Rate My Professor Gill Davis

Associate Professor Gil Davis serves as Director of the Ancient Israel Program at Australian Catholic University in the Faculty of Education and Arts, National School of Arts, offering Australia's only full major and minor in archaeology, history, and languages of ancient Israel and the Near East. He holds a PhD from Macquarie University (2011) with a thesis titled 'Law, money, and the transformation of Athens in the sixth century B.C.E.,' a Master's degree from the same institution (1990) on 'The Athenian State Sacrificial Calendar,' and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Sydney completed in the late 1970s. Before entering academia, Davis worked as a real estate agent in Sydney. His research focuses on ancient Greek history, archaeology of ancient Israel, numismatics, and archaeometallurgy, utilizing epigraphy, scientific techniques including lead isotope analysis, and trace element studies to investigate metal provenances in coins and artifacts from the ancient Mediterranean and Near East.

Davis previously taught Greek history at Macquarie University and directed the Program for Ancient Mediterranean Studies there. He has been Managing Editor of the Journal of the Numismatic Association of Australia since 2011 (volumes 22-31) and Associate Editor of Classicum for the Classical Association of NSW (2013-2014). In 2022, he was a Visiting Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon. He has participated in excavations, including the 2019 project at Ziklag with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Israel Antiquities Authority, revealing Iron Age artifacts such as a Canaanite Baal figurine, bronze calf statue, inscriptions, and a spearhead associated with King David's reign. Notable publications include co-editing Metallurgy in Numismatics 6: Mines, Metals and Money (2020) and Registers and Modes of Communication in the Ancient Near East (2017); chapters such as 'Rites and wrongs: the vexed case Against Nicomachus' (2024) and 'Scientific and Technical Applications' (2022); and journal articles like 'Making money out of making money in ancient Athens' (Archaeometry, 2024), 'Bullion mixtures in silver coinage from ancient Greece and Egypt' (Journal of Archaeological Science, 2024), and 'A miner's perspective on Pb isotope provenances in the Western and Central Mediterranean' (2020, 61 citations). Awards include the Ray Jewell Silver Medal for services to numismatics (2023), top mid-career researcher in the Faculty of Education and Arts (2024), first prize for poster at CAA conference (2013), first prize for XRF presentation (2011), and OPTIMA prize at ASCS (2011).