Staff profile

Research Interests

I am a Landscape Archaeologist with a focus on Southwest and Central Asia during the Holocene. My main focus at the moment is directing the Climate, Landscapes, Settlement and Society (CLaSS) project, funded by an ERC Starting Grant, which began in January 2019 and examines the relationship between complex human societies and climate change over the last 8,000 years. I also have side interests in the emergence of inequality and urbanism, and on heritage management. 

I direct the Durham Archaeology Informatics Laboratory, a research hub dedicated to Landscape Archaeology, GIS and remote sensing and computational approaches to the archaeological record. I am a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and sit on the steering committees of the British Association of Near Eastern Archaeologists and the journal Iraq. I am the Durham Co-Investigator on the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project and the Computational Research in the Ancient Near East II (CRANE II) project. From 2017-2019 I was Deputy and Reviews Editor of the journal Antiquity. 

Climate Change

Climate change has been suggested to play a role in the history and prehistory of the Near East at a range of temporal scales. In the short term, so-called ‘collapse’ events brought about by extreme weather changes such as droughts have been blamed for declines in urban and rural population, social complexity, political systems and entire empires. At the other end of the scale, long term trends in complex phenomena such as urbanism or irrigation can be interpreted within the context of changing climate conditions. My research involves making large scale comparisons between settlement patterns, subsistence strategies, and land cover to identify the causal relationships between social and political organisation and environmental conditions

Cities and Empires

The last 8000 years has seen the emergence of urban sites, small scale polities and large territorial empires, all of which had profound effects on settlement patterns and landscapes. I have conducted research on the emergence of cities in Northern Mesopotamia during the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, and more recently in Eastern Kazakhstan at the site of Semiyarka which dates to the Final Bronze Age. I am interested in how and why people began to group together into larger agglomerations, and the effects this had on subsistence strategies, social systems and the wider landscape.

I am also interested in the impact of empires on landscapes, since they often have transformative effects. I was part of the ERC funded Persia and its Neighbours project (2012-2018) which investigated the frontiers of the Sasanian Empire, including the Gorgan Wall in northeastern Iran. I directed landscape surveys in Georgia, Oman, Iran and Azerbaijan and am currently bringing these to publication in a series of monographs, with colleagues from Durham and Edinburgh.

‘Big Data’ and Data Science in Archaeology

A major trend in recent archaeological research builds on new computational capabilities, especially Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and the combination of legacy data and remote sensing techniques to compose, integrate and manipulate large scale datasets. The shifts in the spatial and temporal scales of analysis we can now deal with allow us to see new patterns in old datasets, to combine different sources of data in new ways and ultimately to provide new perspectives on social and historical phenomena. The Archaeology Informatics Lab, which I direct, is at the forefront of these approaches. My own research also makes heavy use of satellite imagery data, including declassified CORONA spy photography.

Heritage Management and the Middle East

As part of the EAMENA project my research involves developing heritage management resources for countries in the Middle East and providing training to allow heritage bodies there to use and maintain the data. Building on datasets collected during my PhD and PDRA work, we have developed a database of sites in Syria and Iraq with several thousand records. Over the next few months we will be undertaking training courses in Lebanon and Iraq to build capacity among archaeologists and other stakeholders in the region.

I have been a lecturer in the department since October 2015. I completed my PhD in Durham (2013) after studying at University College London and the University of Cambridge, and was a post-doctoral researcher on the ERC funded Persia and its Neighbours Project. I also spent a semester as a fellow at the Digital Institute for Archaeology in the Centre for Advanced Spatial Technology, University of Arkansas.

