Egon H.E. Lass is a field archaeologist who has participated in fifty-five archaeological projects in Israel, Egypt, and the United States. He studied anthropology at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, completing a master of science. One of his major interests is applying the study of anthropology to Mid-Eastern archaeological sites, mainly by means of a flotation methodology that attempts to document the behavior of small groups and single individuals. Another is the study of Archaeomagnetism as a method of dating. By sampling fired soil, such as bread ovens (tabunim), the thermo-remanent magnetism in such features can be utilized to trace the movement of the North Pole through time. This work was done with Robert S. Sternberg of Franklin and Marshall College. A third interest is the analysis of complex stratigraphy, which is encountered in almost every archaeological site in the Middle East. All of these studies have resulted in multiple articles.
Since 1985 Egon has been a staff member of the Leon Levy expedition to Tell Ashkelon, where he worked full time for nine years, publishing among other things, a survey of the Ashkelon wells, with the Geological Survey of Israel (Report GS1/56/89). He is now involved with various aspects of the Ashkelon publication process. For seven years he was a senior archaeologist of the Israel Antiquities Authority, where he directed seven, and co-directed four, archaeological projects, the latter with Shimon Gibson and the late Carsten Peter Thiede. All of the final reports have been submitted to the archives of the IAA, and one was published in `Atiqot (An Early Bronze Age IB Burial Cave and a Byzantine Farm at Horbat Hani [Khirbet Burj el-Haniya] West; `Atiqot 44:1-51).
At Wheaton College Egon spear-headed the publication of the excavations of Joseph P. Free at Tell Dothan (1953-1964), funded by a White-Levy grant and published by Eisenbrauns as Dothan I, with Daniel M. Master, John M. Monson, and George A. Pierce. He has also written non-archaeological books, notably The Seasons of Tulul, an account of a sojourn among the Bedouin of the Judaean desert, and Wrestling with God, three mystical dramas.
Egon H.E. Lass is a field archaeologist who has participated in fifty-five archaeological projects in Israel, Egypt, and the United States. He studied anthropology at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, completing a master of science. One of his major interests is applying the study of anthropology to Mid-Eastern archaeological sites, mainly by means of a flotation methodology that attempts to document the behavior of small groups and single individuals. Another is the study of Archaeomagnetism as a method of dating. By sampling fired soil, such as bread ovens (tabunim), the thermo-remanent magnetism in such features can be utilized to trace the movement of the North Pole through time. This work was done with Robert S. Sternberg of Franklin and Marshall College. A third interest is the analysis of complex stratigraphy, which is encountered in almost every archaeological site in the Middle East. All of these studies have resulted in multiple articles.