Draft:Leonard Rutgers

Leonard Rutgers (1964) is a Dutch archaeologist and ancient historian who is specialized in the study of Jewish Diaspora archaeology, the catacombs of Rome, Jewish-Christian relations, and archaeogenetics. He has been a columnist for the Dutch Financial Times and is a bestselling author. His books have won academic awards, as well as awards in the field of popular science. He is Professor of Late Antiquity at Utrecht University.

Early life and education
Rutgers grew up in Amsterdam where he attended high school and studied ancient history and classical archaeology at the Free University (1982-1986). He went on to study early Christian archaeology in Rome, Jewish Studies in Vienna, and archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He did further graduate work in Religious Studies at Duke University (1989-1993) where he received his Ph.D. in Jewish Studies summa cum laude in 1993. During his undergraduate and graduate years he participated in archaeological fieldwork in France, Italy, and Israel, where he was a staff member of the Sepphoris Regional Project.

Academic career
After a year as postdoc at the Dutch Institute in Rome Rutgers joined the faculty of theology at Utrecht University as a postdoc to become an assistant professor in 1999 and an associate professor in 2000-2002. In 2003, Rutgers became a full professor when the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) created a personal chair in the study of “Late Antiquity, with special emphasis on the interaction between Jews, Christians and Pagans.” In 2006 Rutgers joined the department of history and art history at Utrecht University as a full professor, where he was Head of School between 2009 and 2012. In 2007 he was a Visiting Professor at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Research
Rutgers has led several interdisciplinary research projects including The Rise of Christianity: A New Interdisciplinary Perspective, Reconfiguring Diaspora: The Transformation of the Jewish Diaspora in Late Antiquity , and Diaspora, Migration and the Sciences: A New Integrated Perspective at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies. Rutgers is editor of the series Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion (Leuven: Peeters).

Rutgers has used archaeology and science to argue that the Jewish communities of the Western Roman Diaspora represent a fully integrated rather than marginalized minority group during the pagan Roman Empire. He believes that the rise of Christianity played a major role in the emergence of anti-Judaism in early Medieval Europe, arguing that this was the moment both religions drifted apart. In response to an article published in Nature 2005 Rutgers and his team received media attention when they produced radiocarbon evidence indicating that the Jewish catacombs of Rome predate the early Christian ones by around 100 years. In a study focusing on carbon and nitrogen isotopes from the catacombs of St. Callixtus on the Appian Way they argued that Rome’s early Christians got their protein mainly from fish and that they did so out of poverty. Rutgers also developed a model that identifies cost effectiveness as the main driver in the development of the catacombs of ancient Rome. In collaboration with geneticist David Reich and others he explores the ways in which archaeogenetics can throw new light on the history of migration into Europe during the Roman and medieval periods.

Honors and Awards
The Jews in Late Ancient Rome won the Keetje Hodshon Prize in 1996. De klassieke wereld in 52 ontdekkingen was awarded the Homerus Prize of the Dutch Classical Association in 2019. Rutgers is a member of the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia since 2015 and of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities since 2018.

Books

 * The Jews in Late Ancient Rome. Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora (Leiden: Brill, 1995)


 * The Hidden Heritage of Diaspora Judaism (Leuven: Peeters, 1998)


 * The Use of Sacred Books in the Ancient World (Peeters: Leuven, 1998, eds Leonard Rutgers, P.W. van der Horst, H. W. Havelaar and L. Teugels)


 * Subterranean Rome: In Search of the Roots of Christianity in the Catacombs of the Ternal City (Leuven: Peeters, 2000)


 * What Athens Has to Do With Jerusalem. Essays on Classical, Jewish, and Early Christian Archaeology in Honor of Gideon Foerster (Leuven: Peeters, 2002; edited volume).


 * Making Myths. Jews in Early Christian Identity Formation (Leuven: Peeters, 2011)


 * De klassieke wereld in 52 ontdekkingen (Amsterdam: Balans, 2018)


 * Israël aan de Tiber. Joods leven in het oude Rome (Amsterdam: Balans, 2022)


 * Letters in the Dust. The Epigraphy and Archaeology of Medieval Jewish Cemeteries (Leuven: Peeters, 2022, eds. Leonard Rutgers and Ortal-Paz Saar).