Dr. Elon Heijmans

Biography

Elon Heijmans is an archaeologist and historian specializing in the ancient Mediterranean. He obtained his PhD from Tel Aviv University in 2018 and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University as part of the Anchoring Innovation project supported by the Gravitation Grant under the research agenda OIKOS, a National Research School for Classical Studies in the Netherlands. His research interests include the history and archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean, specifically the Levant and Aegean regions during the Late Bronze Age and classical period. Heijmans’ work particularly focuses on the emergence of money in antiquity and he authored the book 'Origins of Money in the Iron Age Mediterranean World', published by Cambridge University Press in 2021, which examines the significance of money and the introduction of coinage. He draws from a wide range of material and textual sources from the Biblical to the early Greek world to illuminate the early history of money. His academic pursuits also extend to economic history, early literacy, and numeracy, as well as the impact of colonialism on ancient art, with hands-on fieldwork conducted at the ancient city of Halos in Thessaly, Greece.

Research Interests