Archaeologist of Bronze Age Iran and Turkmenistan. Interested in legacy collections rehabilitation, digital data, remote collaborative research and the relationship between geopolitics and archaeology in the past and present. Supervisors: Lauren Ristvet, Holly Pittman, and Megan Kassabaum
The discipline of anthropology faces significant challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The tra... more The discipline of anthropology faces significant challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The trajectories of our research have shifted tectonically as access to our fieldsites has been transformed by quarantines, travel restrictions , and social-distancing measures. These conditions-among many other pressing concerns-have raised questions about the relevance of our work, about the significance of our inquiries, and around our disciplinary ethics (Ruther-ford 2020).
Archaeologische Mitteilungen Aus Iran und Turan, 2020
The corpus of anthropomorphic figurines from Tureng Tepe (تورنگ تپه, EIr: Tūrang Tappa), while wi... more The corpus of anthropomorphic figurines from Tureng Tepe (تورنگ تپه, EIr: Tūrang Tappa), while widely recognized as significant, has remained an enigma since its discovery in 1931. This article rejects the interpretation of these figurines as representations of divinities, and instead examines on how figurines were meaningful in social life by focusing on their archaeologically observable features. Examination of iconography, context, and traces of use affords reconstruction of how, under what circumstances, and by whom these figurines were used. The results of this study substantiate the claim that figurines are ‘about identity’ and strengthen the argument that comparative work can reveal patterns of interaction across the Ancient Near East.
Tureng Tepe is a major site in the archaeology of Iran, but despite having been excavated by two ... more Tureng Tepe is a major site in the archaeology of Iran, but despite having been excavated by two different foreign archaeological missions, crucial periods in its history remain underreported. This is especially the case for the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age layers at the site, which have not been comprehensively published in English. The present investigation focuses on the Frederick and Susanne Wulsin excavation archive and collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and shows that despite a rudimentary approach to excavation, the Wulsins' excavation records contain valuable information on the material culture and chronology of the site. Indeed, when viewed in combination with the published information available from the later French excavations directed by Jean Deshayes, the Wulsin excavations help place Tureng Tepe in its local and regional context. This article presents the results of the primary excavations conducted by the Wulsins in 1931, anchoring their Mound C sequence in a relative and absolute chronological framework using parallels to the Deshayes materials, and assesses the utility of the Wulsin collection for future research.
Quadrotor-UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in archaeolo... more Quadrotor-UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in archaeological field research for the production of digital elevation models and orthophoto mosaics of sites, monuments, and landscapes. In order to make up for the lack of suitable imagery to use in a larger project on the landscapes surrounding Bronze Age tell sites in the Murghab delta of eastern Turkmenistan, we developed a protocol for the deployment of out-of-the-box UAV systems to document sites and their immediate environs. This article discusses the fundamentals of aerial survey based on our experience deploying a quadrotor UAV, using examples from our case study of the site of Togolok 1. We argue that the approach we developed is particularly useful for mesoscale survey, between 1 and 5 km2, and is particularly useful for producing technical quality outputs, even by relative newcomers to UAV-based aerial survey.
Presented at the SAA 2018 in Washington DC
After the passage of the Iranian Antiquities Law of 1... more Presented at the SAA 2018 in Washington DC
After the passage of the Iranian Antiquities Law of 1930, the Gorgan Plain in northeastern Iran was seen as one of the most promising regions in the Old World for archaeological research. Despite decades of pioneering field and laboratory research, northeastern Iran still lacks a regionally integrated ceramic chronology for significant stretches of its archaeological history, particularly the 3rd millennium BCE. While individual sequences from important sites such as Tureng Tepe and Shah Tepe are well known, the precise nature of their relationships to each other and to other less-well known neighboring sites have remained unclear. This lacuna in our understanding of the culture history of the region presents a major obstacle to developing models of the social, political and economic history of the Gorgan. This paper, therefore, presents the results of research aimed at constructing a regionally integrated ceramic chronology for this region, in light of the potential anthropological significance of this dataset with respect to the emergence of regional community networks and the formation of archaic complex polities. In addition, this paper reflects on important issues related to the rehabilitation of legacy data and the methods by which it may be restructured for effective quantitative analysis.
