (described below). Their research focused on the Middle Paleolithic deposits at Hayonim Cave, which ranged from 250,000 to 150,000 years old. One objective of these excavations was to investigate the first arrival of modern humans into the Levant from Africa. Among the objects recovered were Mousterian stone tools, animal bones, and human remains consisting mostly of hand bones found in 1992 and foot bones found in 1998.

Excavations of the Paleolithic site of ‘Ubeidiya, located just south of the Sea of Galilee in the Jordan Valley, began in 1960 shortly after members of a local Kibbutz discovered the site. Bar-Yosef participated in the initial excavations conducted by Moshe Stekelis between 1960 and 1966. Following Stekelis’ death in 1967, Bar-Yosef continued excavating the site until 1974 under the auspices of the Israel Academy of Sciences, which appointed Louis and Mary Leakey to oversee the project. He returned for another round of excavations there from 1988 to 1999. This work revealed Pleistocene deposits containing 1.4 million year old Oldowan and Acheulean artifacts similar to stone tools unearthed at Olduvai Gorge and other east African sites. This made ‘Ubeidiya the one of the oldest known hominid sites in Israel. In 1972 Bar-Yosef traveled to Olduvai Gorge for three weeks at the invitation of Louis and Mary Leakey. The South African archaeologist Glynn Isaac also invited him to spend ten days at the excavations at Lake Turkana led by Richard Leakey. The archaeological discoveries at ‘Ubeidiya were examined in a monograph published by Bar-Yosef and Naama Goren-Inbar titled The Lithic Assemblages of ‘Ubeidiya: A Lower Palaeolithic Site in the Jordan Valley (1993).

During the 1970s, Bar-Yosef engaged in a series of excavations in Sinai following the Israeli occupation of the territory after the Six Days War. He and Avner Goren, the Archaeological Staff Officer for Sinai, conducted salvage excavations at Nawamis in ‘Ein Hudeirah, in eastern Sinai, from 1971 to 1973. Bar-Yosef and American anthropologist James Phillips of the University of Illinois at Chicago spent 1973 to 1976 surveying and excavating at Gebel Maghara, in northern Sinai, where they collected material dating from the Upper Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age. He also conducted salvage excavations in a series of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B sites in southern Sinai in addition to surveying and excavating at Kadesh Barnea in northern Sinai from 1976 to 1979.

An influential turn in Bar-Yosef’s research occurred when he joined the excavations at Qafzeh Cave led by French anthropologist Bernard Vandermeersch of the University of Bordeaux. Qafzeh Cave is located on Mount Precipice in the Jezreel Valley of the Lower Galilee, in Israel. When Moshe Stekelis and René Neuville, the French Consul General in Jerusalem and an amateur prehistorian, conducted the first excavations at Qafzeh from 1933 to 1936, they found several partial human skeletons that were considered to be Neanderthal. French anthropologist Bernard Vandermeersch first visited Qafzeh in 1964, and when the Antiquities Department in Israel approved new research at the site, Vandermeersch conducted excavations there from 1965 to 1979. His team ultimately discovered numerous Mousterian artifacts as well as human fossil remains from seventeen individuals, including eleven children. Vandermeersch eventually concluded that the Qafzeh skeletons differed from the Amud 1, Shanidar, and Tabūn 1 Neanderthal skeletons. He thought the Qafzeh skeletons represented anatomically modern humans (Cro-Magnons) (Vandermeersch (1981; 1982). Paleoanthropologists had long believed that Neanderthals produced Mousterian tools, but the association of Mousterian artifacts with anatomically modern humans led Vandermeersch to suggest that the Cro-Magnon humans living in the Levant also made Mousterian tools.

