Journal Articles by Petra M Creamer
Archaeological Prospection, 2024
The understanding of urban centres in the ancient Near East, one of the main regions for investig... more The understanding of urban centres in the ancient Near East, one of the main regions for investigating the development of cities, has been transformed in recent years through investigations using archaeological geophysical prospection tools. This paper presents results of our recent magnetic gradiometry survey at the large urban site of Türkmen-Karahöyük (Konya Plain, Turkey) conducted using a SENSYS Magneto MXPDA cart-based system. Results of the survey have successfully identified and characterized numerous areas of ancient settlement, industrial activity and burials across the massive site, offering new insights into the history of occupation at Türkmen-Karahöyük. Our findings are thereby helping to shape future investigations at the site and, more broadly, demonstrate the opportunities and challenges presented by cart-based geophysical survey instruments for archaeological investigations of mounded urban sites with extensive lower towns.
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 2022
Despite being one of the most prominent and best-documented northern client states of the Ur III ... more Despite being one of the most prominent and best-documented northern client states of the Ur III state, the city of Asimānum/Šimānum remained unlocalized. Here, we demonstrate through both historical-geographical and philological argumentation and archaeological evidence that it must correspond to later Middle and Neo-Assyrian Šibaniba, modern Tell Billa, northern Iraq. Building upon this finding, we propose a new history of Tell Billa during the Early and Middle Bronze Age.
Ancient Near Eastern Studies, 2021
The southwestern citadel of Tell Billa in the Late Bronze Age provides a rare example of a fully ... more The southwestern citadel of Tell Billa in the Late Bronze Age provides a rare example of a fully excavated functioning neighbourhood showing multiple varying types of household formation, emphasising multi-scalar levels of household members, production, and ownership. This article presents excavation data from the field season at Tell Billa focused in the southwestern corner of the mound. The domestic architecture revealed there as part of Strata II and IA shows a neighbourhood of extended households, with several likely serving as larger residences integrated into the settlement due to the administrative duties of their occupants. A combination of the architectural remains, small finds, textual evidence, and domestic burials reveals an emphasis on the extended family, including members of possibly different ethnic or social origins. These households and their members functioned as the fundamental entity of social, economic, and political organisation.
Iraq, 2021
The Neo-Assyrian site Šibaniba (modern Tell Billa) served as a provincial center at the very edge... more The Neo-Assyrian site Šibaniba (modern Tell Billa) served as a provincial center at the very edge of what is traditionally known as the "Assyrian Heartland". Excavations in the early 1900s under Dr. Speiser of the University of Pennsylvania uncovered architecture in the southwestern portion of the mound, but a loss of records and lack of publication have prevented any comprehensive publications or analysis of the archaeological material. The architecture from Level I in the southwest corner is the remains of a palace from the latter half of the Neo-Assyrian periodcomprised of an inner, paved courtyard and surrounding rooms. The analysis of this palace complex is carried out herein, with a discussion of its positioning and importance, especially during Nineveh's tenure as imperial capital. Overall, Šibaniba, despite being located so close to the Heartland, was an important administrative center in its own rightillustrated by a restructuring of the citadel's organization in the later Neo-Assyrian period and its inclusion in Sennacherib's irrigation program.
Open Archaeology, 2019
**Open Access**
Digital methods provide archaeologists with ever-increasing opportunities to coll... more **Open Access**
Digital methods provide archaeologists with ever-increasing opportunities to collect more data about the past in new formats. These larger evidentiary datasets, in turn, help us to address questions about the human past with increasing precision. To take full advantage of these opportunities, archaeologists must develop digital literacy skills and learn how to lead digital projects. Here, we describe seven digitally-based projects we have undertaken at the University of Pennsylvania in order to create new tools for archaeological data collection and sharing, as well as to test collaborative models for the digital humanities programming process. In these projects, archaeology students work directly with engineering students. Through this interface, the students from both areas gain valuable transdisciplinary experience while experimenting with new ways to accomplish programming goals and to collect archaeological data. The learning potential for these students was a key motivation for our initiative. Our projects have already led to several websites and digital applications that are available as open source downloads. We present our impressions of this collaborative process with the goal of encouraging other archaeologists to form similar digital humanities partnerships.
World Archaeology, 2020
Understanding mortuary ritual provides new perspectives for interpreting spatial collective memor... more Understanding mortuary ritual provides new perspectives for interpreting spatial collective memory and the relationship between elite and non-elite practices. Aššur serves as a case study to investigate the mortuary cult of the Neo-Assyrian period via 'necrogeography' in Mesopotamia. This study compares the textual sources to architectural and material features of elite and non-elite spaces in which burials and tombs were located. Neo-Assyrian domestic burials and their associated cults are then compared to the royal tombs and rituals surrounding the death of rulers. Concepts of space and memory from the theoretical works of Pierre Nora and Mircea Eliade are applied to Mesopotamian ideas of death and the afterlife to understand the necrogeographies of Assyrian burials in relation to the living. This conceptualizes location and memory in relation to sacred and profane space, concluding that burials were intentionally placed to establish a link to the underworld, benefitting both the deceased and the living.
Iraq, 2021
https://scholar.harvard.edu/jasonur/publications/erbil-plain-archaeological-survey-preliminary-re... more https://scholar.harvard.edu/jasonur/publications/erbil-plain-archaeological-survey-preliminary-results-2012-2020. The Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey (EPAS) investigates settlement and land use from the Neolithic to the present in the Erbil Governorate of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which includes a large portion of the core of the Assyrian Empire. In seven field seasons, it has documented a broad settlement landscape in a region of great social and political importance, especially in the Bronze and Iron Ages, including 728 archaeological sites. Its field methodology combines traditional surface collection with the use of historical aerial and satellite photographs, mobile GIS, and UAV (drone) photogrammetry. Preliminary results show some unexpected patterns: a high density of culturally Uruk settlements in the fourth millennium B.C., variable urban morphologies in the Early Bronze Age; and large but low-density settlements at the end of the Sasanian period or the early Islamic period. The project is explicitly testing several hypotheses about centralized Neo-Assyrian landscape planning in the imperial core. These hypotheses appear to be confirmed, although the situation was more complex than in surrounding provinces, probably due to the longer history of continuous settlement.
