Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Dr Sophia Aharonovich

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel

Dr Sophia Aharonovich carrying out field work at Khirbet el-Rai. Sophia Aharonovich received her BSc in Biochemical Engineering in 2010 from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. She then completed her MA at the University of Haifa, Israel, using pollen grains and phytoliths as proxy data for environmental reconstructions in the Middle Palaeolithic period. During her candidature, Sophia was involved in over 25 excavations in Israel, dealing with environmental and anthropogenic aspects of archaeological material from the Middle Palaeolithic to the time of the Crusaders. Sophia then came to Macquarie University to undertake her PhD on global palaeoenvironmental reconstructions based on geological biomarkers during the Miocene Period (23–5 million years ago), which she completed in 2019.

Since 2019, Sophia has worked as a scientific archaeologist for the Khirbet el-Rai excavation project run by Macquarie University's Ancient Israel Program in partnership with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Israel Antiquities Authority. With the financial support of the Wakil family, Sophia developed a unique onsite laboratory for Macquarie University students to work on the analysis of organic residue, pollen, and phytoliths from the Iron Age site.

In 2020, Sophia took up a three-year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel in the Department of History and Archaeology and the Centre of Ancient Cultural Heritage and Environment at Macquarie University, financially supported by the Education Heritage Foundation.

Current projects:

  • General chemistry analysis of archaeological sediments from the Iron Age archaeological site of Khirbet el-Rai, Israel (in collaboration with Prof. Simon George, Dr. Gil Davis, Dr. Kyle Keimer, and Prof. Yosef Garfinkel).
  • Residue analysis of the archaeological pottery from Khirbet el-Rai (in collaboration with Prof. Simon George, Dr. Gil Davis, Dr. Kyle Keimer, and Prof. Yosef Garfinkel).
  • Environmental reconstructions based on pollen proxy from the sediments of Khirbet el-Rai (in collaboration with Prof. Simon George, Dr. Gil Davis, Dr. Kyle Keimer, and Prof. Yosef Garfinkel).
  • Environmental analysis based on phytoliths proxy from the sediments of Khirbet el-Rai (in collaboration with Prof. Simon George, Dr. Gil Davis, Dr. Kyle Keimer, and Prof. Yosef Garfinkel).
  • Multi-proxy research of pollen, phytoliths, and organic residues from pottery of the Giza necropolis, Egypt, now in the Museum of the Fine Arts, Boston, dated to the early Bronze Age (in collaboration with Dr. Karin Sowada and Dr. Margaret Serpico).
  • Multi-proxy research of pollen, phytoliths, and organic residues of the Beer Sheva pottery collection in the Macquarie University History Museum.

Sophia is available to supervise HDR projects. Contact Sophia at sophia.aharonovich@mq.edu.au and visit her online profiles on the Macquarie University Research Portal, LinkedIn, Academia, and Twitter for further information about her work.

Photo credit: Joanne Stephan, Macquarie University.

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