Dr. Orit Peleg-Barkat is a Classical archaeologist specializing in Hellenistic and Roman art and architecture of the southern Levant (4th c. BCE – 4th c. CE). She is currently the head of the Classical Archaeology sub-department at the Institute of Archaeology and runs excavations and field work at several sites, including the Jewish Byzantine-period village at En Gedi by the Dead Sea, a Roman temple and a Jewish pyramidal funerary monument and hideout complex at Horvat Midras in the Judean Foothills as well as under a Crusader-period decorated hall in the Jewish Quarter of Old City of Jerusalem. Her research and fieldwork projects are funded by grants from the Israel Science Fund, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and others.
Dr. Peleg-Barkat has published extensively in various journals and collective books on architectural decoration used in the private and public sphere by the Hasmonean dynasty, King Herod and the Jewish elites of both Second Temple period Jerusalem and its rural countryside. She has also been engaged in studies of the synagogue of Gamla, the art and architecture of Aelia Capitolina, Herodian Jerusalem, Basilica structures in the southern Levant and more. She has authored numerous scientific articles and a book The Temple Mount Excavations in Jerusalem, 1976-1978 Directed by Benjamin Mazar, Final Reports, Vol. V: Herodian Architectural Decoration and King Herod’s Royal Portico, Jerusalem 2017 (Qedem). A forthcoming book (co-authored with A. Dell’Acqua), The Basilica in Roman Palestine Adoption and Adaption Processes, in Light of Comparanda in Italy and North Africa is soon to be published in Rome (Edizioni Quasar).