New Orleans
New Orleans
New Orleans
New Orleans
Tell Edfu, Egypt
Cyprus
Surezha, Iraqi Kurdistan
fieldwork projects
New Orleans
Tell Edfu, Egypt
Cyprus
Surezha, Iraqi Kurdistan
fieldwork projects
New Orleans
Cyprus
New Orleans
Cyprus Project
Cyprus Project
Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus
Dian Lake Region, China

graduate students

Sarah Adcock
Near East - Turkey; Archaeology/anthropology of societal collapse, rural-urban interactions, animal economies, zooarchaeology, Hittites, Late Bronze/Iron Age, Anatolia.
After the End: Animal Economies, Collapse, and Continuity in Hittite and Post-Hittite Anatolia.
Anthropology
Research focuses on the intersection of the ancient and the Renaissance in Rome. Her interests include Roman Imperial religious art, antiquarianism in Renaissance Rome, collecting history and print culture.
Art History
Anna Berlekamp
Near Eastern art and archaeology, with research interests in the Southern Caucasus and its connections with the Near East. Anna received her BS with Honors in Anthropological Sciences and German from Ohio State University, and she has done archaeological fieldwork in Oman, Germany, and Italy. She also conducts archaeobotanical and anthracological analysis, and her undergraduate thesis was based on the study of macrobotanical materials from a Medieval Armenian caravanserai.
NELC

Kelly Wilcox Black
South Asia; Neolithic/Iron Age/Early Historic South India; human-animal relations/human-environmental relations, power and political ecology, historical ecology, animal husbandry and landscape histories, faunal and dental microwear analysis.
Excavating the Deep History of Degradation: Animal Husbandry and the Environmental Impacts of Livestock Grazing in Pre- and Early Historic South India.
Anthropology
Near East; 2nd Millennium BC Anatolia, the distribution of ceramic traditions across Central Anatolia using GIS analyses to examine how those traditions are related to inter-urban road networks.
Performing Power in Hittite Anatolia.
jwcannon@uchicago.edu
NELC
Southern Europe, Mediterranean; Historical ecology, political ecology, domestication, agriculture, arboriculture, archaeobotany, rural communities, posthumanism.
Cultivation Regimes: Political Ecologies of Domestication at Nadin-Gradina, Croatia, ca 500 BCE - 1700 CE.
Anthropology

Alice Diaz Chauvigné
South America; zooarchaeology, Tairona polity, human-animal interactions, transitions and transformation between the pre-Columbian and colonial periods.
Anthropology
Luiza Osorio G. da Silva
Near East - Egypt; kingship, its legitimacy, and diverse legitimization strategies in different periods; the materiality of mudbricks in ancient Egypt and on the significance of their use in the construction of royal palaces.
NELC
Western Europe - Mediterranean prehistory; material culture, ritual uses of the human body, embodiment, consumption and identity, political economy, food and cuisine, alcohol and feasting, colonialism, isotope analysis, landscape archaeology.
Severing Heads and Social Ties: A Biogeochemistry and Material Culture Approach to Contested Bodies in the Late Iron Age of Southern France
MDoppelt@uchicago.edu
Anthropology
Research focuses on pre-Columbian art history, with projects ranging from ancient Mesoamerica to the Andes. His interests include Central Mexican writing systems, cases of aniconic visual practice in the pre-Columbian world, and the historiography of pre-Columbian art.
Art History
Raghda ("Didi") El-Behaedi
Egytptian archaeology. She received her B.A. with Honors in Anthropology (Archaeology) and a minor in Geospatial Technologies from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (2017), with a thesis focused on the feasibility of organic residue analysis on shell material. Her research interests include understanding ancient Egyptian settlement patterns and ancient landscapes through the lens of remote sensing, GIS and computer programming. Didi hopes to use these technologies to further propel cultural heritage preservation efforts and education initiatives in Egypt. She has conducted archaeological fieldwork at a number of sites, including in the United States, France, and Egypt, has worked at the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Pottery Residue Lab and interned at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In addition, Didi has worked as a remote sensing research consultant at NASA Langley Research Center (2016) and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (2017). Most recently, in Summer 2018, she also completed a Space Archaeology internship at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
NELC