Presented at the 11th ICAANE in Munich
One of the greatest challenges facing scholars of ancie... more Presented at the 11th ICAANE in Munich
One of the greatest challenges facing scholars of ancient Near Eastern trade is the question of how past people transported commodities and raw materials over great distances. In attempts to understand the flows of people and goods across the ancient Near East, scholars have previously focused on, inter alia, the textual attestation of inter-regional exchanges, iconographic depictions of trade activities, chemical analysis of artifacts themselves, and the scraps of evidence that might point to who the people were that traveled and connected the far-flung Bronze Age civilizations together. This paper considers the reconstruction of the location of the routes by which these people and goods traveled, through simulations of trade route networks (i.e. From-Everywhere-To-Everywhere Least Cost Analysis, or FETE-LCA). These simulations can be used to test both the effects of different conditions (e.g. climate, locomotion dynamics) on the structure of these networks, but also the relationship of these simulated routes to archaeologically known distributions of sites and the traces of trade activity. In this paper, the basics of FETE-LCA will be presented, along with the results of a case-study that demonstrate how different conditions can affect the simulated route networks. Critical reflections on the method will also be presented, with special focus on what the simulations can and cannot tell us about past movement of people, and what future directions in this field of research might be.
Presented at the American Schools of Oriental Research Conference, San Antonio
The Royal Cemeter... more Presented at the American Schools of Oriental Research Conference, San Antonio
The Royal Cemetery at Ur. The Astarabad Treasure. The Fullol Hoard. What do these three finds have in common? All lie along the route that is purported to have brought lapis lazuli from its source (Sar-i Sang) to Sumer and beyond during the third millennium. Accordingly, these finds, among many others, have been used to argue for the existence of an extensive long-distance trade network during this time. But answers to the questions of exactly when, how, and by whose agency these materials circulated so widely have largely remained elusive. Several models and metaphors have been proposed as solutions, or at least as heuristics, to resolve this problem, including: the prehistory of the Silk Road, World Systems Theory, and Interaction Spheres. While each of these has its own concerns and relative merits, all share in common a desire to “connect-the-dots-on-a-map.” While these models have been used to illuminate certain aspects of third millennium trade, exchange, and interaction, other aspects have remained obscure. For example, given technological and climatic constraints on travel during the third millennium, which routes were likely to have been taken? To what degree do material parallels found over great geographic distances actually index significant interaction? Is there a way to empirically substantiate the analytical categories commonly found in the literature? This paper explores the possibilities of answering these questions by scaling down the geographic scope of analysis and through a combination of regional scale seriation and typology, elemental analysis of ceramics, and GIS-based techniques.
Presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2017 in Washington DC
The... more Presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2017 in Washington DC
The interview is a critical locus in anthropological research and one of the primary sites where we engage in conversations of varying degrees of structuredness with our interlocutors and research participants. Accordingly, anthropological podcasts tend favor the interview both as their primary source of footage and as the centerpiece of individual episodes. Considerable attention has been paid in the ethnographic literature to the ethics of interview practice and the politics of representation; that is, how the researcher positions themselves, their interlocutors, and the narratives that they co-produce both in the flow of the ethnographic encounter and also in their publications, whether academic or popular. We argue that these insights should be brought to bear on the practice of podcasting in anthropology. In this paper, we draw on insights from critical reflections on the ethnographic interview to problematize the ethics of the recording and producing of podcasts in anthropology. Our approach examines how producers frame the podcast interview before and during the recording event, the decisions that are made in post-production, and how these two editing practices shape and are shaped by the figure of the “radio voice”.
Presented at the 3rd Annual Semiotic Anthropology Conference, Philadelphia
For too long, the app... more Presented at the 3rd Annual Semiotic Anthropology Conference, Philadelphia
For too long, the application of Peircean semiotics to archaeology has followed the template of presenting a standard archaeological case study, appending a terminological discussion of Peirce’s sign typology, and triumphantly announcing the discovery of an icon, index, or symbol. What these approaches lack is an appropriate attention to the parameters of the semiotic encounter and an inability to account for how regularities of sign-function, and more importantly, sign-interpretation, sediment themselves in social life. This paper therefore presents an example which illustrates how Peircean semiotics may be used to hypothesize about how, under what circumstances, and by whom objects were used and became meaningful in the past.
The discipline of anthropology faces significant challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The tra... more The discipline of anthropology faces significant challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The trajectories of our research have shifted tectonically as access to our fieldsites has been transformed by quarantines, travel restrictions , and social-distancing measures. These conditions-among many other pressing concerns-have raised questions about the relevance of our work, about the significance of our inquiries, and around our disciplinary ethics (Ruther-ford 2020).