Book Chapters by Petra M Creamer
Identity, Diversity & Contact, 2021
Conference Presentations by Petra M Creamer
The mass-produced and cheaply-made nature of the small, often palm-sized terracotta plaques of th... more The mass-produced and cheaply-made nature of the small, often palm-sized terracotta plaques of the Neo-Sumerian and Old Babylonian periods has been noted in literature as an interesting development in the artistic expression of Mesopotamia. The function of the terracotta relief plaques has been often discussed, with widely-varying opinions. By focusing on the corpus of plaques from the Diyala region, this poster shows that the function of the plaques was predominantly apotropaic in nature, due to the employment of motifs which were previously well-established in Mesopotamian art as protective and auspicious. These plaques were used in primarily domestic contexts and private spaces for the protection of liminal spaces and the attraction of fortune and health. The poster outlines the categories of the motifs which appear on plaques from the Diyala and their proposed apotropaic functions, along with demonstrable comparanda pulled from other areas of Mesopotamian art.
Dissertation/ Theses by Petra M Creamer
Papers by Petra M Creamer
Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Nov 30, 2023
Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie
Despite being one of the most prominent and best-documented northern client states of the Ur III ... more Despite being one of the most prominent and best-documented northern client states of the Ur III state, the city of Asimānum/Šimānum remained unlocalized. Here, we demonstrate through both historical-geographical and philological argumentation and archaeological evidence that it must correspond to later Middle and Neo-Assyrian Šibaniba, modern Tell Billa, northern Iraq. Building upon this finding, we propose a new history of Tell Billa during the Early and Middle Bronze Age.
Iraq, 2021
https://scholar.harvard.edu/jasonur/publications/erbil-plain-archaeological-survey-preliminary-re... more https://scholar.harvard.edu/jasonur/publications/erbil-plain-archaeological-survey-preliminary-results-2012-2020. The Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey (EPAS) investigates settlement and land use from the Neolithic to the present in the Erbil Governorate of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which includes a large portion of the core of the Assyrian Empire. In seven field seasons, it has documented a broad settlement landscape in a region of great social and political importance, especially in the Bronze and Iron Ages, including 728 archaeological sites. Its field methodology combines traditional surface collection with the use of historical aerial and satellite photographs, mobile GIS, and UAV (drone) photogrammetry. Preliminary results show some unexpected patterns: a high density of culturally Uruk settlements in the fourth millennium B.C., variable urban morphologies in the Early Bronze Age; and large but low-density settlements at the end of the Sasanian period or the early Islamic ...
Open Archaeology, Apr 1, 2019
Conference Sessions by Petra M Creamer
With the current shift to virtual teaching, many educators are looking for digital and online edu... more With the current shift to virtual teaching, many educators are looking for digital and online educational materials that they can use in their classrooms. The lack of general, cross-cultural, cross-temporal, and up-to-date teaching materials on death and burial in the Ancient Near East makes it challenging for educators to talk about this specialized, yet ubiquitous, topic. This workshop aims to bring together specialists from multiple geographic and temporal specialties in the Ancient Near East with the goal to create Open Educational Resources (OER) on this subject. We invite participants to discuss the organization, presentation, ethical concerns and dissemination of such resources, including thematic topics, mortuary culture specific to region and period, and methodologies for researching mortuary practices.
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Journal Articles by Petra M Creamer
Digital methods provide archaeologists with ever-increasing opportunities to collect more data about the past in new formats. These larger evidentiary datasets, in turn, help us to address questions about the human past with increasing precision. To take full advantage of these opportunities, archaeologists must develop digital literacy skills and learn how to lead digital projects. Here, we describe seven digitally-based projects we have undertaken at the University of Pennsylvania in order to create new tools for archaeological data collection and sharing, as well as to test collaborative models for the digital humanities programming process. In these projects, archaeology students work directly with engineering students. Through this interface, the students from both areas gain valuable transdisciplinary experience while experimenting with new ways to accomplish programming goals and to collect archaeological data. The learning potential for these students was a key motivation for our initiative. Our projects have already led to several websites and digital applications that are available as open source downloads. We present our impressions of this collaborative process with the goal of encouraging other archaeologists to form similar digital humanities partnerships.
Book Chapters by Petra M Creamer
Conference Presentations by Petra M Creamer
Dissertation/ Theses by Petra M Creamer
Papers by Petra M Creamer
Conference Sessions by Petra M Creamer
Digital methods provide archaeologists with ever-increasing opportunities to collect more data about the past in new formats. These larger evidentiary datasets, in turn, help us to address questions about the human past with increasing precision. To take full advantage of these opportunities, archaeologists must develop digital literacy skills and learn how to lead digital projects. Here, we describe seven digitally-based projects we have undertaken at the University of Pennsylvania in order to create new tools for archaeological data collection and sharing, as well as to test collaborative models for the digital humanities programming process. In these projects, archaeology students work directly with engineering students. Through this interface, the students from both areas gain valuable transdisciplinary experience while experimenting with new ways to accomplish programming goals and to collect archaeological data. The learning potential for these students was a key motivation for our initiative. Our projects have already led to several websites and digital applications that are available as open source downloads. We present our impressions of this collaborative process with the goal of encouraging other archaeologists to form similar digital humanities partnerships.