Bar-Yosef worked at Qafzeh from 1977 to 1979 and was present when Vandermeersch’s team unearthed a badly crushed human cranium. At a conference on the prehistory of the Levant held in Lyon in 1980, Vandermeersch and Bar Yosef described the stratigraphy, paleontology, and archaeology of the Mousterian deposits at Qafzeh in order to argue that these layers were very old, perhaps 90,000 to 100,000 years. Because of the early dates obtained for the Qafzeh hominids and questions about their relationship to the Neanderthal skeletons found at Tabūn and Amud as well as the human skeletons from Skhūl, in 1981 Bernard Vandermeersch, Liliane Meignen, and Bar-Yosef launched a research project called Évolution des populations et des cultures, au Levant, de la fin du Paléolithique inférieur au début du Paléolithique supérieur (Evolution of populations and cultures in the Levant, from the end of the Lower Paleolithic to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic). The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Science Foundation (USA) jointly funded the project. Vandermeersch, Meignen, and Bar-Yosef proposed that it was time to reassess the chronology of Near Eastern hominids by re-excavating certain sites. The project was designed to investigate the relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans in the Levant, to identify possible differences in behaviors between these populations, and to ascertain when the Upper Paleolithic first began and the Neanderthals finally disappeared in the Levant. This project operated from 1982 to 2000 and included French, American, and Israeli scientists who re-excavated Kebara Cave (between 1982 and 1990) and Hayonim Cave (between 1992 and 2000).

Bar-Yosef was part of the international team that pursued the new excavations at Kebara Cave from 1982 to 1990. Kebara Cave is located at Mount Carmel in Israel and lies near two other important caves, Qafzeh and Tabūn. The team unearthed deposits dating from the Upper and Middle Paleolithic (65,000 to 48,000 years ago) containing large numbers of stone tools and animal bones. Many of these bones were from animals that had been butchered. In October 1983, the team discovered a largely complete adult male Neanderthal skeleton (KMH 2) that had been intentionally buried in the Mousterian layer. It was dated to about 60,000 year ago and represents one of the best-documented deliberate Neanderthal burials ever found. The team also found a number of teeth and other fragments of bone over the course of their excavations (Arensburg et al. 1985; Meignen and Bar-Yosef 1988; Bar-Yosef et al. 1988; Bar-Yosef et al. 1992).

The Kebara Neanderthal specimens date to a more recent period than the Qafzeh skeletons. Thus, the discoveries at Qafzeh and Kebara demonstrated that Neanderthals had arrived relatively late to the Levant, probably migrating there from Europe. With this new evidence, Bar-Yosef and Vandermeersch shattered the hypothesis that modern Homo sapiens are descended from Neanderthals since the modern-looking human skeletons at Qafzeh Cave were contemporaries of, not descendants of, Neanderthal populations (Bar Yosef and Vandermeersch 1991a; 1991b). Bar-Yosef and Meignen edited Kebara Cave, Mt. Carmel, Israel: The Middle and Upper Paleolithic Archaeology (part I published in 2007 and part II published in 2019), which presented an analysis of the archaeology, paleontology, and human remains dating from the Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods found at the site. The papers in these volumes describe the daily activities of the cave’s Neanderthal inhabitants, which indicate behavioral patterns previously attributed only to Modern humans.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Bar-Yosef conducted excavations at a number of other sites inside and outside of Israel. In 1980 and 1981, he conducted excavations at El-Wad Terrace on Mount Carmel with French prehistorian François Raymond Valla. Bar-Yosef and Avi Gopher, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, excavated the pre-ceramic Neolithic mound of Netiv Hagdud, in the Lower Jordan Valley, in 1983 and 1984. Bar-Yosef and archaeologist David Alon, of the Israel Antiquities Authority, conducted excavations at Nahal Hemar Cave, in the Judean Desert, in 1983. Between 1989 and 1996, Bar-Yosef participated in excavations and studied the objects collected in Karain and Öküzini Caves in southwestern Turkey. Işın Yalçinkaya of the University of Ankara and Marcel Otte of the University of Liège directed these excavations, and in Öküzini Cave, they found Neolithic/Chalcolithic and Epipaleolithic layers dating from 19,790 to 12,900 years ago. Karain Cave contained Lower and Middle Paleolithic deposits that allowed the researchers to trace the development of stone tool industries at the site and to investigate the cultural links between western Asia and Europe during that time.