Archaeologische Mitteilungen Aus Iran und Turan, 2020
The corpus of anthropomorphic figurines from Tureng Tepe (تورنگ تپه, EIr: Tūrang Tappa), while wi... more The corpus of anthropomorphic figurines from Tureng Tepe (تورنگ تپه, EIr: Tūrang Tappa), while widely recognized as significant, has remained an enigma since its discovery in 1931. This article rejects the interpretation of these figurines as representations of divinities, and instead examines on how figurines were meaningful in social life by focusing on their archaeologically observable features. Examination of iconography, context, and traces of use affords reconstruction of how, under what circumstances, and by whom these figurines were used. The results of this study substantiate the claim that figurines are ‘about identity’ and strengthen the argument that comparative work can reveal patterns of interaction across the Ancient Near East.
Tureng Tepe is a major site in the archaeology of Iran, but despite having been excavated by two ... more Tureng Tepe is a major site in the archaeology of Iran, but despite having been excavated by two different foreign archaeological missions, crucial periods in its history remain underreported. This is especially the case for the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age layers at the site, which have not been comprehensively published in English. The present investigation focuses on the Frederick and Susanne Wulsin excavation archive and collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and shows that despite a rudimentary approach to excavation, the Wulsins' excavation records contain valuable information on the material culture and chronology of the site. Indeed, when viewed in combination with the published information available from the later French excavations directed by Jean Deshayes, the Wulsin excavations help place Tureng Tepe in its local and regional context. This article presents the results of the primary excavations conducted by the Wulsins in 1931, anchoring their Mound C sequence in a relative and absolute chronological framework using parallels to the Deshayes materials, and assesses the utility of the Wulsin collection for future research.
Quadrotor-UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in archaeolo... more Quadrotor-UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in archaeological field research for the production of digital elevation models and orthophoto mosaics of sites, monuments, and landscapes. In order to make up for the lack of suitable imagery to use in a larger project on the landscapes surrounding Bronze Age tell sites in the Murghab delta of eastern Turkmenistan, we developed a protocol for the deployment of out-of-the-box UAV systems to document sites and their immediate environs. This article discusses the fundamentals of aerial survey based on our experience deploying a quadrotor UAV, using examples from our case study of the site of Togolok 1. We argue that the approach we developed is particularly useful for mesoscale survey, between 1 and 5 km2, and is particularly useful for producing technical quality outputs, even by relative newcomers to UAV-based aerial survey.
Presented at the SAA 2018 in Washington DC
After the passage of the Iranian Antiquities Law of 1... more Presented at the SAA 2018 in Washington DC
After the passage of the Iranian Antiquities Law of 1930, the Gorgan Plain in northeastern Iran was seen as one of the most promising regions in the Old World for archaeological research. Despite decades of pioneering field and laboratory research, northeastern Iran still lacks a regionally integrated ceramic chronology for significant stretches of its archaeological history, particularly the 3rd millennium BCE. While individual sequences from important sites such as Tureng Tepe and Shah Tepe are well known, the precise nature of their relationships to each other and to other less-well known neighboring sites have remained unclear. This lacuna in our understanding of the culture history of the region presents a major obstacle to developing models of the social, political and economic history of the Gorgan. This paper, therefore, presents the results of research aimed at constructing a regionally integrated ceramic chronology for this region, in light of the potential anthropological significance of this dataset with respect to the emergence of regional community networks and the formation of archaic complex polities. In addition, this paper reflects on important issues related to the rehabilitation of legacy data and the methods by which it may be restructured for effective quantitative analysis.
Presented at the 11th ICAANE in Munich
One of the greatest challenges facing scholars of ancie... more Presented at the 11th ICAANE in Munich
One of the greatest challenges facing scholars of ancient Near Eastern trade is the question of how past people transported commodities and raw materials over great distances. In attempts to understand the flows of people and goods across the ancient Near East, scholars have previously focused on, inter alia, the textual attestation of inter-regional exchanges, iconographic depictions of trade activities, chemical analysis of artifacts themselves, and the scraps of evidence that might point to who the people were that traveled and connected the far-flung Bronze Age civilizations together. This paper considers the reconstruction of the location of the routes by which these people and goods traveled, through simulations of trade route networks (i.e. From-Everywhere-To-Everywhere Least Cost Analysis, or FETE-LCA). These simulations can be used to test both the effects of different conditions (e.g. climate, locomotion dynamics) on the structure of these networks, but also the relationship of these simulated routes to archaeologically known distributions of sites and the traces of trade activity. In this paper, the basics of FETE-LCA will be presented, along with the results of a case-study that demonstrate how different conditions can affect the simulated route networks. Critical reflections on the method will also be presented, with special focus on what the simulations can and cannot tell us about past movement of people, and what future directions in this field of research might be.
