Long-term Research Fellowships at the American Center of Oriental Research

FAIN: RA-259220-18

American Center of Research (Alexandria, VA 22314-2909)
Barbara A. Porter (Project Director: August 2017 to March 2020)
Pearce Paul Creasman (Project Director: March 2020 to present)

6 months of stipend support (one fellowship) per year for two years and a contribution to defray costs associated with the selection of fellows.

The American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan. The ACOR-NEH Fellowship contributes significantly to the mission of ACOR’s overall Fellowship Program by supporting the research of a senior scholar who has a well-established and productive research and publication record in Jordan and the Middle East and who also serves as an influential mentor during their ACOR residency. Visiting scholars conduct critical on-the-ground research and take advantage of ACOR’s exceptional library to research and write new scholarly publications. (edited by staff)

Associated Products

“I am We”: The Display of Socioeconomic Politics of Neolithic Commodification (Book Section)
Title: “I am We”: The Display of Socioeconomic Politics of Neolithic Commodification
Author: Rollefson, Gary
Editor: M. Benz, T. Watkins and H.G.K. Gebel
Abstract: Competition for resources (arable land, pasturage) within settled farming populations became increasingly intensive as those populations grew. One strong measure to reduce the tensions that might lead to conflicts over such commodified aspects of the environment was the development of corporate kinship groups that established exclusive access to certain land parcels (among other resources) to their members; abiotic resources were also claimed exclusively, such as names, symbols, and myths. A cor-related development was the expression of corporate identities, signs that distinguished one corporate group from all others. While many of those signs may have been lost to prehistorians, others have survived. The site of ‘Ain Ghazal provides good evidence of such corporate identities as reflected in architectural clustering and ritual practices, particularly during the Middle PPNB (MPPNB) and Late PPNB (LPPNB) periods.
Year: 2018
Publisher: ex oriente
Book Title: The Construction of Neolithic Corporate Identities
ISBN: 9783944178110

The Lower and Middle Paleolithic of the Southern Levant (Book Section)
Title: The Lower and Middle Paleolithic of the Southern Levant
Author: Rollefson, Gary
Editor: A. Yasur-Landau, E. Cline and Y. Rowan
Abstract: The early evolution of human ancestry occurred in Africa, and sometime near the Plio-Pleistocene boundary members of Homo erectus grade first ventured outside the African continent. The migration must have passed through southwestern Asia, marking the beginning of a long and gradual evolution both physically and culturally in what is today the southern Levant. Although evidence for the earliest emergence into the region is rare, recent advances in chronometric dating have placed the changing trajectories of both cultural and physical evolution on firmer foundations. The ensuing developments have become more numerous, continuous, and understandable during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic periods through the disappearance of Archaic Homo sapiens at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, some 45,000 years ago.
Year: 2019
Publisher: Cambridge University
Book Title: The Social Archaeology of the Levant: From Prehistory to the Present
ISBN: 9781316661468

At the Core of the Matter: Aspects of Late Neolithic Lithic Production at Wisad Pools, Black Desert, Jordan (Book Section)
Title: At the Core of the Matter: Aspects of Late Neolithic Lithic Production at Wisad Pools, Black Desert, Jordan
Author: Rollefson, Gary
Editor: S. Nakamura, T. Adachi and M. Abe
Abstract: The Eastern Badia Archaeological Project (EBAP) began in- tensive investigation of two sites in the basalt ?elds of Jordan’s panhandle in 2008 (Fig. 1). Surveys [Rollefson et al. 2014; Rowan et al. 2014] and subsequent excavations were undertaken at the southwestern edge of the basalt in the Wadi al-Qattafi, located about 60 km ESE of North Azraq [Rollefson et al. 2017] and at Wisad Pools, an additional 60 km east of Qattafi at the eastern edge of the harra [Rollefson et al. 2011; Rowan et al. 2015]. While the EBAP investigations at both sites are continuing, sufficient samples of stone tool production allow for a preliminary interpretation of the lithic technology and behavior of the residents of these sites that spanned more than a millennium (~6,600-5400 calBC) during the Late Neolithic period. Cores provide basic insights into how strategies of core reduction affect the production of blanks and tools and how these strategies may have evolved over time [e.g. Barket 2016:306-307]. That is the focus of this study: examining patterns of lithic production by looking at cores recovered from structures W-66 [cf. Rollefson et al. 2012] and from W-80 [Rollefson et al. 2015] at Wisad Pools.
Year: 2019
Publisher: Rokuichi Shobou
Book Title: Decades in Deserts: Essays on Western Asia Archaeology in Honor of Sumio Fujii
ISBN: 9784864451116

