This book features a collection of papers produced in honour of Roger Matthews, Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Reading. Roger previously taught at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology (2001–2010), before which he served as the Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (BSAI, today BISI) in Baghdad and the British Institute at Ankara (BIA) in the 1980s and 1990s. The volume honours Roger’s legacy by assembling interdisciplinary research by his students, collaborators, and colleagues that maps challenges and new possibilities in the archaeology of Southwest Asia across the interrelated themes that have emerged from his work in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Türkiye.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Author Biographies Selected Publications by Roger Matthews 1. Devolving Early Neolithic community ecology: animal connections and interactions at Bestansur, Iraq Robin Bendrey 2. “If only those jaws could move”. A narrative of Building 1 at Çatalhöyük Ian Hodder 3. Beyond subsistence: new perspectives on Sialk North village, 6000-4900 BCE Hassan Fazeli Nashli, Javad Hussainzadeh and Jebraeil Nokandeh 4. Cities, symbols and deities: ancient and modern constructions of political power in Late Chalcolithic southern Iraq Mónica Palmero Fernández 5. Washing hands and feet? Personal hygiene at Abu Salabikh (and further north) Nicholas Postgate 6. To change, or not to change… Transitional glyptic styles in ED II Fara / Šuruppak and their relation to officialdom Adelheid Otto 7. Two Babylonian beakers and an unpublished report on excavations at Ur in 1858 John Curtis 8. How high were the walls of Mesopotamia? John MacGinnis 9. Large-scale pottery production at Middle Bronze Age Qatna Daniele Morandi Bonacossi 10. The beads from the Achaemenid period of the archaeological site of Barikot, Swat Valley, northern Pakistan (c. 500-350 BCE): a preliminary typological study Mubariz Ahmed Rabbani Interlude 1: Roger’s deconstruction seminar Birger Ekornåsvåg Helgestad 11. Human-environmental interactions in the Zagros region from the Epipalaeolithic to the Neolithic period: key debates and issues Maria Rabbani 12. Still mind the gap: a note on the ‘missing millennium’ between the Late Epipaleolithic and the Transitional Neolithic in the Central Zagros Hojjat Darabi 13. The walking dead: a brief view on the mobility of mortuary remains and practices in the Neolithic central Zagros and adjacent regions Judith Thomalsky 14. Rural fortitude at Çadır Höyük: the 5.9 and 5.2 kya climate events on the Anatolian plateau Madelynn von Baeyer, Sharon R. Steadman and Benjamin Arbuckle 15. Commensality, ritual and the making of transtopographic communities Claudia Glatz 16. Ancient neighbourhoods Alessandra Salvin 17. “Alas the destroyed city!” A search for private houses of the Ur III period at Ur Elizabeth Stone and Paul Zimansky 18. Thinking through and beyond the hinterland: towards a critical archaeology of rural settlements in Western Asia Christoph Bachhuber 19. Hilltop forts and pasture control: the spatial organisation of the semi-nomadic communities in the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age South Caucasus Guido Guarducci 20. Archaeology of the recent past in mountainous Kurdistan: Kani Gund village Karel Nováček, Lenka Starková and Hemin Naman Kawes Interlude 2. A person of influence: in gratitude and admiration to Prof. Roger Matthews Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin 21. East India Company diplomats and antiquarians in early nineteenth-century Iraq Michael Seymour 22. Partialities, priorities and unintended glimpses of the archaeological process: a review of the site reports of the British excavations at Carchemish Lisa Cooper 23. Reverting to the Fertile Crescent: the story of the CZAP project 2008 Yaghoub Mohammadifar with Leila Ghanbari 24. Leading transitions in research excavations: impacts of the excavations at Neolithic Bestansur Amy Richardson and Kamal Raeuf Aziz 25. Decolonising knowledge-making on Iraq: a conversation with Zahra Ali Alesia Koush