Dr. Linda Whittaker is Assistant Archaeobotanist on the Shiloh project and beginning the construction of a relational database for incoming data on the project, together with Brent Hoefling. Dr. Whittaker received a Ph.D. in evolutionary ecology from Cornell University in 1980, focused on informatics and multivariate analysis in community ecology, and married the ecologist Prof. R.H. Whittaker. After her husband’s death in 1980, she moved to Technion in Israel in 1981 to continue their joint research on species diversity (1981-1982). During 1984-1994 she was a staff ecologist at the Institute for Desert Research, Sede Boqer. She moved to the Israel Nature and Parks Authority as a conservation biologist, to build and manage their survey and monitoring database during 1994-2014, including cooperation to build the international Global Biodiversity Information Facility (www.gbif.org). After an early retirement in 2014 she moved to the German Archaeological Institute to do data analysis and archaeobotany focused on Tal Zira’a in Jordan, continuing with that same work at Hebrew University from 2023 to the present, with a focus on Tel Beit Mirsim and Shiloh. Dr. Whittaker has also been a member of the Netivyah messianic congregation in Jerusalem for the past 30 years.
An example of her archaeological and analytical work is seen here: 57-76-Whittaker.pdf