Suay Seyma Erkusoz
Near East; prehistoric communities of Anatolia, early social complexity, household archaeology, microarchaeology; organization of craft production in early complex societies. Her master thesis was on Neolithic households of western Anatolia.
NELC
Kirsten Forsberg
Hidden inequalities of heterarchical societies in Iron Age West Africa, bioarchaeological analysis.
Anthropology
Middle East, Oman, Indian Ocean rim; Citizenship, the nation-state, economics, urban development, aesthetics. Social Death of Things: Intercultural Encounters and Ritualized Consumption in Early Bronze Age Oman (3100-2000 B.C.)
omar1@uchicago.edu
Anthropology
North America, Arctic/Sub-Arctic; Settler colonialism, ethics, epistemology, religion, landscapes/seascapes/icescapes, ecology, sovereignty, climate, futures.
Anthropology
USA, Louisiana, French Caribbean, Haiti; Labor and subjectification, urban landscapes, built environment; material culture; craftsmanship, urban experience; loss, displacement, belonging.
Crafting Community: Race, Creative Labor, and Everyday Aesthetics in the Creole Faubourgs of New Orleans, 1790-1896.
cgrant@uchicago.edu
Anthropology

Nicole Grigg
Mid-Atlantic USA, urban archaeology, immigration and migration, archaeology of the African Diaspora, nationalism constructions of heritage, public archaeology
ngrigg@uchicago.edu
Anthropology
Siyun Guo
China, Cultural frontier regions (the Gansu/Hexi Corridor); a study of temporality from the perspective of subsistence practices - utilizing zooarchaeology & paleosoil records
Anthropology
Daniel Hansen
European Celtic societies of the early Middle Ages, especially focusing on the Picts and their interaction with Goidelic-speaking groups. Materiality, material culture theory, semiotics, archaeology of ethnicity
Anthropology
Near Eastern archaeology. Sam is an archaeologist and anthropologist whose research focuses on domestic activity, foodways, and local manifestations of regional interaction in late prehistoric Mesopotamia. He received his BA from Harvard College (‘05) and holds master’s degrees in contemporary Arab studies (Georgetown ‘08) and Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations (UChicago ‘14). As Lead Fellow at the Chicago Center for Teaching, he facilitates pedagogical training and development at the university.
NELC

Debora Heard
Africa - Egypt/Nubia, Sudan; State Power: ideology, religion and material culture; Archaeology of Ideology: iconography, landscape and ritual.
In the Houses of the Ram and the Lion: Religious Displays of Royal Socio-Political Subjectivity in the Kushite Temples of Amun and Apedemak.
ddheard@uchicago.edu
Anthropology
Ceramics of the Kura-Araxes period of the Eastern Caucasus.
mfheinsc@gmail.com
Anthropology
Mongolia, Inner Asia; Prehistory of Mongolia and the eastern Eurasian steppe; the Xiongnu and steppe empires, mobile pastoralism, bioarchaeological and zooarchaeological methods and theory; multispecies ethnography, human-animal studies, materiality.
Imperial Body-Politic(s): Human-Animal Relationships of the Xiongnu Empire at Elst Ar, Central Mongolia.
emmahite@uchicago.edu
Anthropology
Latin America, Peru; Cusco, the Inka, Spanish colonialism in the Andes; landscapes, agriculture, empire, cartography, environment, zooarchaeology, archaeobotany.
Households in Transition: Examining Material Change in Colonial Andean Domestic Economy and Ecology.
rahunter@uchicago.edu
Anthropology
South Asia, South India; Archaeology; time, temporality, memory and historicity; periodization, historical narratives and 'the medieval'; ceramic analysis.
Tempered by Time: Ceramics and the Fabric of Time in Medieval (ca AD 500-1600) South India.
mannatjohal@uchicago.edu
Anthropology

Michael Johnson
NELC
East Asia, Japan; Material aspects of Western interaction with early modern Japan (the Dutch at Dejima); Commodities and materiality, cultural property management and tourism; value and commensuration, feasting, early modern globalization and commerce, sociality of economic transactions, alterity.
Dejima: An Archaeology of Intercultural Commerce in Early Modern Japan.
skautz@preservationlongisland.org
Anthropology

