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Staff profile

Overview

Rune Rattenborg

Biography

I hold a BA in Assyriology and elective Near Eastern Archaeology (2009) and an MA in Assyriology from the University of Copenhagen (2012). I have extensive archaeological experience through participation in excavations in Jordan and Syria since 2007, and I am a former Assistant Director of the Danish-Jordanian Islamic Jarash Project (IJP) of the University of Copenhagen (http://miri.ku.dk/projekts/djip/).

My postgraduate research is associated with the Fragile Crescent Project (FCP) of the Durham University Departments of Archaeology and Geography, and generously funded through a Durham Doctoral Studentship (2012-2015) by Durham University’s Faculty of Social Sciences and Health.

Research project

Traversing philology, history, sociology, and archaeology, my doctoral research constitutes a novel and interdisciplinary approach to the study of early complex societies. My work combines quantitative data extracted from cuneiform sources with settlement data from archaeological survey, further complemented by aerial and satellite imagery for analysis and visualisation. Based on this material, I investigate the material scale and extent of political economies relative to their parent settlement and hinterland in a regional, comparative perspective. Specifically, my thesis concerns textual assemblages and archaeological survey data relating to six settlements of the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1800-1600 BCE) spread across Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

This research framework utilises the particular amenability of the cuneiform corpus to large-scale statistical analysis. Through the development of a standardised format for the comparative analysis of quantities in cuneiform texts, my work involves the analysis of data on several thousand tonnes of subsistence resources assembled from more than 1,500 cuneiform texts. Focusing on the scale of production and consumption of basic commodities, the organisation of agriculture, and the management of livestock, my research seeks to assess the overall economic power of early political organisations in quantifiable terms.

My study keys into a number of fundamental issues concerning the emergence of early states and their economic basis. Much has been written about the economic structure of early complex societies and emergent state polities, but surprisingly few studies have attempted to quantify the material basis of these communities. In pairing a geographically extensive dataset with recent theoretical and methodological advances in the study of past society, the results hold important implications for our understanding of the economic power of some of the earliest political organisations in world history.

Grants Awarded

2014: Augustinus Fonden (£830) for research visit to Freie Universität Berlin

2013: Durham University Institute of Advanced Studies (£500) for organising the workshop "A Thousand Worlds: Network Models in Archaeology"

2013: Durham University Centre for Academic and Research Development (CARD) £500 for organising the workshop "A Thousand Worlds: Network Models in Archaeology"

2013: Durham University Department of Archaeology Research Dialogue £500 for organising the workshop "A Thousand Worlds: Network Models in Archaeology"

2012: Elisabeth Munksgaard Fonden & National Museum of Denmark £788 for conference participation.

2012: London Centre for the Ancient Near East £64.10 for conference participation.

2012: Durham Doctoral Studentship £42000

2008: Collegium Domus Regiae 'Regensen' (college bursary 2008-2012) £16260. 

Conference contributions (selected)

2016: "The scale and extent of institutional households in the Middle Bronze Age Jazīrah and the Bilād al-Šām (c. 1800-1600 BCE)" BANEA Annual Conference 6-8 January, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter

2014: “Written Landscapes: Regionalising Interpretive Histories, Landscape Archaeology, and Social Power Networks of the Ancient Near East” The Social in the Past. Things, Networks, and Texts: A Material Approach to the Pre-Modern, 11-14 November, Local Dynamics of Globalization in the Pre-Modern Levant (LDG), Centre for Advanced Studies, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

2014: “Land of Behemoths: altering concepts of political power and territoriality in the Middle Bronze Age Fertile Crescent” 9th ICAANE, 9-13 June, University of Basel, Switzerland

2014: “Urban Spaces of Early Islamic Jarash: Recent excavations of the Danish-Jordanian Islamic Jarash Project” 9th ICAANE, 9-13 June, University of Basel, Switzerland

2014: “Configuring Mesopotamia: regional signifiers and the many locations of the ‘land between the rivers’" Mapping Ancient Identities: Kartographische Identitätskonstruktionen in den Altertumswissenschaften 26-28 May, Excellence Cluster TOPOI, Berlin

Workshop organisation

2015: "Analog Life, Digital Image: recontextualising social and material lives of Ancient Near Eastern communities" Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale 22-26 June, University of Geneva and University of Bern

2013: "A Thousand Worlds: Network Models in Archaeology" Department of Archaeology Research Dialogues, 18-19 October, Durham University

Publications

Chapter in book

Journal Article