Presented at the American Schools of Oriental Research Conference, San Antonio
The Royal Cemeter... more Presented at the American Schools of Oriental Research Conference, San Antonio
The Royal Cemetery at Ur. The Astarabad Treasure. The Fullol Hoard. What do these three finds have in common? All lie along the route that is purported to have brought lapis lazuli from its source (Sar-i Sang) to Sumer and beyond during the third millennium. Accordingly, these finds, among many others, have been used to argue for the existence of an extensive long-distance trade network during this time. But answers to the questions of exactly when, how, and by whose agency these materials circulated so widely have largely remained elusive. Several models and metaphors have been proposed as solutions, or at least as heuristics, to resolve this problem, including: the prehistory of the Silk Road, World Systems Theory, and Interaction Spheres. While each of these has its own concerns and relative merits, all share in common a desire to “connect-the-dots-on-a-map.” While these models have been used to illuminate certain aspects of third millennium trade, exchange, and interaction, other aspects have remained obscure. For example, given technological and climatic constraints on travel during the third millennium, which routes were likely to have been taken? To what degree do material parallels found over great geographic distances actually index significant interaction? Is there a way to empirically substantiate the analytical categories commonly found in the literature? This paper explores the possibilities of answering these questions by scaling down the geographic scope of analysis and through a combination of regional scale seriation and typology, elemental analysis of ceramics, and GIS-based techniques.
Presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2017 in Washington DC
The... more Presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2017 in Washington DC
The interview is a critical locus in anthropological research and one of the primary sites where we engage in conversations of varying degrees of structuredness with our interlocutors and research participants. Accordingly, anthropological podcasts tend favor the interview both as their primary source of footage and as the centerpiece of individual episodes. Considerable attention has been paid in the ethnographic literature to the ethics of interview practice and the politics of representation; that is, how the researcher positions themselves, their interlocutors, and the narratives that they co-produce both in the flow of the ethnographic encounter and also in their publications, whether academic or popular. We argue that these insights should be brought to bear on the practice of podcasting in anthropology. In this paper, we draw on insights from critical reflections on the ethnographic interview to problematize the ethics of the recording and producing of podcasts in anthropology. Our approach examines how producers frame the podcast interview before and during the recording event, the decisions that are made in post-production, and how these two editing practices shape and are shaped by the figure of the “radio voice”.
Presented at the 3rd Annual Semiotic Anthropology Conference, Philadelphia
For too long, the app... more Presented at the 3rd Annual Semiotic Anthropology Conference, Philadelphia
For too long, the application of Peircean semiotics to archaeology has followed the template of presenting a standard archaeological case study, appending a terminological discussion of Peirce’s sign typology, and triumphantly announcing the discovery of an icon, index, or symbol. What these approaches lack is an appropriate attention to the parameters of the semiotic encounter and an inability to account for how regularities of sign-function, and more importantly, sign-interpretation, sediment themselves in social life. This paper therefore presents an example which illustrates how Peircean semiotics may be used to hypothesize about how, under what circumstances, and by whom objects were used and became meaningful in the past.
Presented at the SAA Meeting 2017, Vancouver
This paper evaluates the previously proposed sequenc... more Presented at the SAA Meeting 2017, Vancouver This paper evaluates the previously proposed sequence of transformations in prehistoric social organization in Northeastern Iran (Khorasan) using geospatial analysis of settlement distributions. The proposed sequence begins with agricultural villages during the Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic, transitions to craft-producing towns during the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, culminates in a process of proto-urbanization and the emergence of state-like structures during the Middle Bronze Age, and subsequently collapses at the end of the Bronze Age, resulting in the ‘abandonment’ of the region until the Middle Iron Age. Several explanations have been invoked to explain the transitions in this sequence, including migrations, shifting long-distance trade routes, the exhaustion of productive resources and climate change. In this paper, I present the results of a settlement pattern analysis of data generated through synthesis of legacy surveys in GIS and visual inspection of satellite imagery. This analysis focuses on several key variables, including measures of site size, morphology, landform correlations, clustering, hydrological potential, estimation of territorial boundaries, and relationships to modeled transportation corridors. The results of this study help us to operationalize the concepts of 'community' and 'social organization' in this region and evaluate the validity of the proposed culture-historical sequence.
