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…
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Over the course of the third millennium BC, the human landscape of northern Mesopotamia transitioned from a period of small, dispersed settlements to one characterized by a more diverse network of villages, towns, and cities. This event was one component of a larger phenomenon t…
Ancient water management, especially for irrigation purposes, has featured prominently in anthropological theories on the development of socio-political and economic complexity. Traditional approaches have assumed that centralized control was needed to meet the managerial requir…
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…
In this dissertation, I study a critical transition in the urban development of Tell es-Sweyhat, a large site in Syria occupied from c. 3000-1900 BCE. In the middle of the third millennium, Sweyhat was an open town centered on a fortress. It was ringed with cemeteries and had a …
The notion of a primeval paradise is often associated with the absence of death for both humans and animals. Humans are envisioned as immortal, both humans and animals are restricted to a vegetarian diet, and all live together in perfect peace. This dissertation is an examinatio…
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…
This dissertation is a study of the political history of the Mesopotamian kingdom of Larsa in the Early Old Babylonian Period, from the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur to the conquest of Larsa by Hammu-rāpi of Babylon (c. 2003–1762 B.C.). It is clear that the rulers of Larsa were…
While much has been written on the formation and collapse of state-level societies, relatively little attention has been paid to the actual function of those societies. With this analysis, I hope to contribute to this area of investigation. Large-scale society cannot support its…
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 …
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…
Les fouilles de tell ‘Atij et de tell Gudeda, deux sites localisée en Mésopotamie septentrionale, dans la moyenne vallée du Khabour en Syrie et datés de la période Ninive 5 (3000–2500 av. J.-C.), ont permis de mettre au jour environ 5000 artfacts de pierre taillée. Le but premie…
This dissertation describes the way in which ancient Near Eastern kingdoms practiced the art of warfare from the middle of the second millennium B.C. to the end of the united Israelite monarchy. It does so by studying the records of nations located within the Fertile Crescent an…
Archaeologists have long held that changing patterns of settlement within a region reflect the changing social organization of Its human population, but they have had little success developing general theory to explain or otherwise make use of this relationship. Much of this dif…
Excavations at Tell al-Raqa'i, a village site of the early urban period in northeastern Syria, revealed the remains of what is believed to be a specialized settlement which served as a locus for the processing, storage, and transport of cereal grains, presumably destined for one…
The mid 2nd millennium BC in Mesopotamia is defined by the ebb and flow of power politics, with the Old Babylonian state, the Kassite state, and the kings of the Sealand, vying for power over the southern alluvial plains. Although widespread sociopolitical instability is acknowl…