Bar-Yosef joined Steve Weiner of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Paul Goldberg of Boston University, and Chinese scientists Xu Qinqi and Liu Jinyi of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in 1996 and 1997 for research at the site of Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, where the “Peking Man” Homo erectus fossils were discovered. Their research helped to disprove former claims for the early use of fire at the site (Weiner et al. 1998). This research also applied new approaches of investigating cave morphology and stratigraphy to one of the most important sites for understanding Homo erectus and Homo sapiens populations in China. Bar-Yosef then collaborated with archaeologist Jirí Svoboda of the Czech Academy of Sciences in 1997 and 1998 during research at Stránská skála, a complex of Upper Paleolithic open-air loess sites on the outskirts of the Brno Basin in the Czech Republic. From 1996 to 2008 Bar-Yosef joined Tengiz Meshveliani of the National Museum of Georgia, and Anna Belfer-Cohen of Hebrew University, in excavations of the Upper Paleolithic deposits of Dzudzuana Cave and the Late Mesolithic to Early Neolithic deposits of Kotias Klde Cave, in the Republic of Georgia. The objective of their research was to discover evidence of the migration of early Homo sapiens from Africa into Europe and their possible interactions with Neanderthals in the region (Bar-Yosef et al. 2015).

From 2002 to 2004, Bar-Yosef joined the excavations that were directed by Mehmet Özdoğan, professor of prehistoric archaeology at the University of Istanbul, at Mezra’a Tleilat, a Neolithic mound located in the Euphrates valley in Turkey. Bar-Yosef and Chinese archaeologist Yuan Jiarong, of the Hunan Institute of Archaeology, co-directed excavations of the Upper Paleolithic site at Yuchanyan Cave, in Hunan Province, China, during 2004 and 2005. Bar-Yosef returned to China for excavation in 2009 at Xianrending Cave, in Jangxi Provice, China with Wu Xiaohong, Zhang Chi, Paul Goldberg, and David Cohen. These excavations provided evidence that the Yangzi River region was among the earliest places in the world where human communities created ceramic vessels, which dated to around 18,000 to 20,000 years ago. This also provided some of the first evidence that pottery preceded the invention of agriculture. This work led Bar-Yosef to become involved in the Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Yangzi River Basin Project to investigate the transition from hunting/gathering to early rice agriculture in Neolithic China. In 2012 he participated in excavations at the early Neolithic site of Shalonggang, one of the earliest village sites in the Middle Yangzi River region of China. Bar-Yosef also conducted excavations at Nahal Ein Gev II, a Natufian site in the Jordan Valley from 2010 to 2012, and from 2011 to 2014, he participated in excavations led by Douglas Baird of Liverpool University at Boncuklu Höyük, an early Neolithic site in central Turkey.

During the course of his long career, Bar-Yosef made many contributions to our understanding of human prehistory. He provided important contributions to lithic analysis, the debates on human dispersals out of Africa, human-Neanderthal interactions, the relationship between environmental and behavioral change, early pottery production, and the development of early agriculture in the Near East. He is widely renowned as an expert on the transition from the Paleolithic to the early Neolithic and the origins of agriculture in the Levant as a result of his excavation of numerous Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic sites. Through his decades of field and laboratory research at Hayonim, Qafzeh, and Kebara Caves (in collaboration with Bernard Vandermeersch, Liliane Meignen, Paul Goldberg, Anna Belfer-Cohen, and others) he contributed to our understanding of the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic. Significantly, this research helped demonstrate that humans (Cro-Magnons) and Neanderthals coexisted in this region and that there is no one-to-one correlation between Neanderthals and the Middle Paleolithic in the Levant. It also prompted him to suggest that technological and behavioral changes, rather than biological changes due to evolution, allowed modern humans to outcompete the Neanderthals. Bar-Yosef was also interested in the later migration of Cro-Magnons out of the Middle East and their colonization of Europe when Neanderthals still dominated the continent.

