Melissa Cradic

Melissa Cradic is an archaeologist and museum curator specializing in the history and cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, with a special focus on the Levant. Her research investigates houses and households, burial practices, memory, and the role of the dead in everyday life. She has conducted fieldwork in Israel since 2008, including at Tel Megiddo, and has served as Educational Program Director of the Jezreel Valley Regional Project and as Assistant Director of excavations at Legio, a Roman military camp. She has held fellowships at Harvard University (2014-2016), W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem (2016-2017), and most recently at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (2019-2020), where she carried out work on her current book projects, Megiddo VII: Decoding Death: The Investigation of Two Elite Bronze Age Tombs (forthcoming, Tel Aviv University Press) and "Dwelling with the Dead in the Ancient Mediterranean World." Her work has appeared in journals such as Levant, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Near Eastern Archaeology, and Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports and has also been featured in National Geographic and Smithsonian Magazine.