Asst. Prof. Melis Uzdurum

My research interests are focused on Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic communities in Anatolia and Southwest Asia, complex societies, techno-environmental dynamics of earthen building materials specifically mudbricks, the relationship between human material culture and the environment, and microarchaeological and geoarchaeological approaches and methods. I am interested in further developing expertise in environmental archaeology, a field that includes using components of soils and sediments as proxies for environmental conditions in the human past.

My current field of interests concentrate on the integration of archaeological sciences and social theory, archaeological micromorphology, microarchaeology, multi-proxy archaeological data and materiality. I focus on chaîne opératoire approaches and methods that have been conducted on earthen material to understand micro indicators of building biographies and expand the limits of our knowledge of cultural identities and norms. I appeal to geoarchaeological methods, specifically micromorphology as a tool to create social interpretations of the mudbrick architecture.