This book features a collection of papers produced in honour of Roger Matthews, Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Reading. Roger previously taught at UCLs Institute of Archaeology (20012010), before which he served as the Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (BSAI, today BISI) in Baghdad and the British Institute at Ankara (BIA) in the 1980s and 1990s.
The volume honours Rogers legacy by assembling interdisciplinary research by his students, collaborators, and colleagues that maps challenges and new possibilities in the archaeology of Southwest Asia across the interrelated themes that have emerged from his work in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Türkiye.
Foreword
Author Biographies
Selected Publications by Roger Matthews
1. Devolving Early Neolithic community ecology: animal connections and
interactions at Bestansur, Iraq Robin Bendrey
2. If only those jaws could move. A narrative of Building 1 at Çatalhöyük
Ian Hodder
3. Beyond subsistence: new perspectives on Sialk North village, 6000-4900
BCE
Hassan Fazeli Nashli, Javad Hussainzadeh and Jebraeil Nokandeh
4. Cities, symbols and deities: ancient and modern constructions of political
power in Late Chalcolithic southern Iraq
Mónica Palmero Fernández
5. Washing hands and feet? Personal hygiene at Abu Salabikh (and further
north)
Nicholas Postgate
6. To change, or not to change Transitional glyptic styles in ED II Fara /
uruppak and their relation to officialdom
Adelheid Otto
7. Two Babylonian beakers and an unpublished report on excavations at Ur in
1858
John Curtis
8. How high were the walls of Mesopotamia?
John MacGinnis
9. Large-scale pottery production at Middle Bronze Age Qatna
Daniele Morandi Bonacossi
10. The beads from the Achaemenid period of the archaeological site of
Barikot, Swat Valley, northern Pakistan (c. 500-350 BCE): a preliminary
typological study
Mubariz Ahmed Rabbani
Interlude 1: Rogers deconstruction seminar
Birger Ekornåsvåg Helgestad
11. Human-environmental interactions in the Zagros region from the
Epipalaeolithic to the Neolithic period: key debates and issues
Maria Rabbani
12. Still mind the gap: a note on the missing millennium between the Late
Epipaleolithic and the Transitional Neolithic in the Central Zagros
Hojjat Darabi
13. The walking dead: a brief view on the mobility of mortuary remains and
practices in the Neolithic central Zagros and adjacent regions
Judith Thomalsky
14. Rural fortitude at Çadr Höyük: the 5.9 and 5.2 kya climate events on the
Anatolian plateau
Madelynn von Baeyer, Sharon R. Steadman and Benjamin Arbuckle
15. Commensality, ritual and the making of transtopographic communities
Claudia Glatz
16. Ancient neighbourhoods
Alessandra Salvin
17. Alas the destroyed city! A search for private houses of the Ur III
period at Ur
Elizabeth Stone and Paul Zimansky
18. Thinking through and beyond the hinterland: towards a critical
archaeology of rural settlements in Western Asia
Christoph Bachhuber
19. Hilltop forts and pasture control: the spatial organisation of the
semi-nomadic communities in the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age South
Caucasus
Guido Guarducci
20. Archaeology of the recent past in mountainous Kurdistan: Kani Gund
village
Karel Nováek, Lenka Starková and Hemin Naman Kawes
Interlude
2. A person of influence: in gratitude and admiration to Prof.
Roger Matthews
Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin
21. East India Company diplomats and antiquarians in early nineteenth-century
Iraq
Michael Seymour
22. Partialities, priorities and unintended glimpses of the archaeological
process: a review of the site reports of the British excavations at
Carchemish
Lisa Cooper
23. Reverting to the Fertile Crescent: the story of the CZAP project 2008
Yaghoub Mohammadifar with Leila Ghanbari
24. Leading transitions in research excavations: impacts of the excavations
at Neolithic Bestansur
Amy Richardson and Kamal Raeuf Aziz
25. Decolonising knowledge-making on Iraq: a conversation with Zahra Ali
Alesia Koush
Claudia Glatz is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Glasgow. Her research interests centre around the material production as well as resistance against early states and empires at both the landscape scale and through material culture. She is the author of numerous journal articles on the subject as well as the monograph The Making of Empire in Bronze Age Anatolia (CUP, 2020). She currently directs the Sirwan Regional Project in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which combines regional survey, excavations, and cultural heritage initiatives. A first monograph summarising this work was recently published (Sidestone Press 2024: Place, Encounter, and the Making of Communities) Mónica Palmero Fernández has a PhD in archaeology from the University of Reading. Between 2019 and 2022, she was Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Glasgow. She also served as Secretary of RASHID International between 2020 and 2025. Her research focuses on the interrelation between gender and the construction of power in antiquity, as well as the intersection of ethics, equitable research collaborations and the impacts of archaeology on society and the wider environment. She currently works at the University of Oxford in research strategy and policy. Amy Richardson is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Reading, developing integrated digital and scientific approaches to clay bureaucratic objects. After completing her PhD at Reading, she was CZAP Project Manager, Wainwright Fellow at the University of Oxford, and MENTICA Project Assistant Director. Her research integrates material science and network analysis to examine prehistoric communities. Michael Seymour is Associate Curator in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He completed his PhD at University College London and worked at the British Museum in the Department of the Middle East before joining The Met in 2011. His research has focused on the later reception and representation of ancient Southwestern Asia, particularly the city of Babylon, the early history of archaeology in Iraq, and Mesopotamian art of the first millennium BCE and early centuries CE.