Tumultuous Times in the Eighth and Seventh Millennia BC in the Southern Levant (Book Section)
Title: Tumultuous Times in the Eighth and Seventh Millennia BC in the Southern Levant
Author: Rollefson, Gary
Editor: A. Marcianiak
Abstract: The second half of the seventh millennium BC saw the demise of the previously affluent and dynamic Neolithic way of life. The period is marked by significant social and economic transformations of local communities, as manifested in a new spatial organization, patterns of architecture, burial practices, and in chipped stone and pottery manufacture. This volume has three foci. The first concerns the character of these changes in different parts of the Near East with a view to placing them in a broader comparative perspective. The second concerns the social and ideological changes that took place at the end of Neolithic and the beginning of the Chalcolithic that help to explain the disintegration of constitutive principles binding the large centers, the emergence of a new social system, as well as the consequences of this process for the development of full-fledged farming communities in the region and beyond. The third concerns changes in lifeways: subsistence strategies, exploitation of the environment, and, in particular, modes of procurement, consumption, and distribution of different resources.
Year: 2019
Publisher: Lockwood
Book Title: Concluding the Neolithic. The Near East in the Second Half of the Seventh Millennium BC
ISBN: 1937040836

Intersectional Ecologies: Reimagining Anthropology and Environment (Article)
Title: Intersectional Ecologies: Reimagining Anthropology and Environment
Author: A. Moore
Author: Bridget Guarasci
Author: S.E. Vaughn
Abstract: N/A
Year: 2021
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Annual Review of Anthropology 50

The Art of Nature in Iraq's Marshes: Images of the Occupation (Article)
Title: The Art of Nature in Iraq's Marshes: Images of the Occupation
Author: Bridget Guarasci
Abstract: n/a
Year: 2021
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World

Bird Markets, Artisinal Pigeons, and Class Relations in the Middle East (Article)
Title: Bird Markets, Artisinal Pigeons, and Class Relations in the Middle East
Author: Bridget Guarasci
Abstract: n/a
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://merip.org/2020/10/bird-markets-artisinal-pigeons-and-class-relations-in-the-middle-east/
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Middle East Report 296
Publisher: Middle East Research and Information Project

The Climate of Occupation in Iraq (Blog Post)
Title: The Climate of Occupation in Iraq
Author: Bridget Guarasci
Abstract: n/a
Date: 01/25/2022
Primary URL: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/the-climate-of-occupation-in-iraq
Blog Title: Fieldsights: Theorizing the Contemporary
Website: Society for Cultural Anthropology

Ecologies of War (Blog Post)
Title: Ecologies of War
Author: E.J. Kim
Author: Bridget Guarasci
Abstract: This collection, Ecologies of War, extends ethnographic attention beyond “war itself” to include forms of war that are often unrecognized as such—in everyday experiences, material effects, and affective resonances of violence that have penetrated and contaminated the environments and ecologies of places where perpetual wars of US empire, never-ending wars, and peacelessness of political enmity continue. Although environmental historians have examined battlegrounds and landscapes altered by military activities and technologies, these essays bring an explicitly anthropological approach to essential entanglements of wars and ecologies, characterized by proliferations and archives of violence.
Date: 01/25/2022
Primary URL: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/ecologies-of-war
Blog Title: Fieldsights: Theorizing the Contemporary
Website: Society for Cultural Anthropology

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