Steve Renette

Archaeologist of Southwest Asia with broad interests in societies of mountainous landscapes, highland-lowland interactions, and diversity of social-ecological systems in Mesopotamian lowland societies

Research Area

My research focuses on the diversity of environments and social-ecological systems that underpin the historical trajectories of societies across Southwest Asia, or ‘Greater Mesopotamia’. Recent archaeological work in Iraq, Iran, and Syria has demonstrated that ancient societies in this region were less monolithically dependent on grain agriculture and sheep-goat husbandry than textual sources suggest. Instead, the diversity of environments, from wetlands and arid steppes to hilly zones and mountain valleys, forms the foundation of the region's complex history.

My methodological focus is on interdisciplinary fieldwork that incorporates a range of landscape- and environment-focused strategies. This includes remote sensing, geophysical prospection, spatial analysis, and targeted excavations, which produce datasets that are accessible for a range of scientific analyses, which are contextualised in the archaeological and historical record.

Project Interests

I am interested in co-developing projects that take a landscape or environment approach to address archaeologically and historically relevant questions. Specifically, projects that investigate either the mountain landscapes or the southern Mesopotamian wetlands are of particular interest. Such projects can draw from my past and ongoing work in both regions, including networks with academic institutions in the countries of Iraq and Iran. In my current fieldwork project at the site of ancient Lagash, a multitude of methodologies are deployed to investigate this city’s structural layout in relation to its unique wetland environment.