Peter J. Parr

Overview

Peter J. Parr is a British archaeologist of the southern Levant and Arabia, long associated with the Institute of Archaeology in London, now part of University College London, where he is an honorary research associate. In the 1950s he excavated with Kathleen Kenyon at Jericho, the site now known as Tell es-Sultan, and at Petra.

Major Works and Contributions

Parr is best known for his research on the Nabataean kingdom centred on Petra. In 1967 he identified the older remains at Qurayyah in north-west Arabia, a site some have connected with the land of Midian. He has continued to write on the practice of archaeology in the region, including a 2020 editorial in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly on delays in the publication of excavation reports.

Jericho

Parr belongs to the generation trained on Kenyon's excavations at Jericho, which dated the city's destruction to the end of the Middle Bronze Age, earlier than the time of Joshua. That dating has been challenged within the biblical framework by Bryant G. Wood, who argued from a re-analysis of the pottery that the destruction belongs to the end of the fifteenth century BC.