Position:

Associate Faculty Member

Faculty / College Address:

School of Archaeology

Email:

christoph.bachhuber@arch.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

My research interests include the Bronze Age material culture of the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean, and specific engagement with the archaeologies of value and of place. My fieldwork is located at the site Zincirli (ancient Sam’al) in southeastern Turkey, where I am investigating how and why long existing settlement mounds were transformed into monumental features in the landscape during the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2600-2200 BC, the focus of my fieldwork at Zincirli), and the Iron Age (ca. 900-600 BC, excavated a century ago). I am also developing a parallel project, which investigates how the site of Zincirli has been the focus of global flows of information, personnel, and power during three historical periods: ancient (Assyrian empire), modern (late 19^th-early 20^th century, German imperial ambitions and excavations), and post-modern (cultural development policies including American-led excavations).

Additional research interests include the late prehistoric and early historic archaeology of Turkey, archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Aegean prehistory, maritime archaeology in the Mediterranean, and an archaeology of value with specific interests in pre-coinage finance.

Current Projects:

• Project Head of the Early Bronze Age excavations at Zincirli (Ancient Sam’al) in southeastern Turkey, part of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli
• Associated Regional Chronologies of the Ancient Near East (ARCANE), Western Anatolia Research Group

Courses Taught:

• Materials and objects of the Ancient Near East in the Ashmolean
• Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations and History (tutor)
• Mesopotamia and Egypt to 2000 BC (tutor)

Recent Publications:

Monograph:

• in press (2013). The Early Bronze Age in Anatolia: citadels, cemeteries and an interpretation. Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology 15. London: Equinox

Edited Volume:

• 2009.  C. Bachhuber and R.G. Roberts (eds.) Forces of Transformation: The End of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean, Proceedings of an International Symposium held at St. John’s College, Oxford on the 25-6^th March 2006. Themes from the Ancient Near East BANEA Publication Series, Vol. 1.Oxford: Oxbow

Articles:

• 2009. ‘The Treasure Deposits of Troy: Rethinking Crisis and Agency on the Early Bronze Age Citadel,’ Anatolian Studies 59: 1-18
• 2006. ‘Aegean Interest on the Uluburun Ship,’ American Journal of Archaeology  110: 345-63
• in preparation . ‘A Prehistory of Finance’, to be submitted in early 2013

Invited Contributions:

• 2012. ‘Bronze Age Cities of the Plains and the Highlands: the Anatolian Plateau’  in D. Potts (ed.) Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, 575-95,Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
• 2012. ‘Sumer, Ebla, Akkad and Anatolia’ in H. Crawford (ed.) The Sumerian World, 498-516, London: Routledge
• 2012. ‘Cape Gelidonya Shipwreck’, ‘Keftiu’, ‘Sea Peoples’, ‘Troad’, ‘Troy’ and ‘Uluburun Shipwreck’, in R. Bagnall, K. Brodersen, C. Champion, A. Erskine and S. Hübner (eds.) Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell;  http://www.encyclopediaancienthistory.com/
• 2011. ‘Negotiating Metal and the Metal Form in the Royal Tombs of Alacahöyük in North-Central Anatolia’, in T. Wilkinson and S. Sherratt (eds.) Interweaving Worlds: systemic interactions in Eurasia, 7^th to 1^st millennia BC, 158-74. Oxford: Oxbow
• in press (2013). ‘James Mellaart and the Luwians: A Culture-(Pre)history’, (length 8000 words) in A. Mouton, I. Rutherford, and I. Yakubovich (eds.) Luwian Identities: culture, language and religion between Anatolia and the Aegean. Leiden: Brill
• in press (2013). ‘The Anatolian Context of Philia Material Culture on Cyprus’ (length 9000 words) in  A.B. Knapp and P. van Dommelen (eds.) The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze-Iron Age Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• in press (2013). ‘Settlement mounds in spectacle-scapes in Bronze Age Turkey ’, (length 6000 words) in J. Osborne (ed.) Approaching Monumentality in the Archaeological Record. Albany: SUNY Press

Non-academic Media:

• 2012. ‘Metal, mystification and the origins of money: a dialogue with the art of Lucy Skaer’, The Federal 3: 23-28

Further Info:

• Honorary Research Fellow and Sub-Faculty of the School of Archaeology, Oxford
• Research Fellow of the British Institute at Ankara, Turkey