Born in Jaffa in 1968 and raised in the Upper Galilee town of Safed, Oren Gutfeld earned his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology, carrying out post-doctoral research in the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Oren has over twenty years’ experience in directing archaeological excavations, including the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, the Early Islamic city of Ramla, Herod’s palace-fortresses at Herodium and Hyrcania, and the village of Beit Loya in the Judean Lowland, inhabited from the Iron Age to the Mamluk period.