Rate My Professor Kyle Keimer

Kyle H. Keimer serves as an Honorary Senior Research Fellow and former Senior Lecturer in the Department of Ancient History within the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University. He earned his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, MA from Wheaton College, MA from Ashland Theological Seminary, and BA from The Ohio State University. Throughout his career at Macquarie University, Keimer has taught courses such as The Archaeology of Ancient Israel and the Near East and History Studies: Warfare in the Ancient Near East. He was promoted to Level C Senior Lecturer in 2019. Keimer supervises postgraduate theses on topics including divine communication in ancient texts, deportations in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and archaeological correlates of the United Monarchy. As co-director of excavations at Khirbet el-Ra'i in the Judean Shephelah alongside Professor Yosef Garfinkel, he has contributed to discoveries illuminating early Iron Age IIA pottery assemblages, proto-Canaanite inscriptions like the Jerubba'al Inscription, and potential identifications of biblical sites such as Ziklag.

Keimer's research specializes in the archaeology and history of ancient Israel, Near Eastern archaeology, Biblical studies, the Hebrew Bible, and the ancient Near East. His key publications include the co-edited volumes The Ancient Israelite World (2023), Registers and Modes of Communication in the Ancient Near East (2018), and New Studies in the Historical Geography of the Ancient Near East (2025). Notable articles encompass 'Biblical Ziklag: the Case for Khirbet er-Ra'i' (Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 2023), 'The Historical Geography of 1 Kings 9:11-14' (Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 2020), 'The Jerubba'al Inscription from Khirbet al-Ra'i: A Proto-Canaanite (Early Alphabetic) Inscription' (Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology, 2021, with Gil Davis), and 'Khirbet al-Ra'i in the Judean Shephelah: the 2015-2019 Excavation Seasons' (Strata, 2019). He has delivered seminars on excavation results, presented webinars on monumental architecture in ancient Israel, and co-hosts the Biblical World podcast, enhancing public engagement with ancient Near Eastern history and archaeology.