Through his discoveries at ‘Ubeidiya, Bar-Yosef uncovered important evidence for early human dispersals from Africa to Eurasia, which contributed to discussions about the Out of Africa Hypothesis. Through his studies of caves, done in collaboration with Paul Goldberg, Steve Weiner, and others, he helped improve our understanding of how humans used caves and rock-shelters during the Upper Pleistocene in the Levant. He also improved the methodology for excavating and studying cave deposits. Bar-Yosef was interested in the changes in climate and ecology that occurred during the Pleistocene and Holocene and how these changes affected the ways humans behaved in their environment and their social systems and settlement patterns. He argued that studies of environmental and climatic changes during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene are essential to understanding the transition from hunting/gathering to farming and the domestication of animals. Bar-Yosef even wrote several papers on Neolithic Jericho and suggested that the walls of the city were built to prevent flooding of the early Neolithic village. He organized or co-organized numerous conferences on a range of topics including Southern Levantine prehistory, Levallois technology, the Aurignacian, the Natufian, pastoralism, the Neolithic demographic transition, seasonality and sedentism, Quaternary chronology and paleoenvironments, and modern human origins.

Bar-Yosef was active in a variety of professional organizations and institutions. He was a co-editor of the journal Geoarchaeology from 1995 to 2000, and he became a co-editor of the journal Eurasian Prehistory in 2002. He became a member of the Israel Prehistoric Society in 1960 and served as the Society’s chair from 1978 to 1981. He was a member of other prominent Israeli institutions, including the Israel Exploration Society (from 1954), the Archaeological Council of the State of Israel, Ministry of Education and Culture (from 1979 to 1988) and of the Society for the Archaeological Survey of Israel from 1977 to 1989. Additionally, Bar-Yosef was a member of the Société Préhistorique Française from 1967 to 1985, of the Society for American Archaeology from 1973, of the Society of Archaeological Science from 1992 to 2013, and of the Geological Society of America from 1994. He was elected a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) in 2001 and then a member in 2010. He was also elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2005 and a Foreign Fellow of the Academy of Science of the Republic of Georgia in 2003. Bar-Yosef was instrumental in the creation of the Irene Levi Sala CARE Archaeological Foundation, which provides grants for prehistoric research in Israel. In 2013 he was the first recipient of the Lloyd Cotsen Prize for Lifetime Achievement in World Archaeology, which is bestowed by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California-Los Angeles. He also received honorary doctorates from Ben-Gurion University in 2013 and from the University of Bordeaux in 2018.

Ofer Bar-Yosef died in his home in Kfar Saba, Israel, on 14 March 2020.

Selected Bibliography

Ofer Bar-Yosef and Eitan Tchernov, “Archaeological Finds and Fossil Faunas of the Natufian and Microlithic Industries at Hayonim Cave (Western Galilee, Israel).” Israel Journal of Zoology 15 (1966): 104-140.

Ofer Bar-Yosef and Naama Goren, “Natufian Remains in Hayonim Cave.” Paleorient 1 (1973): 49-68.

B. Arensburg and Ofer Bar-Yosef, “Human Remains from Ein Gev I, Jordan Valley, Israel.” Paleorient 1 (1973): 201-206.

Dov Nir and Ofer Bar-Yosef, Quaternary Environment & Man in Israel (in Hebrew). Tel Aviv: The Society for the Protection of Nature & the Israel Exploration Society, 1976.

Anna Belfer-Cohen and Ofer Bar-Yosef, “The Aurignacian at Hayonim Cave.” Paleorient 7 (1981): 19-42.

B. Arensburg, O. Bar-Yosef, M. Chech, P. Goldberg, H. Laville, L. Meignen, Y. Rak, E. Tchernov, A.-M. Tillier, and B. Vandermeersch, “Une sépulture néandertalienne dans la grotte de Kébara (Israël).” Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l’Académie des Sciences 300 (1985): 227–230.

Liliane Meignen and Ofer Bar-Yosef, “Kebara et le Paléolithique Moyen du Mont Carmel.” Paleotient 14 (1988): 123-130.

