New Faculty Appointments

The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University is pleased to announce the addition of two new professors to the faculty: Lorenzo d'Alfonso and Roderick B. Campbell.

Lorenzo d'Alfonso, Assistant Professor of Ancient Western Asian Archaeology and History

Professor d'Alfonso earned his MA in Ancient Civilizations from the University of Pavia (1997) and his PhD in Ancient Anatolian and Aegean Studies from the University of Florence (2002). Since then he has worked as a post-doctoral fellow and adjunct professor at the Universities of Mainz, Konstanz, and Pavia.

His main research interests concern the social, juridical, and political history of Syria and Anatolia under the Hittite Empire and during its aftermath (16th-7th centuries BC). On these themes he has published a monograph on the judicial procedures of the Hittite administration in Syria (2005), a website of textual references (The Emar Online Database), more than 30 articles in volumes and journals, and co-edited two important volumes.

From 2006 to 2009 he was the director of an archaeological survey in Southern Cappadocia, and since 2010 he has concentrated his efforts on the site of Kınık Höyük (Nigde, Turkey)

Roderick B. Campbell, Assistant Professor of Early Chinese Art and Archaeology

Professor Campbell graduated from Harvard in 2007 with a dual degree in
 Anthropology (Archaeology) and East Asian Languages and Civilizations 
(Chinese History). Prior to coming to ISAW he was the Peter Moores Research Fellow in Chinese Archaeology at Merton College, University of Oxford. His research has been focused on theorizing ancient
 social-political organization, social violence and history and his 
geographical and temporal focus has been late 2nd millennium BC north
 China although an interest in broader comparison and long-term change is
 beginning to draw him beyond Shang China.

 With training as an archaeologist, historian and
 epigrapher, his work attempts to unite disparate sources of evidence 
with contemporary social theory.

Professor Campbell’s current fieldwork project, a collaboration with archaeologists from
 the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is a zooarchaeological production analysis on what may be the world’s largest collection of
 worked bone at Anyang, the last capital of the Shang dynasty. Recent 
publications have included an article on early complex polities for
 Current Anthropology and a report on the Origin of Chinese 
Civilization Project (with Yuan Jing) for Antiquity. He has recently 
finished an edited volume manuscript on Violence and Civilization for 
the Joukowsky Institute publication series and is finishing up another 
manuscript on the archaeology of the Chinese Bronze Age for the Cotsen
 Institute. He has received numerous fellowships, awards and grants for 
his work including ones from the Luce Archaeology Initiative, the 
Chiang Ching-kuo foundation, and the Canadian Social Sciences and 
Humanities Research Council.

Professor Campbell will begin offering seminars this fall, and Professor d'Alfonso in the spring of 2012. Please join us in welcoming them to our community.

Roger Bagnall, Leon Levy Director