Gideon Hartman

Associate Professor

Anthropology

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Education

Ph.D., 2008, Harvard University

About

My research is interdisciplinary by nature and lies at the intersection between paleoenvironmental reconstruction, plant and animal eco-physiology, anthropology and archaeology. I primarily, but not exclusively, use stable isotope methods to reconstruct past environment, the mobility and migration of past human societies, paleodiet and past human economic systems. My research program begins in the contemporary world, by investigating the mechanisms that cause variability in the ratios of stable isotopes as they move along foodwebs: from soil and atmosphere, to plants and from there to animals and humans. In many cases, the present day variability in stable isotope values provides suitable models to reconstruct past conditions with a high degree of certainty. The principles established as part of my contemporary work can thus be applied to ecological settings in the present and to paleoecological and archaeological settings in the past.

Publications

Zeigen, C., Hovers, E., Brittingham, A., Hren, M.T., Richards, M.P., Rabinovich, R., Hartman, G., (2026) “Reconstructing Local Environmental change and Fallow Deer Hunting Ranges at Amud Cave: results from a combined plant wax and tooth enamel isotope study”. Journal of Human Evolution

Yeshurun. R., Hartman, G., May. H., Rivals, F., Crater Gershtein. K.M., Zeigen, C. and Zaidner. Y. (2025). “Archaic humans in the Middle Palaeolithic Levant conducted planned and selective intercepts of aurochs, but not mass hunting”. Scientific Reports

Arnold, E.R., Greenfield, H.J., Hartman, G., Greenfield, T.L., Albaz, S., Boaretto, E., Regev, J. and Maeir, A., (2025). “An isotopic perspective on equid selection in cult at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel”. PlosONE

Aurbach, M., Hartman, G., Rivals, F., Zeigen, C., Zeidner, Y., and Yeshurun, R. (2024). “Death at the water hole: Opportunistic hunting and scavenging events in the upper sequence of middle Paleolithic Nesher Ramla, Israel”. Quaternary Science Reviews https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2024.108852

Clark, J.L., Hartman, G., Nilsson-Stutz, L., and Stutz, A. (2024). “The fauna from Mughr el-Hamamah (Jordan): Insights on human hunting behavior during the Early Upper Paleolithic”. Journal of Human Evolution 190:103518 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2024.103518

Samei, S., Munro, N., Alizadeh, K., Hartman, G. (2023). “Highland pastoralism in the Early Bronze Age Kura-Araxes cultural tradition: Stable oxygen (δ18O) and carbon (δ13C) isotope analyses of herd mobility at Köhne Shahar in northwestern Iran”. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 47, 103773. 10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103773

Arnold, E.R., Greer, J.S., Ilan, D., Thareani, Y., Hartman, G., (2021). “Come, O pilgrim”—but buy local: an isotopic investigation of animal provisioning at Iron Age II Tel Dan”. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 13, 58. 10.1007/s12520-021-01291-7

Hartman, G., Brittingham, A., Gilboa, A., Hren, M., Mass, K., Pilver, J. and Weiss, E. (2021) “Post-charring diagenetic alteration of archaeological lentils by bacterial degradation”. Journal of Archaeological Science 17C, 105 – 119 doi.10.1016/j.jas.2020.105119

Vaiglova, P., Hartman, G., Marom, N.; Ayalon, A., Bar-Matthews, M., Zilberman, T., Yasur, G., Buckley, M., Bernstein, R., Tepper, Y., Weissbrod, L., Erickson-Gini, T., and Bar-Oz, G. (2020) “Climate stability and societal decline on the margins of the Byzantine empire in the Negev Desert”. Scientific Reports 10: 1512 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-58360-5

Brittingham, A., Hren, M.T., Hartman, G., Wilkinson, K.N., Mallol, C., Gasparyan, B., Adler, D.S. (2019) Geochemical evidence for the creation and control of fire by Middle Paleolithic Hominins. Scientific Reports, 9: 15368 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51433-0

Brittingham, A., Petrosyan, Z., Hepburn J.C., Richards, M. P. and Hartman, G. (2019) “Influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation on δD and δ18O in meteoric water in the Armenian Highland”. Journal of Hydrology. 575, 513-525 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.05.064

Grossman, A., Calvo, R., Lopez-Antonazas R., Knol, F.; Hartman, G. and Rabinovich, R. (2019) First record of Sivameryx (Cetartiodactyla: Anthracotheriidae) from the Early Miocene of Israel highlights the importance of the Levantine Corridor as a dispersal route between Eurasia and Africa. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. e1599901. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2019.1599901 .

Nitch, E., Lamb, A., Heaton, T., Vaiglova, P., Fraser, R., Hartman, G., Moreno-Jiménez, E., Lopez-Piñero, A. Peña-Abades, D. and Bogaard A. (2018) Preservation and interpretation of δ34S in charred archaeobotanical remains. Archaeometry. 61(1), 161-178. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/arcm.12388

Arnold, E.R., Greenfield, H.J., Hartman, G., Greenfield, T.L., Shai, I., Carter-McGee, P.M. and Maeir, A.M. (2018) Provisioning the Early Bronze Age city of Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel: isotopic analyses of domestic livestock management patterns. Open Quaternary 4(1), 1. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/oq.35

Brittingham, A., Hren, M.T., Hartman, G., (2017). Microbial alteration of the hydrogen and carbon isotopic composition of n-alkanes in sediments, Organic Geochemistry 107, 1-8. http://doi.org/10.1016 /j.orggeochem.2017.01.010

Arnold, E. R., Hartman, G., Babcock, L. E., Greenfield, H.J., Maeir, A., and Shair, I. (2016) Evidence for the economic ties between the Early Bronze Age city of Tell es-Safi and the Nile Valley. Preliminary isotopic analysis of a sacrificial ass. PLOS One 11 e0157650. Doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0157650