Due to the nature of their lifestyle and inherent mobility nomadic groups of the past have left little if any discernible imprint in excavated archaeological records. This is regrettable since most regions of the world that saw the emergence of complex societies were shaped by p…
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This study reconstructs the paleoepidemiology of zoonoses and other infectious diseases in Mesopotamia and the ancient Near East from the Early Bronze Age through the Late Iron Age. I combine macromorphological and molecular analyses of human skeletal remains along with an exami…
This dissertation concerns the ways in which the ritualized materials and ritualized practice of the Neo-Assyrian temple, through their culturally valued and prioritized visual and experiential characteristics, created and marked the special status and divine aspect of the house…
This study investigates the relationship between rainfall variation and rain-fed agricultural production in Upper Mesopotamia with a specific focus on Early Bronze Age urban settlements. In return, the variation in production is used to explore stability of urban settlement syst…
The destruction of Iraq's cultural heritage gained public attention after the looting of the Iraq National Museum in 2003. However, little has been done to identify and investigate the current threats to Mesopotamian archaeological sites. Given that damage to cultural heritage e…
Medicine in the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible is studied predominantly in two ways: the biological or the Biblical perspective. From a biological standpoint, the studies use paleopathology in combination with an analysis of symptoms reported in medical and literary acco…
This dissertation explores the working of the organizational apparatus evinced in the Old Babylonian Mesopotamian divination collections from the divinatory technique known as extispicy (the examination of a sacrificed sheep's exta, or entrails: in the main the liver, but also t…
The sun-god of ancient Mesopotamia, Utu/Šamaš, was widely represented in both literature and iconography. In order to better understand the theology of this deity in ancient Sumer and Babylon, these two representational forms should be studied together. This dissertation asks ho…
This thesis presents a new approach to the history of archaeology in Iraq. The representation of Babylon is taken as a case study through which social, political and cultural factors in the formation and development of European archaeology in Iraq are examined. Babylon's history…
This dissertation examines the creative ways in which the ancient Israelites used genres that were part of the broader ancient Near Eastern cultural repertoire in order to shape a narrative of their early history as a people. Study of the itinerary genre as it is used in adminis…
This dissertation is a comparison of the book of Ezekiel with the well-known city lament genre of ancient Mesopotamia. Nine shared features are analyzed and explained. These features derive from the work of Dobbs-Allsopp 1 and his comparison of biblical Lamentations with city la…
A significant development in ancient Mesopotamia occurred during the mid-fourth millennium BC, when materials and settlements in the southern Mesopotamian Uruk tradition began to appear in neighboring areas. Some scholars have interpreted this phenomenon as a colonial network. W…
This dissertation examines cultural parallels as found in the literature of Greece, Mesopotamia and Anatolia. Of specific interest is the question of cultural influence exerted by these ancient civilizations on each other. One of the geographic points of intersection common to t…
Those who study the cognitive development of Homo sapiens maintain that our specialized communication skills evolved from the desire to narrate. Societies define themselves through their histories and their traditional stories; the socio-political significance of narrative in an…
This research was aimed at an historical evaluation of an active archaeological excavation by an intensive descriptive and functional study of the architecture and ceramics. The project attempted to discern if chronological changes in ceramic assemblages over time could be effec…
This dissertation presents an analysis of seal use in the Murasu Archive, excavated by the University of Pennsylvania at Nippur (Iraq) in 1893. The more than 800 tablets of the archive are all private, legal documents relating to the business dealings of the Murasu "firm" that d…
The akītu festival is one of the oldest recorded religious festivals in the ancient Near East. The festival was celebrated for several millennia, developing from a semiannual agricultural celebration to an annual Spring New Year's national event. This study demonstrates how the …
Numerous art historians and anthropologists such as Rudolf Wittkower, Michael Baxandal and Alfred Gell have addressed the question of how art reflected the people by and for whom it was produced in the context of different cultures and periods. In my dissertation, I intend to co…
High-resolution low-cost declassified CORONA spy satellite imagery is used to detect archaeological sites and relict canals in the Diyala Plain to the east of Baghdad, Iraq. This project seeks to improve upon the ground survey conducted there in the 1950s by providing better geo…