Archaeology of Western Asia

Members

Jérôme KAHL

I am an archaeologist and PhD candidate at the Department of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology, University of Vienna. I am interested in exploring the dimensions of identity to sketch the trajectory of mortuary behavior and practices in northwest Arabia. For that, I am integrating various fields in an interdisciplinary manner, while specializing in archaeometallurgy with a focus on alloying practices, manufacturing techniques, and lead- isotope-based provenance studies. My dissertation project “Forging Identity: Metallurgy and Visual Culture in the Construction of the Self in Ancient Arabia” investigates different facets of identity through an interdisciplinary analysis of multiple proxies throughout the Bronze Age in northwestern Arabia. In this interdisciplinary and bottom-up approach I combine the four approaches: 1. Funerary archaeology, 2. Archaeometallurgy, 3. Visual culture, and 4. Isotope-based mobility studies of both of humans and metal artifacts. The case study verges on the findings in the North Arabian oasis of Qurayyah, a site that provides a unique diachronic sequence of funerary activities. By combining multiple proxies, the aim of the project is to understand how ancient people forged and expressed different facets of identities through time. I am a member of the Qurayyah Joint Archaeological Project, and the dissertation project is supervised by an international supervisory team: Prof. Marta Luciani (HEAS Team leader) from the University of Vienna, Prof. Nima Nezafati from Ruhr…

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Department of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology (IUHA) Members

Doralice KLAINSCEK

I am an archaeologist and PhD candidate at the Department of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology, University of Vienna, where I am a project collaborator in Marta Luciani’s team for the FWF-funded project I6562 “ANAPAN: A New Approach to Pottery of Arabia and its Neighbors” (ANAPAN - FWF). My dissertation project “Tracing Socio-Economic Dynamics through Pottery Manufacture and Distribution: a Diachronic and Interregional Perspective from NW Arabia” investigates the socio-economic dynamics associated with the manufacture, use and distribution of pottery. The focus is on vessels from the Bronze and Iron Age site of Qurayyah –a 300ha walled multi-phase oasis-settlement in the Hejaz region of NW Arabia. Results are further contextualized in the broader NW Arabian and Southern Levantine region. I am employing an interdisciplinary chaîne-opératoire-oriented approach, studying the material through macroscopic and microscopic (petrographic) analyses and combining archaeological, technological and archaeometric perspectives.

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Department of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology (IUHA) Team Leaders

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.

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