Zeidan A. Kafafi (Arabic: زيدان الكفافي) is a Jordanian archaeologist and academic who has directed and otherwise contributed to numerous excavations in and around Jordan and has assisted the institutional development of local academic institutions. He is a Professor Emeritus who recently served as the President of Yarmouk University.
Among his contributions to the field of Near Eastern Archaeology are the significant discoveries at the site of 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan.
Kafafi holds a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Jordan (1971, 1977) and a Ph.D. from the Free University Berlin (1982).
He joined Yarmouk University's faculty in the eighties, first in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and then as a founding member of the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, becoming full professor thereafter, in 1993. He later served as Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology (2009–2011). Kafafi developed the M.A. program in Cultural Resource Management at Yarmouk in the late 1990s with support from USAID, and he has advised a number of undergraduate and graduate dissertations.
King Abdullah appointed Kafafi as president of Yarmouk University in 2018.
Kafafi has also held leadership positions at Hashemite University, served as president of the Jordanian Club of von Humboldt Fellows, and is a member of the board of the organization Friends of Archaeology and Heritage (FoAH). He has served as a leading voice in the development of numerous higher education institutions in Jordan (Petra's Scientific Committee, Al Al-Bayt University Museum, Jordan's Ministry of Higher Education, the Dead Sea Scrolls Committee) and even elsewhere in the world (such as King Saud University in Riyadh).
Kafafi was a member of the Royal Committee that first led to the establishment of the Jordan Museum, and he served as Acting Director of the museum from 2012–2013. He has also been involved in a number of other curation and museum projects in addition to his research.
Kafafi's research interests largely revolve around the Neolithic period, but also cover the Chalcolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages.
Kafafi has been serving as co-director of an excavation at Tell Damiyah in collaboration with Dutch archaeologists from the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden since 2014. Their focus is on the Iron Age period at the site.
Additional archaeological engagements are listed on Kafafi's faculty website. He has also consulted on various other archaeology, CRM, and tourism development initiatives. He holds close connections with officials at the Jordanian Department of Antiquities.