Emily Hammer holds a PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University (2012) and a BA both in Mathematics and Classical & Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College (2006). Her research and teaching interests include the development of complex societies in the ancient Near East and the impacts these societies had on their environments. Her methodological expertise is in landscape archaeology, employing GIS and spatial analysis to integrate the results of archaeological survey and excavation with data gleaned from historical texts, ethnography, environmental records, digital terrain models, and satellite imagery.
Emily’s project at ISAW, “Dynamics of Settlement and Transhumance in Agricultural Peripheries on the Fringes of Ancient Mesopotamia,” will explore the past relationship between human communities and agriculturally marginal landscapes in the Middle East and South Caucasus. Data for the project are drawn from past surveys that illuminate regional settlement trajectories over the last eight millennium along the Tigris River in southeastern Turkey and a new ongoing survey of highland and steppe zones in Naxçıvan, Azerbaijan. This project builds upon her PhD dissertation on the archaeology of pastoral nomadism in Ottoman Period (ca. 1500-1920 AD) Diyarbakır Province, Turkey, as well as her research on the environmental adaptations of sedentary and mobile communities of the Iron Age (ca. 3000 BP) in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.