Abbas Alizadeh

Abbas Alizadeh

University of Chicago
2006 & 2000 Grant Recipient
Abbas Alizadeh

Ancient Settlement Systems and Cultures in the Ram Hormuz Plain, Southwestern Iran: Excavations at Tall-e Geser and Regional Survey of the Ram Hormuz Area (2006 Award – Published 2014) 

Chogha Mish Volume II: The Development of a Prehistoric Regional Center in Lowland Sisiana, Southwestern Iran: Final Report on the Last Six Seasons of Excavation, 1972-1978 (2000 Award – Published 2008) 

Since 1985, Dr. Abbas Alizadeh has conducted numerous archaeological excavations and surveys in the Levant, Anatolia, Iran and Iraq. Dr. Alizadeh's academic research is primarily focused on the role of ancient nomads in the development of early complex societies in the Middle East. Born in Tehran in 1951, Alizadeh took his BA in Iranian archaeology and art history at Tehran University in 1975. He continued his studies in the US and received his PhD in 1988 at Chicago. He moved to Harvard University to become associate curator of the Semitic Museum and assistant professor as well as associate director of the Ashkelon Expedition and director of the Ashkelon archaeological lab at the Albright Institute from 1990 to 1991. In 1991, Alizadeh was offered a post as senior research associate to direct the decades-old Iranian Prehistoric Project; Alizadeh is now a research associate professor at the OI and director of the OI Nippur Expedition.

His research and publication on the prehistoric regional center of Tall-e Geser (a.k.a. Tall-e Ghazir) was supported by a generous White-Levy Grant. Tall-e Geser is in the eastern frontier of lowland Susiana in the Ram Hormuz region, an area where both ethnically and archaeologically can be considered a buffer zone between the highland and lowland polities of the 5th and 4th millennia BC. The site is the largest population center in this pivotal region. The published archaeological materials are of great importance in addressing socio-economic relationships between the lowlands and highlands on the one hand and the development of proto-Elamite civilization on the other.

 

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