Mesopotamia, women’s roles in Syria and Mesopotamia. She has published a number
of books and essays on Near Eastern art and archaeology.Holly Pittmanis Bok Family Professor at the University of Pennsylvania where she
teaches the art and archaeology of the Ancient Near East. She also serves as Curator
in the Near East Section in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology. Her work focuses primarily on the visual art of the Bronze Age Near
East and especially on the imagery of glyptic art.Jennifer R. Pournelledevelops multidisciplinary international research programs for
the University of South Carolina’s Environment and Sustainability Program. She has
conducted fieldwork in nine countries, including Iraq. She currently leads The Sealands
Archaeology and Environment Program in the south of that country. Her work has been
featured in Scienceand The New York Times, and on The Discovery Channel and
National Geographic Television.
Tonia Sharlach, a specialist in the Third Dynasty of Ur, holds degrees from Cambridge
and Harvard. She is currently an Associate Professor of Ancient History at Oklahoma
State University in Stillwater.
Alice Stevensonis currently a researcher in World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers
Museum, University of Oxford. Educated at the University of Cambridge (BA, Ph.D.),
she specialises in the analysis of mortuary practices of the Egyptian Predynastic period
and is presently undertaking research into Nubian A-group rituals. She has worked
for the Egypt Exploration Society and has held teaching and research positions at
the Institute of Archaeology, UCL. Her recent publications include The Predynastic
Cemetery of el-Gerzeh( 2009 ) and a co-edited volume on the Pitt Rivers Museum’s
World Archaeology collections (forthcoming).
Elizabeth C. Stoneis a Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook
University. She has focused her research on the organisation of ancient Near Eastern
- especially Mesopotamian – cities with an emphasis on the residential component.
She has directed excavations at ‘Ain Dara in Syria, at the Ayanis Outer Town in Turkey
and at Mashkan-shapir and Tell Sakhariya in Iraq.
Claudia E. Suterstudies ancient Near Eastern images and texts. Among her interests
are visual and verbal communication, cultural identities and ideologies of ruling classes
in pre-modern societies. Her publications include Gudea’s Temple Building: The
Representation of an Early Mesopotamian Ruler in Text and Image, “Between Human and
Divine: High Priestesses in Images from the Akkad to the Isin-Larsa Period”, and
“Luxury Goods in Ancient Israel: Questions of Consumption and Production”.
Jon Tayloris Curator of Cuneiform Collections in the Department of the Middle East
at the British Museum. His research interests include literacy and education in the
ancient Near East, the palaeography of cuneiform, and the non-textual features of clay
documents. Currently he is investigating attitudes towards and uses of the past in the
ancient Near East itself.
–– Contributors ––xviii