Semiotic theories have had a long history of application to archaeological interpretation, but wi... more Semiotic theories have had a long history of application to archaeological interpretation, but with only a few notable exceptions, these have consisted of little more than imposition of Saussurian or Peircian terminology onto what ultimately remains entirely archaeological reasoning. Put differently, being satisfied with classifying different archaeological artifacts as signs, signifiers, objects, interpretants, icons, indexes, and symbols is not just insufficient but in fact unproductive. Instead, archaeology must incorporate theories of metasemiosis in order to take advantage of its unique potential to trace meaning-making across material encounters. This paper therefore explores the possibilities for articulating a methodology that can allow us to reconstruct higher order semiotic processes involving social indexicals of various kinds. A unique corpus of anthropomorphic figurines from northeastern Iran is examined as a case study for demonstrating the potential of metasemiotic theories for the interpretation of archaeological materials.
The Gorgan Plain of northeastern Iran is an under-studied but important region in the ancient Nea... more The Gorgan Plain of northeastern Iran is an under-studied but important region in the ancient Near East, located at the junction of the Eurasian Steppe with the Iranian Plateau. This region is home to over four hundred mound sites, many dating to the Bronze Age. During this period, some of the inhabitants of this area participated in long distance trade networks crisscrossing the so-called ‘Indo-Iranian Borderlands’, a fact attested by the presence of rich hoards of metal tools and vessels, as well as by exotic materials such as lapis lazuli, alabaster, gold, and silver appearing as funerary offerings in some burials. This evidence, along with the existence of monumental architecture and sumptuous hoards of metal tools, weapons, and vessels has been used to argue for social stratification via differential access to luxury goods and status symbols. This paper asks the question: what evidence do we have for non-elite culture, and how exactly does it differ from elite culture? As relevant data are fragmentary, this paper must approach the question from a variety of angles. Investigation of burials and settlement distributions have historically formed the bulk of the data used to argue for social differentiation in prehistoric societies; as a result, these data are marshaled to speak to the question of what characterizes commoner culture. When considered in conjunction with the differential representation of the human body across media and space, it is argued that a clear hierarchy of access to resources and status symbols does exist. It is not clear, however, whether the archaeologically visible materials correlate to commoner and elite cultures or whether they are the residues of some other system of social organization.
This paper focuses on the previously unanalyzed anthropomorphic figurines from the Bronze Age lay... more This paper focuses on the previously unanalyzed anthropomorphic figurines from the Bronze Age layers of Tureng Tepe, the largest tell-site in the Gorgān Valley of northeastern Iran. Previous approaches to the study of prehistoric figurines in Iran and Central Asia have focused largely on issues of culture-history; these scholars have been primarily concerned with working out typologies and chronologies in order to examine inter-cultural connections between different archaeological assemblages across the region. The question of their meaning is often bracketed or answered in an unsystematic fashion. The data and analyses presented in this paper challenge the prevailing assumption in the region that these figurines are ritualistic in function. I argue for a composite method for investigating prehistoric figurines in order to test such assumptions, inspired by contemporary research from other regions in the Near East and theoretical insights from the ‘archaeology of the body’. This paper analyzes these figurines in terms of their morphology, their stylistic attributes and their depositional contexts. Based on the results of preliminary analyses the figurines of Tureng Tepe would appear to be quotidian objects withoutany ritual significance, but further research is necessary to answer more complex questions.
Tureng Tepe is the largest Bronze Age site in the Gorgan Valley of northeastern Iran. The site wa... more Tureng Tepe is the largest Bronze Age site in the Gorgan Valley of northeastern Iran. The site was excavated in 1931 by Fredrick and Susanne Wulsin, and again between 1961 and 1975 by Dr. Jean Deshayes. While Dr. Deshayes produced many publications, the Wulsins published very little about their work at Tureng Tepe. This archival project originally set out to investigate the terracotta figurines from Tureng Tepe housed at the University Museum of Pennsylvania, but discovered that much more information was available to work with. Preliminary analyses of various unpublished aspects of the Wulsin’s excavations are presented.