Ofer Bar-Yosef et al., “La sépulture néandertalienne de Kebara (unité XII).” In M. Otte (ed.), L’Homme de Néandertal, vol. 5: La Pensée. Pp. 17-24. Liège: Université de Liège, 1988.

“Le paléolithique en Israël.” L’Anthropologie 92 (1988): 76-795.

Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anna Belfer-Cohen, “The Origins of Sedentism and Farming Communities in the Levant.” Journal of World Prehistory 3 (1989): 447-498.

Ofer Bar-Yosef, “Geochronology of the Levantine Middle Palaeolithic.” In P. Mellars and C. Stringer (eds.), The Human Revolution: Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Humans. Pp.589-610. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1989.

“The Archaeology of the Natufian Layer in Hayonim Cave.” In O. Bar-Yosef and F. R. Valla (eds.), The Natufian Culture in the Levant. (International Monographs in Prehistory). Pp.81-92. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1991.

Liliane Meignen and Ofer Bar-Yosef, “Les outillages lithiques mousteriennes de Kebara.” In O. Bar-Yosef and B. Vandermeersch (eds.), Une squelette mousterienne à Kebara, Mt. Carmel, Israel. Pp. 49-78. Paris: Editions CNRS, 1991.

Ofer Bar Yosef and Bernard Vandermeersch, “Premiers hommes modernes et Néandertaliens au Proche-Orient: chronologie et culture.” In J. J. Hublin and A. M. Tillier (eds.), Aux origines d’Homo sapiens. Pp. 219-250. Paris: P.U.F., 1991a.

“Middle Palaeolithic Chronology and the Transition to the Upper Palaeolithic in Southwest Asia.” In: G. Bräuer and F. H. Smith (eds.), Continuity or Complete Replacement: Controversies in Homo Sapiens Evolution. Pp. 261-272. Rotterdam: Balkema Press, 1991.

Ofer Bar Yosef and Bernard Vandermeersch, Premiers hommes modernes at Néandertaliens au Proche Orient: chronologie et culture. In: J.J. Hublin and A. M. Tillier (eds.), Aux origines d’Homo sapiens. Pp. 219-250. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991b.

O. Bar-Yosef, B. Vandermeersch, B. Arensburg, A. Belfer-Cohen, P. Goldberg, H. Laville, L. Meignen, Y. Rak, J. D. Speth, E. Tchernov, A-M. Tillier, S. Weiner, “The Excavations in Kebara Cave, Mt. Carmel.” Current Anthropology 33 (1992): 497-550.

Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anna Belfer-Cohen, “From Foraging to Farming in the Mediterranean Levant.” In A. B. Gebauer and T. D. Price (ed.), Transition to Agriculture in Prehistory. 21–48. Madison: Prehistory Press, 1992.

Ofer Bar-Yosef and Naama Goren-Inbar. The Lithic Assemblages of ‘Ubeidiya: A Lower Palaeolithic Site in the Jordan Valley. (Qedem: Monographs of the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem No.34). Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, 1993.

“The Contributions of Southwest Asia to the Study of the Origin of Modern Humans.” In M. Nitecki and D. Nitecki (eds.), Origins of Anatomically Modern Humans. Pp. 23-66. New York: Plenum Press, 1994.

“The Lower Paleolithic of the Near East.” Journal of World Prehistory, 8 (1994): 211-265.

O. Bar-Yosef and R. Meadow, “The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East.” In T. D. Price and G. Gebauaer (eds.), Last Hunters- First Farmers. Pp. 39-94. Santa Fe: School of American Research, 1995.

“The Impact of Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Climatic Changes on Humans in South-western Asia.” In L. Straus, B. Eriksen, J. M. Erlson and D. Yesner (eds.), Humans at the End of the Ice Age. Pp. 61-78. New York: Plenum Press: 1996.

“Modern Humans, Neanderthals & the Middle/Upper Paleolithic Transition in Western Asia.” In O. Bar-Yosef, L. Cavalli-Sforza and M. Piperno (eds.), The Lower and Middle Paleolithic. Pp. 175-190. Forli: Edizioni A.B.A.C.O. 1996.

