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Department of Archaeology

 

Displaying 13 projects

The ways Neanderthals treated their dead have been a key focus of long-standing debates about their capacities for compassion and symbolic thought, and their similarity to modern humans. These questions feed into broader questions concerning how similar Neanderthals were to ourselves, modern humans...
The project will develop an innovative new model to examine the pivotal role of anthropogenic wetlands in the long transition to agriculture in the Levant. Remarkably, while this transition has been explored in some detail, we still do not have a good grasp on the long-term developments and causes...
During the Early and Middle Bronze Age (2500-1600 B.C), a range of exchange networks linked Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Bahrain and South Asia, facilitating the long-distance movement of a wide variety of raw materials and finished products. Texts from the Sargonic and Ur III period (2300-2000 BC) provide...
My project for the McDonald Institute investigates the interplay of institutional authorities, private citizens, localities, and global networks in the Late Bronze Age (ca. 16th-12th centuries BC), the first phase of globalization in world history. Globalization is not only an issue of...
The aim of H-E Interactions is to investigate how increasingly anthropogenic wetland landscapes, and the reliable resources within those environments, influenced the evolution of plant-food production and the origins of agriculture through the Final Pleistocene and into the Early Holocene (ca. 23-8...
A new archaeological project at the ancient city of Lagash in south Iraq (modern Tell al-Hiba) began in March-April of 2019. LAP is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, University of Pennsylvania (USA) and Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.
This project analyses early Near Eastern materials and inscriptions holistically in the study of the commemoration of the individual from the Early Dynastic period through the first millennium BCE.
SCATTER investigates the multivocal notion of territory in Protohistory through the study of settlement patterns in ecological settings. Specifically, SCATTER focus on the Central Anatolian region during the Middle and Late Bronze Age, i.e. the second millennium B.C. The goal is to acquire better...
Shanidar cave viewed from the south (Photograph: Graeme Barker) The Shanidar Cave Project Following an invitation to Professor Graeme Barker from the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, the Shanidar Cave Project was established as a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the...
What was understood to be ‘good government’ in the Ancient Near East? While the notion of a ‘constitution’ – a key mechanism for setting out how to govern – is typically associated with relatively modern societies, this project sets out to explore the core ideas behind state power, the rule of law...
Investigating human-animal relations in the ancient Near East, with equids (horses, donkeys and horse-donkey hybrids) as the main focus.
The PlaCe network is a high-profile partnership focused on the interdisciplinary study of pre-modern ceramics and plasters. This Innovative Training Network aims at training Early-Stage Researchers to conduct state-of-the-art, science-based research on the technology, use, and provenance of...
The Assyrian Empire was the first multinational empire in the ancient near east. By the seventh century BC it had grown to cover all of Iraq, Syria and the Levant, substantial portions of western Iran and south-eastern Turkey and even, for brief periods, Egypt. In the site of Ziyaret Tepe we have...