Yeonsuk Lee is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in pottery analysis, with a focus on the historical life cycle of ceramics—from production and use to their role in foodways. She holds an M.A. in Archaeology from Tel Aviv University, where her research examined cooking pots from the Middle and Late Bronze Ages in the Levant. Her study explored how different social systems facilitated the transmission of technologies that shaped the distinctive characteristics of cooking pots. To pursue this, she employed a multidisciplinary approach combining archaeometric and ethnographic analyses.
At the University of Notre Dame, her doctoral research continues this multidisciplinary investigation by integrating archaeometric methods with anthropological perspectives to illuminate communities of practice surrounding foodways and cooking pot technologies in early urban societies of the Levant. Her research interests include urbanism, communities of practice, foodways, pottery technologies, and archaeometric methods.