New ISAW Faculty Appointment for Spring 2013
The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Daniel T. Potts as Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology and History, effective January 2013. Dr. Potts comes to us from the University of Sydney where he was Edwin Cuthbert Hall Chair of Middle Eastern Archaeology for over twenty years. Dr. Potts received his PhD in Near Eastern Archaeology from Harvard University in 1980 and then taught at the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Copenhagen, where he completed his Habilitation in 1991.
Although his research interests are wide-ranging, the majority of his scholarly work has focused on the cultural developments in Iran, Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula, as well as relations between these regions and their neighbors. Chronologically his span is far-reaching; from the Neolithic to late antiquity, but his main focus has been on the transition from pre-history to the Bronze Age in Mesopotamia and Iran, especially the 3rd millennium BCE.
Dr. Potts has led and participated in numerous excavation projects in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Arabian Archaeology & Epigraphy, a Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is he author of the books In the Land of the Emirates: The Archaeology and History of the UAE (2012), Mesopotamia, Iran and Arabia from the Seleucids to the Sasanians (2010), Mesopotamian Civilization: The material foundations (1997), and The Archaeology of Elam (1999), among others, and has authored and edited a vast number of other books, volumes, chapters, and articles. Most recently he was the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Iranian Archaeology (2013).
Dr. Potts will begin offering seminars in the Spring 2013 semester. Please join us in welcoming him into the ISAW community.