Ofer Bar-Yosef (Hebrew: עופר בר-יוסף‎; 29 August 1937 – 14 March 2020)^[1][2] was an Israeli archaeologist and anthropologist whose main field of study was the Palaeolithic period.

Archaeology and academic career

From 1967 Bar-Yosef was Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem,^[3] the institution where he studied archaeology at undergraduate and post-graduate levels in the 1960s.

In 1988, he moved to the United States of America where he became Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Harvard University^[3] as well as Curator of Palaeolithic Archaeology at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

He excavated prehistoric Levantine sites such as Kebara Cave and the early Neolithic village of Netiv HaGdud, as well as Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites in China and Georgia.

Selected publications

• The Natufian Culture in the Levant (Ed), International Monographs in Prehistory, 1992.
• Late Quaternary Chronology and Paleoclimates of the Eastern Mediterranean. Radiocarbon, 1994.
• Seasonality and Sedentism: Archaeological Perspectives from Old and New World Sites, (Ed), Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 1998.
• (with Belfer-Cohen, A) From Africa to Eurasia - Early Dispersals. Quaternary International 75:19-28, 2001.