Burton MacDonald

Burton MacDonald (September 13, 1939 – October 20, 2022) was a Canadian biblical archaeologist specialising in the archaeology of Jordan.

After working as a priest and two years teaching at Xavier College (now Cape Breton University) and St. F. X., he enrolled in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literature at the Catholic University of America (CUA), where he obtained a PhD in 1974 with a dissertation on the biblical Tribe of Benjamin.

MacDonald first became involved in archaeological fieldwork whilst studying at the École Biblique, including the sites of Gezer (1970) and Tell el-Hesi (1971) in Israel.

After further work at Idalion (1974) and Tell el-Hesi (1975), he was introduced to the archaeology of Jordan as a member of the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain, directed by Walter E. Rast and R. Thomas Schaub (1977) and the Central Moab Survey, directed by J. Maxwell Miller (1979).

He also participated in the University of Toronto's The Wadi Tumilat Project, East Nile Delta, Tell al Maskhuta, Egypt, under the directorship of John S. Holladay (1978–1979).