“The Natufian Culture in the Levant, Threshold to the Origins of Agriculture.” Evolutionary Anthropology 6 (1998): 159-177.

“On the Nature of Transitions: The Middle to Upper Paleolithic & the Neolithic Revolution.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 8 (1998): 141-177.

S. Weiner, Xu Q., P. Goldberg, Liu J., and O. Bar-Yosef, “Evidence for the Use of Fire at Zhoukoudian, China.” Science 281 (1998): 251-253.

“The Chronology of the Middle Paleolithic of the Levant.” In T. Akazawa, K. Aoki, and O. Bar-Yosef (eds.), Neanderthals and Modern Humans in Western Asia. Pp. 39-56. New York: Plenum, 1998.

“The Upper Paleolithic Revolution.” Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (2002): 363-393.

“On the Nature of Transitions and Revolutions in Prehistory.” Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society 35 (2005): 469-483.

Ofer Bar-Yosef and Liliane Meignen (eds.), Kebara Cave, Mt. Carmel, Israel: The Middle and Upper Paleolithic Archaeology, Part 1. (American School of Prehistoric Research Bulletin, Vol. 49.) Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 2007.

Ofer Bar-Yosef and Yosef Garfinkel, Prehistory of Israel (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Ariel, 2008.

Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anna Belfer-Cohen, “The Levantine Upper Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic.” In E. Garcea (ed.), South-Eastern Mediterranean People between 130,000 & 10,000 Years Ago. Pp. 144-167. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010.

“From Foraging to Farming in Western and Eastern Asia.” In P. Gepts et al. (eds.), Biodiversity on Agriculture: Domestication, Evolution & Sustainability. Pp. 57-91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Anna Belfer-Cohen and Ofer Bar-Yosef, “The Natufian in Hayonim Cave and the Natufian of the Terrace.” In F. Valla (ed.), Les Fouilles de la Terrace d’Hayonim (Israël): 1980-1981 et 1985-1989. Pp. 507-519. Paris: De Boccard, 2012.

Qu, T., O. Bar-Yosef, Y. Wang, and X. Wu, “The Chinese Upper Paleolithic: Geography, Chronology and Typo-Technology.” Journal of Archaeological Research 15 (2012): 1-73.

B. Vandermeersch, B. Arensburg, O. Bar-Yosef, and A. Belfer-Cohen, “Upper Paleolithic Human Remains from Qafzeh Cave, Israel.” Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society 43 (2013): 5-23.

R. E. Taylor and O. Bar-Yosef. Radiocarbon Dating: An Archaeological Perspective. 2nd ed. Walnut Creek, Calif.: Left Coast Press, 2014.

Bar-Yosef et al. “Dzudzuana: An Upper Palaeolithic Cave Site in the Caucasus Foothills (Georgia).” Antiquity 85 (2015): 331-349.

Liliane Meignen and Ofer Bar-Yosef (eds.), Kebara Cave, Mt. Carmel, Israel: The Middle and Upper Paleolithic Archaeology, Part I1. (American School of Prehistoric Research Bulletin, Vol. 51.) Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 2019.

Secondary Sources

“Spotlight on Ofer Bar-Yosef.” AnthroQuest 43 (1991): 15-18.

James L. Phillips, “Introduction.” Mitekufat Haeven: Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society (Special Issue: Advances in Eurasian Prehistory: Papers in Honor of Ofer Bar-Yosef) 40 (2010): 9-12.

John D. Speth, “Ofer Bar-Yosef, Renowned Archaeologist, 29 August 1937 – 14 March 2020.” PaleoAnthropology (2020): 69-73.

Anna Belfer-Cohen, Isaac Gilead, Avi Gopher, Naama Goren-Inbar, Nigel Goring-Morris, and Erella Hovers. “Ofer Bar-Yosef (1937–2020) and the New Israeli Prehistory.” Journal of Anthropological Research 76 (2020): 405-409.

John Shea, “Ofer Bar-Yosef (1937-2020).” SAA Archaeological Record (2020): 56-57.