Bryan Hanks completed his PhD in archaeology at the University of Cambridge, UK in 2003. His dissertation focused on the complexity of human-animal relationships during the Early Iron Age (800-300 BCE) of the Urals and Western Siberia and investigated the use of animal imagery in art, animal sacrifice in the mortuary sphere, and changing economic patterns of pastoral nomadism in the first millennium BCE. He currently holds the position of tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and is Associate Director of the Center for Comparative Archaeology there. His research interests include the Bronze and Iron Ages of the Eurasian steppes, mortuary archaeology, social organization of early mobile pastoralists, and early metallurgical production and exchange. He has been conducting collaborative archaeological research in Russia since 1998 and is currently the director of a National Science Foundation funded project on Middle Bronze Age (2100-1700 BCE) developments connected with the Sintashta culture in the Southern Urals, Russia. His research project at ISAW focuses on the completion of a book on the Eurasian steppe Iron Age that is contracted for publication with Cambridge University Press.