Gil Stein

University of Chicago, Oriental Institute, Faculty Member

Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Conference & Workshop Grants, Faculty Member

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Gil J. Stein is Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the Oriental Institute and in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He also serves as Director of the Chicago Center for Cultural Heritage Preservation. He received his BA from Yale University in 1978 and his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988. He has excavated and surveyed in Arizona, New Mexico, Turkey, Syria, and the Kurdistan region in Northeast Iraq. His main research interests focus on the development of early urbanism and complex societies in the Near East, cultural heritage, zooarchaeology, inter-regional interaction, economic systems, and the archaeology of ancient colonies. He has written over 50 journal articles, book chapters, and reviews, and the book Rethinking World Systems: Diasporas, Colonies, and Interaction in Uruk Mesopotamia, and the edited volume The Archaeology of Colonial Encounters – Comparative Perspectives. From 1992-1997 he directed excavations at the 4th millennium BC site of Hacinebi in the Euphrates valley of southeast Turkey, where an Uruk trading enclave was established inside a local Late Chalcolithic Anatolian settlement. From 2008-2010 he directed the Oriental Institute’s excavations at the prehistoric 6th-5th millennium BC site of Tell Zeidan in the Euphrates Valley, Syria in a project focused on the Ubaid period and the emergence of social complexity in North Syria/Upper Mesopotamia. Starting in 2013, he is currently directing excavations of the Chalcolithic mound of Surezha in the Erbil Governate, Kurdistan region, Northern Iraq. Since 2012, he has been director of the Oriental Institute’s Partnership with the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. This 5 year cultural heritage preservation project funded by the US State Department has been helping to rebuild the information infrastructure of the National Museum of Afghanistan by training museum staff, developing a bilingual Dari-English computer database for the museum, and conducting the first ever complete inventory of the objects in its collections. From 2002-2017 he served as Director of the Oriental Institute.
Phone: office: 773-702-4098
Address: Oriental Institute
University of Chicago
1155 East 58th St.
Chicago, IL 60202
USA

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2024 (Gil J. Stein and Michael Fisher) “Surezha Excavations 2023 Field Season” ISAC Annual Report 2023-2024 pp 71-84. University of Chicago Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Publications.

ISAC Annual Report 2023-2024, 2024

Excavations by the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC) of the University of Chicag... more Excavations by the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC) of the University of Chicago at Tell Surezha on the Erbil Plain in the Kurdistan region of northeastern Iraq investigate the prehistoric roots of the earliest towns and later cities in northern Mesopotamia during the Chalcolithic period from roughly 5500 to 3500 bce. Surezha is an ideal site for exploring the chronology, economy, and developmental sequence of the Erbil Plain in this period because the high mound at Surezha is largely prehistoric, with only limited later occupation from the Middle Assyrian period and the Iron Age. Located at the southwestern edge of the modern village of Gund-i Surezha, the ancient site of Surezha has three parts: (1) the prehistoric high mound, (2) the terrace, and (3) the Hellenistic through Islamic-period lower town. The cone-shaped high mound and terrace measure approximately 188 m from northwest to southeast and 150 m from southwest to northeast, with an area of approximately 2.8 ha (fig. 1). The high mound rises to a height of 16 m above the terrace. The terrace surrounding the base of the high mound is about 2 m high and slopes gradually down over a distance of approximately 70 m to the lower town, which extends out from the terrace in all directions. Taken together, the archaeological deposits in these three areas total approximately 20 ha.

Gil Stein

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