• Archaeology of the Ancient Near East
• GIS and Remote Sensing
• Landscape Archaeology
• Long term human-environment interaction
• Urbanisation and the emergence of complex societies

• 2018: External Examiner, University of Glasgow:
• 2017: Member of Editorial Board, Iraq, Journal of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq:
• 2016: Member of the BANEA Steering Committee:
• 2016: Member, AHRC Peer Review College:

Book review

• Lawrence, D. (in press). New Book Chronicle. Antiquity, 92(362), https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.37
• Lawrence, D. (in press). New Book Chronicle. Antiquity, 92(364), https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.133
• Lawrence, D. (2019). New Book Chronicle. Antiquity, 93(367), 280 - 285. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.262
• Lawrence, D. (2018). New Book Chronicle. Antiquity, 92(361), https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2017.245
• Lawrence, D. (2018). New Book Chronicle. Antiquity, 92(363), https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.90
• Lawrence, D. (2018). New Book Chronicle. Antiquity, 92(366), https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.237
• Lawrence, D. (2018). New Book Chronicle. Antiquity, 92(365), https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.203

Chapter in book

• de Gruchy, M., & Lawrence, D. (in press). Route Studies Across Greater Mesopotamia: Past, Present, and Future. In T. Kalayci (Ed.), Archaeologies of Roads. The Digital Press, University of North Dakota
• Hopper, K., Omrani Rekavandi, H., Ricci, A., Welton, L., Lawrence, D., & Philip, G. (2022). Sasanian landscapes of the Gorgan Plain: new insights from remote sensing and field survey. In E. Sauer, J. Nokandeh, & H. Omrani Rekavandi (Eds.), Ancient Arms Race: Antiquity's Largest Fortresses and Sasanian Military Networks of Northern Iran: A joint fieldwork project by the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research, the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism and the University of E. Oxbow Books
• Fobbe, S., Navrouzov, N., Hopper, K., Khudida Burjus, A., Philip, G., Nawaf, M. G., …Mishko, F. (2021). Cultural Heritage Destruction during the Islamic State's Genocide against the Yazidis. In J. Rehman, A. Shahid, & S. Foster (Eds.), The Asian Yearbook of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (111-114). Brill Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004466180_006
• Hopper, K., Lawrence, D., Pitskhelauri, K., & Philip, G. (2020). Appendix III. Investigations of ancient canal systems in central and eastern Georgia. In E. Sauer, L. Chologauri, A. Gabunia, K. Hopper, D. Lawrence, E. MacDonald, …et al. (Eds.), Dariali: the Caspian Gates' in the Caucasus from Antiquity to the Age of the Huns and the Middle Ages. The joint Georgian-British Dariali Gorge excavations & surveys 2013-2016 (937-954). Oxbow Books
• Hopper, K., Lawrence, D., Snape-Kennedy, L., Chologauri, L., Priestman, S., Pitskelauri, K., & Philip, G. (2020). Landscape investigations in the Dariali Pass, Georgia. In E. Sauer, L. Chologauri, A. Gabunia, K. Hopper, D. Lawrence, E. MacDonald, …A. E. A. Tiliakou (Eds.), Dariali: the Caspian Gates' in the Caucasus from Antiquity to the Age of the Huns and the Middle Ages. The joint Georgian-British Dariali Gorge excavations & surveys 2013-2016 (303-412). Oxbow Books
• Lawrence, D., Philip, G., & Altaweel, M. (2020). Conclusion. In D. Lawrence, M. Altaweel, & G. Philip (Eds.), New agendas in remote sensing and landscape archaeology in the Near East : studies in honour of Tony J. Wilkinson (321-327). Archaeopress
• Lawrence, D., & Rey, S. (2020). Extrapolating Ebla: Combining Remote Sensing, Survey and Textual Sources to Define an Early State. In D. Lawrence, G. Philip, & M. Altaweel (Eds.), New agendas in remote sensing and landscape archaeology in the Near East : studies in honour of Tony J. Wilkinson (175-188). Archaeopress
• Lawrence, D., & Wilkinson, T. J. (2017). The Northern and Western Borderlands of the Sasanian Empire: Contextualizing the Roman/Byzantine and Sasanian Frontier. In E. Sauer (Ed.), Sasanian Persia : between Rome and the steppes of Eurasia (99-125). Edinburgh University Press
• Lawrence, D., & Ricci, A. (2016). Long-term Settlement Trends in the Birecik-Carchemish Sectors. In T. Wilkinson, E. Peltenburg, & E. Wilkinson (Eds.), Carchemish in Context: the Land of Carchemish Project 2006 - 2010 (38-67). Oxbow
• Smith, S., Wilkinson, T., & Lawrence, D. (2014). Agro-pastoral Landscapes in the Zone of Uncertainty: The Middle Euphrates and the North Syrian Steppe during the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. In D. Morandi Bonacossi (Ed.), Settlement Dynamics and Human-Landscape Interaction in the Dry Steppes of Syria (151-172). Harrassowitz