Matthew Knisley
Africa, Tanzania/Zambia; Historical archaeology of hunter-gatherers; historical archaeology; landscape archaeology, political ecology; colonialism and post-colonialism, landscape, political ecology, temporality, ethnobotany and archaeobotany.
An Archaeology of the 'Natural': Historical Landscapes of the Sandawe Homeland, Central Tanzania.
mck@uchicago.edu
Anthropology

Anthony Lauricella
Islamic Archaeology; Interim Director of the CAMEL Lab.
NELC
East Asia - China (Anyang, Late Shang); Bronze Age China, bioarchaeology; childhood; personhood and gender; sacrifice; stable isotope analysis; skeletal pathology and trauma; mortuary practice.
Revisiting Lineage: A Bioarchaeological Life Course Approach to Relatedness in the Late Shang Capital of Yinxu (c. 1200-1050 BCE).
lledin@uchicago.edu
Anthropology

Qi Li
East Asia - China; Shang China, Erligang, agriculture.
Anthropology and EALC (joint)
Mongolia, Eurasian Steppe; Landscape/space/place, pastoralism and mobility; ritual; GIS, regional survey, mortuary archaeology, human osteology, lithics; Bronze Age/Iron Age subsistence shift in West-Central Mongolia. Tracing a Transition: Political Economies of the Bronze and Iron Ages of Mongolia.
kblowry@uchicago.edu
Anthropology

Dominik Lukas
Digital applications in archaeology, systems of documentation, digital archives.
Anthropology
Latin America, Peru; Landscape/space/place, pastoralism and mobility; ritual; GIS, regional survey, mortuary archaeology, human osteology, lithics; Bronze Age/Iron Age subsistence shift in West-Central Mongolia. "Tracing a Transition: Political Economies of the Bronze and Iron Ages of Mongolia.
willmccollum@uchicago.edu
Anthropology
Islamic Archaeology. Veronica is a maritime archaeologist who studies harbors, exchange networks, and maritime cultural landscapes in the eastern Mediterranean. She is interested in early Islamic trade, coastal communities, and the rise of the Muslim navy. Veronica received her MA from the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M, as well as a certificate in the Conservation of Archaeological Resources. She is a research associate at the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, where she has most recently co-directed the partial excavation and recording of a 3rd Dynasty boat burial at Abusir. Veronica has worked on archaeological projects around the globe, including terrestrial sites in Egypt, Vietnam, and Hawaii, underwater excavations in Alexandria, Greece, Bermuda, and Tobago, and deepwater surveys off Crete and Israel. After three years as a CRM project supervisor in Hawaii, Veronica co-founded a photogrammetry company that creates interactive 3D exhibits for at-risk and inaccessible archaeological sites.
NELC
Studies pre-Columbian and Colonial Latin American art history. Her research explores the multivalence of colonial aesthetics and the ways in which the pre-Columbian tradition was condensed and transformed in colonial art.
Art History
West Africa, Senegal; Historical archaeology and anthropology of West Africa, specifically Senegal; archaeology of gender and education, domestic archaeology, religion & conversion, food studies, missionization, practice theory, historical ecology, humna/plant relationships, archaeobotany.
Cultivating Catholicism: Practice, Gender, and the 'Civilizing Mission' in Colonial Senegal (ca 1860-1939).
jpacyga@uchicago.edu
Anthropology

Resham Tessa Redmond
West Africa, Mexico, Central America. Postcolonial archaeology, community-based research, activist research methods.
Anthropology

