Episode 56: The industrial revolution of prehistoric Israel, with Tom Levy
Ask Haviv Anything
Haviv Rettig Gur
4.9 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 November 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today we step out of the politics and anxious debates of this difficult time and go back 5,500 years to the Chalcolithic, the so-called Copper Age. Our guide is Prof. Tom Levy, eminent archaeologist and emeritus Norma Kershaw Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Neighboring Lands at the University of California, San Diego.
Tom's new graphic-novel memoir, The Boomer Archaeologist, tells the story of his journey into the deep past of the land of Israel, and offers an opportunity for us to talk to him about his groundbreaking work on the origins of inequality, on the vast copper industry of the ancient Biblical kingdom of Edom - a kingdom whose very existence archaeologists long doubted - and even, along the way, some thoughts on the roots of religion and technological innovation.
Tom has published 12 books and several hundred scholarly articles. The Boomer Archaeologist is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Boomer-Archaeologist-Graphic-Memoir-Identity/dp/B0F2LP47JK/ref=sr_1_1
This episode is sponsored by Renee Schweber and Matthew Schweber in memory of their late husband and father Jack Schweber, who passed away on April 30, 2020. Jack's story, retold in the podcast, is an extraordinary snapshot of the American Jewish experience writ large.
If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and opinions, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.
If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com.
Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, everybody. |
| 0:06.0 | Welcome to a very exciting episode of Ask Kov Anything, a pallet cleanser for the soul. |
| 0:12.1 | I have a wonderful sweet guy who happens to be one of the most important archaeologists working on this region, currently in academia and has written a |
| 0:22.8 | fun new book about his life, but he's also written 12 academic scholarly books and |
| 0:28.4 | hundreds of articles. Tom Levy is here, and I am going to ask him questions about the deep, |
| 0:35.6 | deep, ancient world because he himself revolutionized |
| 0:39.0 | some of our understanding of how states were formed in this place, in the Calcolithic period, |
| 0:45.5 | before the Iron Age, before the Bronze Age. And he is going to walk us through some of the fascinating |
| 0:52.4 | deep knowledge that he helped produce |
| 0:54.9 | about the deep, deep, ancient world. We're talking pre-Bible. So if that's interesting to you, |
| 1:01.0 | join me. It's going to be great. Tom Levy is the distinguished professor and holds the, |
| 1:06.2 | was the founding holder of. He no longer has the chair, he is retired, but was the founding holder |
| 1:11.7 | of the Norma Kershaw chair in the archaeology of ancient Israel and neighboring lands at the |
| 1:16.0 | University of California, San Diego. A member of the Department of Anthropology and the |
| 1:21.3 | Judaic Studies program, he leads the cyber archaeology research group at the Qualcomm Institute, |
| 1:26.7 | at the California Center of Telecommunications and Information Technology. |
| 1:30.3 | I'm going to be asking him what the heck cyber archaeology means, has published 12 books, several hundred scholarly articles, and is the author of a new graphic novel, which I have here called the Boomer Archaeologist. |
| 1:45.2 | Now, I am too old to appreciate that Boomer is funny and tongue-in-cheek. |
| 1:53.1 | Because I'm not Boomer. |
| 1:54.9 | I'm the last millennial year. |
| 1:56.9 | You could still be a millennial, which means on Gen X. |
| 1:59.3 | I don't know. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Haviv Rettig Gur, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Haviv Rettig Gur and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.