Doctoral Thesis

• Lawrence, D. (2012). Early Urbanism in the Northern Fertile Crescent [electronic resource] : a comparison of regional settlement trajectories and millennial landscape change. (Thesis). Durham University. Retrieved from https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1618599

Edited book

• Lawrence, D., Altaweel, M., & Philip, G. (Eds.). (2020). New Agendas in Remote Sensing and Landscape Archaeology in the Near East: Studies in Honour of Tony J. Wilkinson. Archaeopress

Journal Article

• Gaastra, J. S., Lawrence, D., & Tumolo, V. (2024). Provisioning urbanism: a comparative urban-rural zooarchaeology of ancient Southwest Asia. Antiquity, 98(398), https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2024.24
• Deckers, K., Polisca, F., Riehl, S., de Gruchy, M., & Lawrence, D. (2024). Impact of anthropogenic activities on woodland in northern Syria (4th-2nd millennia BC): Evidence from charcoal assemblages and oak measurements. Environmental Archaeology, 29(2), 129-164. https://doi.org/10.1080/14614103.2021.1989977
• Bogaard, A., Ortman, S., Birch, J., Cervantes Quequezana, G., Chirikure, S., Crema, E., …Kohler, T. (2023). The Global Dynamics of Inequality (GINI) project: analysing archaeological housing data. Antiquity, https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.188
• Lawrence, D., de Gruchy, M. W., Hinojosa-Baliño, I., & Al-Hamdani, A. (2023). Long-term trends in settlement persistence in Southwest Asia: Implications for sustainable urbanism, past, present and future. Urban Studies, https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231161245
• Crawford, K. A., Huster, A. C., Peeples, M. A., Gauthier, N., Smith, M. E., Lobo, J., …Lawrence, D. (2023). A systematic approach for studying the persistence of settlements in the past. Antiquity, 97(391), https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.175
• Silva, F., Coward, F., Davies, K., Elliott, S., Jenkins, E., Newton, A. C., …Williams, A. (2022). Developing Transdisciplinary Approaches to Sustainability Challenges: The Need to Model Socio-Environmental Systems in the Longue Durée. Sustainability, 14(16), Article 10234. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141610234
• Lawrence, D., Philip, G., & Gruchy, M. W. (2022). Climate change and early urbanism in Southwest Asia: A review. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 13(1), https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.741
• Hewett, Z., de Gruchy, M., Hill, D., & Lawrence, D. (2022). Raincheck: A new diachronic series of rainfall maps for Southwest Asia over the Holocene. Levant, 54(1), 5-28. https://doi.org/10.1080/00758914.2022.2052660
• Palmisano, A., Bevan, A., Lawrence, D., & Shennan, S. (2022). The NERD Dataset: Near East Radiocarbon Dates between 15,000 and 1,500 cal. yr. BP. Journal of Open Archaeology Data, 10, https://doi.org/10.5334/joad.90
• Gaastra, J., Welton, L., de Gruchy, M., & Lawrence, D. (2021). Landscapes, climate and choice: Examining patterns in animal provisioning across the Near East c. 13,000-0 BCE. Quaternary International, 595, 54-87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2021.03.045
• Deckers, K., Riehl, S., Tumolo, V., Genz, H., & Lawrence, D. (2021). Intensive olive production at Levantine sites. New data from Fadous-Kfarabida and Khirbet-ez Zeraqon. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 36, Article 102841. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2021.102841
• Garcia-Molsosa, A., Orengo, H. A., Lawrence, D., Philip, G., Hopper, K., & Petrie, C. (2021). Potential of deep learning segmentation for the extraction of archaeological features from historical map series. Archaeological Prospection, 28(2), 187-199. https://doi.org/10.1002/arp.1807
• Lawrence, D., Palmisano, A., & de Gruchy, M. W. (2021). Collapse and continuity: A multi-proxy reconstruction of settlement organization and population trajectories in the Northern Fertile Crescent during the 4.2kya Rapid Climate Change event. PLoS ONE, 16(1), Article e0244871. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244871