Sasha Rohret
Egyptian Archaeology, with a specialty in zooarchaeology. Sasha's research interests include domestication and animal husbandry in the ancient Near East, state provisioning and household economies, and the link between production strategies and the political economy. Her dissertation work focuses on the use of faunal remains from Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period contexts at Edfu and Dendera to understand if and how production strategies changed after the collapse of the centralized government, and if these changes impacted the economic structure at these settlement sites. Sasha has been a teaching assistant for undergraduate courses in New Kingdom Archaeology and Bioarchaeology at the University of Chicago, and will teach a course on Forensic Archaeology in Winter 2018. She has also been actively involved in museum education at the Oriental Institute where she has given lectures and designed and implemented student and family programs.
NELC
Near Eastern Art and Archaeology. Akiva is a Neubauer Graduate Fellow specializing in Mesopotamian Art and Archaeology. He is interested in mobility during the rise and fall of one of the world’s first urban networks in northern Mesopotamia. Specifically, his research is concerned with mutually transformative interactions on the edges of this network with highland societies of the Kura Araxes Cultural Tradition. Previously, Akiva has worked on genetic diversity in present-day highland Georgia and other regions, and he has published an article on the application of a new methodology for analyzing the sex of ceramic producers to episodes of state-formation at Tell Leilan, Syria. Akiva has excavated in Israel, Jordan, Turkey, and Georgia.
NELC
Egyptian Archaeology. Émilie's interests include settlement archaeology, the interactions between ancient Egypt and Nubia, and the political uses and misuses of archaeology. She is also interested in the role of museums in transmitting and shaping our modern perceptions of the past. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Classics with honors from McGill University, and has participated in various archaeological excavations in Canada and in France. Since 2015, she has been a member of the Oriental Institute missions excavating at Tell Edfu and Dendera. She has also been working with the Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes of the Oriental Institute since 2013, on diverse projects utilizing GIS for archaeological and heritage purposes. She was co-coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop in 2015-2016, and is currently working with the Oriental Institute Museum to design the display maps for the renewal of the galleries.
NELC
Claudio is a comparatist interested in the construction of cultures and ideologies through myth and religion, with an emphasis on archaeological and anthropological materials, relationship between texts and material cultures. Interested in museums and the construction of academic narratives related to Greco-Roman, Italic, and ANE archaeology. ASCSA Member (Summer School 2016).
Classics/Comp. Lit.
Egyptian Archaeology, with a particular focuses on monumental architecture, urbanism, landscape archaeology, and the materiality of borders in the ancient Egyptian world. His dissertation traces the development of monumental enclosure walls in ancient Egypt from the Predynastic through the Second Intermediate Period, with special attention to both the construction techniques employed to build such features and the broader social and political meanings of these walling projects. Oren has participated in field projects at Tell Edfu, Dendara, and Mendes, and since 2016 has worked with the Afghan Heritage Mapping Project at the Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes.
NELC
Samantha Suppes
Near Eastern art and archaeology, with research interests in the Bronze Age and Iron Age of the Southern Levant. Her research focuses on the influences of empires like Egypt and Assyria on this region’s culture and development. She received her undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University and her masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, she has worked at several archaeological sites in Israel including Ashkelon, Tel Shimron, Megiddo, Qumran Caves, and the City of David.
NELC

South Asia - North India; Identity, urbanization, paleoenvironmental research, ceramic technology and trade, geoarchaeology, lithics.
Tradition, Conversion and Place: The Khanzada of Mewat 1200-1950.
mudit@uchicago.edu
Anthropology
Private Houses and Palace Administration: Household Economies and Sociopolitical Development in late 3rd Millennium BC Tell Asmar, Mesopotamia.
NELC
Latin America, Inka.
The Inka Empire's Economic System and Civil War, 1527-1532.
juanjose.villarias@cchs.csic.es
Anthropology
Research interests: Greek and Near Eastern interactions; ideologies of power in the Early Iron Age. Dissertation theme: What’s in a Name? Identity, Difference, Archaeology, and the Ionian Experience in the Archaic Period.
Classics, Program in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Teagan Wolter
Near Eastern Art and Archaeology. She is interested in interregional interactions throughout Mesopotamia and Central Asia. She got her BA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she majored in German and anthropology, with a minor in archaeology. After getting an MA through the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, she entered the PhD program in NELC. She attended field school in Belize at Buena Vista and has had subsequent excavation experience in Turkey. She has been on archaeological surveys in Azerbaijan and in Armenia. Since entering beginning her PhD, she has received Kosciuszko Foundation Tuition Scholarship, the Phi Kappa Phi Love of Learning Award, and a FLAS fellowship for studying Turkish.
NELC
Studies history of art and architecture on the Silk Road, with a focus on the arts and culture of the Xianbei (proto-Mongols) and the Sogdians (an Eastern Iranian people). His dissertation discusses sarcophagi of the Northern Dynasties (386-581 CE), a politically divisive but culturally brilliant period in Chinese history.
Art History