The figurines of Tureng Tepe are a remarkable collection of terracotta anthropomorphs that are un... more The figurines of Tureng Tepe are a remarkable collection of terracotta anthropomorphs that are unique in both a micro- and macro-regional context. Their significance has long been recognized, but systematic investigation into this corpus of figurines has not been forthcoming. Previous scholars who have engaged with this material have generally agreed that these figurines are evidence of various kinds of Goddess worship. This study calls that assumption into question on theoretical and empirical grounds. In order to ‘test’ this hypothesis, this thesis documents the figurines through a revised typology, morphological, stylistic, and contextual analyses. It finds that there is no evidence to suggest the existence of worship of either a Mother Goddess or other named goddesses identified from Aegean and Mesopotamian textual sources. The corollary of performing this analysis was a reformulation of the fundamental questions at the heart of figurine studies from “what” questions to “how” questions. This shift allows for not only an anthropological analysis of the significance of these figurines vis-à-vis the negotiation of different social identities, but also in terms of a cross-cultural analysis. It is proposed that by investigating the semeiotic ideologies that were materialized through figurines, we can begin to build a picture of the process of identity formation in the Ancient Near East at both a local and regional scale during the Bronze Age.
The Thompson Library has been redesigned in part as a learning
commons with the assumption that ... more The Thompson Library has been redesigned in part as a learning commons with the assumption that pedagogical models and student learning are becoming more and more social and collaborative. However, it is unclear whether students' ideas of how libraries should be used have caught up with these developments. Students may still have the habitus of a more traditional university library and may not view and use the library as a learning commons. The goal of the ethnographic study was to understand students' use of the new Thompson Library.
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Papers by Kyle Olson
as significant, has remained an enigma since its discovery
in 1931. This article rejects the interpretation of these
figurines as representations of divinities, and instead examines
on how figurines were meaningful in social life by
focusing on their archaeologically observable features.
Examination of iconography, context, and traces of use
affords reconstruction of how, under what circumstances,
and by whom these figurines were used. The results of
this study substantiate the claim that figurines are ‘about
identity’ and strengthen the argument that comparative
work can reveal patterns of interaction across the Ancient
Near East.
Translations by Kyle Olson
Talks by Kyle Olson
After the passage of the Iranian Antiquities Law of 1930, the Gorgan Plain in northeastern Iran was seen as one of the most promising regions in the Old World for archaeological research. Despite decades of pioneering field and laboratory research, northeastern Iran still lacks a regionally integrated ceramic chronology for significant stretches of its archaeological history, particularly the 3rd millennium BCE. While individual sequences from important sites such as Tureng Tepe and Shah Tepe are well known, the precise nature of their relationships to each other and to other less-well known neighboring sites have remained unclear. This lacuna in our understanding of the culture history of the region presents a major obstacle to developing models of the social, political and economic history of the Gorgan. This paper, therefore, presents the results of research aimed at constructing a regionally integrated ceramic chronology for this region, in light of the potential anthropological significance of this dataset with respect to the emergence of regional community networks and the formation of archaic complex polities. In addition, this paper reflects on important issues related to the rehabilitation of legacy data and the methods by which it may be restructured for effective quantitative analysis.
One of the greatest challenges facing scholars of ancient Near Eastern trade is the question of how past people transported commodities and raw materials over great distances. In attempts to understand the flows of people and goods across the ancient Near East, scholars have previously focused on, inter alia, the textual attestation of inter-regional exchanges, iconographic depictions of trade activities, chemical analysis of artifacts themselves, and the scraps of evidence that might point to who the people were that traveled and connected the far-flung Bronze Age civilizations together. This paper considers the reconstruction of the location of the routes by which these people and goods traveled, through simulations of trade route networks (i.e. From-Everywhere-To-Everywhere Least Cost Analysis, or FETE-LCA). These simulations can be used to test both the effects of different conditions (e.g. climate, locomotion dynamics) on the structure of these networks, but also the relationship of these simulated routes to archaeologically known distributions of sites and the traces of trade activity. In this paper, the basics of FETE-LCA will be presented, along with the results of a case-study that demonstrate how different conditions can affect the simulated route networks. Critical reflections on the method will also be presented, with special focus on what the simulations can and cannot tell us about past movement of people, and what future directions in this field of research might be.