• Morrison, K. D., Hammer, E., Boles, O., Madella, M., Whitehouse, N., Gaillard, M., …Zanon, M. (2021). Mapping past human land use using archaeological data: A new classification for global land use synthesis and data harmonization. PLoS ONE, 16(4), Article e0246662. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246662
• Basri, P., & Lawrence, D. (2020). Wealth Inequality in the Ancient Near East: A Preliminary Assessment Using Gini Coefficients and Household Size. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 30(4), 689-704. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774320000177
• Palmisano, A., Lawrence, D., de Gruchy, M. W., Bevan, A., & Shennan, S. (2020). Holocene regional population dynamics and climatic trends in the Near East: a first comparison using archaeo-demographic proxies. Quaternary Science Reviews, 252, Article 106739. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106739
• Cookson, E., Hill, D. J., & Lawrence, D. (2019). Impacts of long term climate change during the collapse of the Akkadian Empire. Journal of Archaeological Science, 106, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2019.03.009
• Stephens, L., Fuller, D., Boivin, N., Rick, T., Gauthier, N., Kay, A., …Ellis, E. (2019). Archaeological assessment reveals Earth’s early transformation through land use. Science, 365(6456), https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax1192
• Ricci, A., D'Anna, M. B., Lawrence, D., Helwing, B., & Aliyev, T. (2018). Human mobility and early sedentism: the Late Neolithic landscape of southern Azerbaijan. Antiquity, 92(366), https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.230
• Lindsay, I., Rubinson, K. S., Greene, A. F., Hammer, E., & Lawrence, D. (2018). Progress, problems, and possibilities of GIS in the South Caucasus: an international workshop summary. Antiquity, 92(362), https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.55
• Lawrence, D., Philip, G., Wilkinson, K., Buylaert, J., Murray, A., Thompson, W., & Wilkinson, T. (2017). Regional Power and Local Ecologies: Accumulated Population Trends and Human Impacts in the Northern Fertile Crescent. Quaternary International, 437(Part B), 60-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.06.026
• Lawrence, D., Philip, G., Hunt, H., Snape-Kennedy, L., & Wilkinson, T. (2016). Long term population, city size and climate trends in the Fertile Crescent: a first approximation. PLoS ONE, 11(3), Article e0152563. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0152563
• Sauer, E., Pitskhelauri, K., Hopper, K., Tiliakou, A., Pickard, C., Lawrence, D., …Shupe, C. (2015). Northern outpost of the Caliphate: maintaining military forces in a hostile environment (the Dariali Gorge in the Central Caucasus in Georgia). Antiquity, 89(346), 885-904. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2015.80
• Lawrence, D., & Wilkinson, T. (2015). Hubs and upstarts: pathways to urbanism in the northern Fertile Crescent. Antiquity, 89(344), 328-344. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2014.44
• Wilkinson, T., Philip, G., Bradbury, J., Dunford, R., Donoghue, D., Galiatsatos, N., …Smith, S. (2014). Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-Pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent during the Fourth and Third Millennia BC. Journal of World Prehistory, 27(1), 43-109. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-014-9072-2
• Wilkinson, T. J., Galiatsatos, N., Lawrence, D., Ricci, A., Dunford, R., & Philip, G. (2012). Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Landscapes of Settlement and Mobility in the Middle Euphrates: A Reassessment. Levant, 44(2), 139-185. https://doi.org/10.1179/0075891412z.0000000007
• Lawrence, D., Bradbury, J., & Dunford, R. (2012). Chronology, Uncertainty and GIS: A Methodology for Characterising and understanding Landscapes of the Ancient Near East. ETopoi (Berlin), Special Volume 3, 1007-1014