Marta LUCIANI

Marta Luciani is associate professor of Archaeology and History of Western Asia, spokesperson of the Cluster “Archaeology and Material Culture” of the Vienna Doctoral School of Historical and Cultural Studies and UNESCO world heritage list consultant. After heading excavations and surveys in Syria, Turkey and Italy, since the 2010s she directs the Joint Archaeological Project at Qurayyah in Saudi Arabia, the Northwest Sulaimaniyah Survey and excavations at Chemchemal in Iraqi Kurdistan and investigations on finds holdings of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (Tell el-Kheleifeh, Nuzi). As specialist of the Bronze and Iron Ages, passionate about human (as opposed to artificial) intelligence, she focuses her current research on investigating the formation of complex societies and urbanism in desert environments; through an FWF-funded interdisciplinary project (with OeAI/OeAW, TU Wien and University of Innsbruck) establishing with a multi-site approach ceramic production, use and circulation in NW Arabia and the Greater Levant; through metabolic analysis of ancient residues (with the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology) reconstructing ancient smellscapes and uses of medicinal and aromatic plants in the past; with BOKU, Wien, FU Berlin, DAI and OeAI/OeAW understanding human-nature (ancient fauna and flora) interplay in the genesis of anthropic landscapes, geomorphology and water resources in arid environments.