The Royal Cemetery at Ur. The Astarabad Treasure. The Fullol Hoard. What do these three finds have in common? All lie along the route that is purported to have brought lapis lazuli from its source (Sar-i Sang) to Sumer and beyond during the third millennium. Accordingly, these finds, among many others, have been used to argue for the existence of an extensive long-distance trade network during this time. But answers to the questions of exactly when, how, and by whose agency these materials circulated so widely have largely remained elusive. Several models and metaphors have been proposed as solutions, or at least as heuristics, to resolve this problem, including: the prehistory of the Silk Road, World Systems Theory, and Interaction Spheres. While each of these has its own concerns and relative merits, all share in common a desire to “connect-the-dots-on-a-map.” While these models have been used to illuminate certain aspects of third millennium trade, exchange, and interaction, other aspects have remained obscure. For example, given technological and climatic constraints on travel during the third millennium, which routes were likely to have been taken? To what degree do material parallels found over great geographic distances actually index significant interaction? Is there a way to empirically substantiate the analytical categories commonly found in the literature? This paper explores the possibilities of answering these questions by scaling down the geographic scope of analysis and through a combination of regional scale seriation and typology, elemental analysis of ceramics, and GIS-based techniques.
The interview is a critical locus in anthropological research and one of the primary sites where we engage in conversations of varying degrees of structuredness with our interlocutors and research participants. Accordingly, anthropological podcasts tend favor the interview both as their primary source of footage and as the centerpiece of individual episodes. Considerable attention has been paid in the ethnographic literature to the ethics of interview practice and the politics of representation; that is, how the researcher positions themselves, their interlocutors, and the narratives that they co-produce both in the flow of the ethnographic encounter and also in their publications, whether academic or popular. We argue that these insights should be brought to bear on the practice of podcasting in anthropology. In this paper, we draw on insights from critical reflections on the ethnographic interview to problematize the ethics of the recording and producing of podcasts in anthropology. Our approach examines how producers frame the podcast interview before and during the recording event, the decisions that are made in post-production, and how these two editing practices shape and are shaped by the figure of the “radio voice”.
For too long, the application of Peircean semiotics to archaeology has followed the template of presenting a standard archaeological case study, appending a terminological discussion of Peirce’s sign typology, and triumphantly announcing the discovery of an icon, index, or symbol. What these approaches lack is an appropriate attention to the parameters of the semiotic encounter and an inability to account for how regularities of sign-function, and more importantly, sign-interpretation, sediment themselves in social life. This paper therefore presents an example which illustrates how Peircean semiotics may be used to hypothesize about how, under what circumstances, and by whom objects were used and became meaningful in the past.
as significant, has remained an enigma since its discovery
in 1931. This article rejects the interpretation of these
figurines as representations of divinities, and instead examines
on how figurines were meaningful in social life by
focusing on their archaeologically observable features.
Examination of iconography, context, and traces of use
affords reconstruction of how, under what circumstances,
and by whom these figurines were used. The results of
this study substantiate the claim that figurines are ‘about
identity’ and strengthen the argument that comparative
work can reveal patterns of interaction across the Ancient
Near East.
After the passage of the Iranian Antiquities Law of 1930, the Gorgan Plain in northeastern Iran was seen as one of the most promising regions in the Old World for archaeological research. Despite decades of pioneering field and laboratory research, northeastern Iran still lacks a regionally integrated ceramic chronology for significant stretches of its archaeological history, particularly the 3rd millennium BCE. While individual sequences from important sites such as Tureng Tepe and Shah Tepe are well known, the precise nature of their relationships to each other and to other less-well known neighboring sites have remained unclear. This lacuna in our understanding of the culture history of the region presents a major obstacle to developing models of the social, political and economic history of the Gorgan. This paper, therefore, presents the results of research aimed at constructing a regionally integrated ceramic chronology for this region, in light of the potential anthropological significance of this dataset with respect to the emergence of regional community networks and the formation of archaic complex polities. In addition, this paper reflects on important issues related to the rehabilitation of legacy data and the methods by which it may be restructured for effective quantitative analysis.
One of the greatest challenges facing scholars of ancient Near Eastern trade is the question of how past people transported commodities and raw materials over great distances. In attempts to understand the flows of people and goods across the ancient Near East, scholars have previously focused on, inter alia, the textual attestation of inter-regional exchanges, iconographic depictions of trade activities, chemical analysis of artifacts themselves, and the scraps of evidence that might point to who the people were that traveled and connected the far-flung Bronze Age civilizations together. This paper considers the reconstruction of the location of the routes by which these people and goods traveled, through simulations of trade route networks (i.e. From-Everywhere-To-Everywhere Least Cost Analysis, or FETE-LCA). These simulations can be used to test both the effects of different conditions (e.g. climate, locomotion dynamics) on the structure of these networks, but also the relationship of these simulated routes to archaeologically known distributions of sites and the traces of trade activity. In this paper, the basics of FETE-LCA will be presented, along with the results of a case-study that demonstrate how different conditions can affect the simulated route networks. Critical reflections on the method will also be presented, with special focus on what the simulations can and cannot tell us about past movement of people, and what future directions in this field of research might be.
