Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Fields of Study
- Near Eastern Archaeology
Areas of Interest
- Rise of urbanism in the ancient Near East
- Emergence of bureaucratic complexity
- Early warfare and conflict management
- Text archaeology (conceptual approaches to integrated archaeological/textual research)
(On Leave: January 1 to December 31, 2024)
Biography
As a Mesopotamian Archaeologist trained at the University of Chicago (Ph.D. 2001), my research focuses on the ancient cultures of Sumer, Assyria and Babylonia. Field work has encompassed much of my career. Since 1992 I have excavated widely in Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt, mostly focusing of various aspects of urban development. Between 2005 and 2010 I co-directed the Syrian-American excavations at Hamoukar in Northeastern Syria, a Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze age urban center. Since 2002, I have also directed the online publication of 15,000 unpublished artifacts from the Diyala Expedition, conducted by the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute during the 1930s. In the near future I hope to commence excavations at the site of Tell al-Uqair (Southern Iraq) to further investigate the emergence of urbanism within Southern Mesopotamia around 4000 BC.
Education
Publications
- ’Human Instincts, Canine Intelligence, and Monkey Features’: The Gutians and other “Mountain People” in Mesopotamian and 20th Century Scholarly Perspectives (Czech Institute of Egyptology, Prague : 2019)
- Centre and Periphery—the Role of the ‘Palace of the Rulers’ at Tell Asmar in the History of Ešnunna (2,100 –1,750 BCE) (Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies, Toronto, Ontario : 2018)
- A view from the east: The Godin VI Oval and the Uruk Sphere (Elsevier : 2016)
- Bureaucratic Backlashes - the agency of record-keeping in the development of early Mesopotamian society (University of Colorado Press, Boulder : 2013)
- Early Bronze Age Hamoukar: "Akkadian" - and Beyond? (Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden : 2012)
- Beyond the Garden of Eden – Competition and Early Warfare in Northern Syria (4500–3000 B.C.) (Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte, Halle : 2009)
- Cataloguing the Losses—The Oriental Institute’s Iraq Museum Database Project (Oriental Institute Museum Publications, Chicago : 2008)
- The King is Dead, Long Live the King—the Last Days of the Shusin Cult at Eshnunna and its Aftermath (Oriental Institute, Oriental Institute Seminars 4, Chicago : 2008)
- Beyond Cataloguing Losses: The Oriental Institute’s Iraq Museum Database Project, University of Chicago (Taylor and Francis Online : 2005)