Department of Archaeology

People

Prof. Nicholas Postgate

Professor of Assyriology

Office: Room 204, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.
Phone: +44(0)1223 335120
Fax: +44(0)1223 335110.
Email: jnp10@cam.ac.uk

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Current research interests

My research revolves round the social and economic history of the ancient Near East, with special emphasis on Sumer in the 3rd millennium BC and Assyria between 1400 and 600 BC. In particular I have published and edited Assyrian government and business archives, and excavated both a Sumerian city at Abu Salabikh in southern Iraq and a Bronze to Iron Age regional centre at Kilise Tepe in southern Turkey. A particular concern is the integration of written documentary evidence with the archaeological record.

Current research projects

Editions and studies of cuneiform archives remain fundamental. An archive from the domestic wing of the Neo-Assyrian palace at Nimrud was published with Prof. Ali Yaseen Ahmad of Mosul University in 2007, and an edition of a Middle Assyrian archive from Tell Ali on the Lower Zab was published in collaboration with Dr. Bahijah Khalil Ismail, former Director of the Iraq Museum, in 2008. Work on further texts from M.E.L. Mallowan's work at Nimrud has been thwarted by conditions in Iraq.

Since October 2009 I have been preparing a monograph on the nature of government in Assyria and neighbouring societies in the 14th–12th centuries BC, with the help of a three year Senior Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. This entails a study of a number of cuneiform archives recovered from across Assyria to reveal the role of the written document in the practice of state administration and the associated ethos.

Excavations at Abu Salabikh, a 3rd millennium city in southern Iraq, were suspended after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and plans to resume fieldwork have had to be abandoned in the light of current political conditions in Iraq. The fifth volume of the definitive report, on two large Early Dynastic houses, is currently in preparation, and will be followed by a second volume on graves and another on the city layout, largely recovered by surface clearance.

My current fieldwork project is at Kilise Tepe, in the province of Mersin in southern Turkey. This is a multi-period site, with a Byzantine church and other architecture which is investigated by Dr Mark Jackson of Newcastle University. My own interest is principally focused on the Late Bronze Age and early Iron Age levels, which span the transition from the Hittite Empire tp the nascent world of Classical antiquity. We aim to show how the changing political and social conditions are reflected in the material record. Five seasons of work at the site were published by the McDonald Institute and the British Institute at Ankara in 2007. The current spell of fieldwork at the site began in 2007, and one further season of excavation is planned for 2011 (supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council).