The Royal Cemetery at Ur. The Astarabad Treasure. The Fullol Hoard. What do these three finds have in common? All lie along the route that is purported to have brought lapis lazuli from its source (Sar-i Sang) to Sumer and beyond during the third millennium. Accordingly, these finds, among many others, have been used to argue for the existence of an extensive long-distance trade network during this time. But answers to the questions of exactly when, how, and by whose agency these materials circulated so widely have largely remained elusive. Several models and metaphors have been proposed as solutions, or at least as heuristics, to resolve this problem, including: the prehistory of the Silk Road, World Systems Theory, and Interaction Spheres. While each of these has its own concerns and relative merits, all share in common a desire to “connect-the-dots-on-a-map.” While these models have been used to illuminate certain aspects of third millennium trade, exchange, and interaction, other aspects have remained obscure. For example, given technological and climatic constraints on travel during the third millennium, which routes were likely to have been taken? To what degree do material parallels found over great geographic distances actually index significant interaction? Is there a way to empirically substantiate the analytical categories commonly found in the literature? This paper explores the possibilities of answering these questions by scaling down the geographic scope of analysis and through a combination of regional scale seriation and typology, elemental analysis of ceramics, and GIS-based techniques.
The interview is a critical locus in anthropological research and one of the primary sites where we engage in conversations of varying degrees of structuredness with our interlocutors and research participants. Accordingly, anthropological podcasts tend favor the interview both as their primary source of footage and as the centerpiece of individual episodes. Considerable attention has been paid in the ethnographic literature to the ethics of interview practice and the politics of representation; that is, how the researcher positions themselves, their interlocutors, and the narratives that they co-produce both in the flow of the ethnographic encounter and also in their publications, whether academic or popular. We argue that these insights should be brought to bear on the practice of podcasting in anthropology. In this paper, we draw on insights from critical reflections on the ethnographic interview to problematize the ethics of the recording and producing of podcasts in anthropology. Our approach examines how producers frame the podcast interview before and during the recording event, the decisions that are made in post-production, and how these two editing practices shape and are shaped by the figure of the “radio voice”.
For too long, the application of Peircean semiotics to archaeology has followed the template of presenting a standard archaeological case study, appending a terminological discussion of Peirce’s sign typology, and triumphantly announcing the discovery of an icon, index, or symbol. What these approaches lack is an appropriate attention to the parameters of the semiotic encounter and an inability to account for how regularities of sign-function, and more importantly, sign-interpretation, sediment themselves in social life. This paper therefore presents an example which illustrates how Peircean semiotics may be used to hypothesize about how, under what circumstances, and by whom objects were used and became meaningful in the past.
This paper evaluates the previously proposed sequence of transformations in prehistoric social organization in Northeastern Iran (Khorasan) using geospatial analysis of settlement distributions. The proposed sequence begins with agricultural villages during the Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic, transitions to craft-producing towns during the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, culminates in a process of proto-urbanization and the emergence of state-like structures during the Middle Bronze Age, and subsequently collapses at the end of the Bronze Age, resulting in the ‘abandonment’ of the region until the Middle Iron Age. Several explanations have been invoked to explain the transitions in this sequence, including migrations, shifting long-distance trade routes, the exhaustion of productive resources and climate change. In this paper, I present the results of a settlement pattern analysis of data generated through synthesis of legacy surveys in GIS and visual inspection of satellite imagery. This analysis focuses on several key variables, including measures of site size, morphology, landform correlations, clustering, hydrological potential, estimation of territorial boundaries, and relationships to modeled transportation corridors. The results of this study help us to operationalize the concepts of 'community' and 'social organization' in this region and evaluate the validity of the proposed culture-historical sequence.
commons with the assumption that pedagogical models and student learning are becoming more and more social and collaborative. However, it is unclear whether students' ideas of how libraries should be used have caught up with these developments. Students may still have the habitus of a more traditional university library and may not view and use the library as a learning commons. The goal of the ethnographic
study was to understand students' use of the new Thompson Library.