University of Southern California
USC College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences   USC
USC College Department of Art History
Faculty

Anne Porter

Assistant Professor of Religion, Art History, and Classics

Contact Information
E-mail: amporter@email.usc.edu
Phone: (213) 821-6386
Office: ACB 230A

LINKS
Curriculum Vitae
 

Education

  • B.A. Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Melbourne, 1/1985
  • M.A. Department of Middle Eastern Studies, in Archaeology, University of Melbourne, 1/1986
  • M.A. Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, in Syro-Palestinian and Anatolian Archaeology, University of Chicago, 1/1989
  • Ph.D. , University of Chicago, 1/2000

Academic Appointment, Affiliation, and Employment History

  • Visiting Fellow, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU, 2007-2008   
  • Professor, College de France, 05/01/2007-06/01/2007  

Description of Research

Summary Statement of Research Interests
Anne Porter is a Near Eastern archaeologist specializing in the complex societies of Mesopotamia from the fourth to mid-second millennium BCE. She has had twenty years experience in field work, and since 1990 has held the position of Co-director of the Euphrates Archaeology Project, conducting excavations at the Tell Banat Settlement complex on the left bank of the Euphrates river, Syria. She has a joint appointment in Religion and Art History, as well as Classics, and teaches courses on the art, archaeology and texts of the ancient Near East.

Anne’s research of recent years has concentrated on the third millennium BCE, but is now concerned with research problems that are rooted in the fourth and second millennium BCE. She is currently writing a book called Mobilizing the Past that considers the role of mobility in the dynamics of state formation through a re-examination of two problems - the Uruk expansion and the origin of the Amorites. In regards to the first problem, what is considered the first experiment with colonialism in the fourth millennium BCE is rather the stretching of social bonds between southern Mesopotamian communities and pastoralists who were moving into far off territories as irrigation agriculture expanded over their previous pasturage. In addition she has recently published a detailed consideration of the methodological and theoretical issues involved in the construction of chronology, with a major revision of accepted ceramic sequences resulting in a revised understanding of the collapse of the first period of urbanization and state formation in greater Mesopotamia. This provides the basis for a proposed resolution of the second major historical problem of Near Eastern Studies with which her book is concerned, the emergence of the Amorites in the early second millennium. Anne's other interests, on which she has published extensively, include the meaning of the dead in Mesopotamian worldviews from the perspectives of archaeology, art history and literary theory.

Research Keywords
chronology, cosmology, mortuary practices,mobility, pottery, Syria
Research Specialties
Near Eastern Archaeology

Funded Research

USC Funding
  • Zumberge Individual Award. Community and Cosmology. Participatory Political Practice in Ancient Mesopotamia : Statues and figurines from the third millennium of the ancient Near East tell us much about the Mesopotamian vision of an ideal world., $25,000, 2007-2008   

Conferences and Other Presentations

Conference Presentations
  • ""Extreme measures: subverting sacrifice and status in the land of the four river banks, 2500-2200 BCE", Theoretical Archaeology Group, Talk/Oral Presentation, , Columbia University, New York, 05/23/2008-05/26/2008  
  • "Beyond dimorphism: how mobility shaped, and shapes, the ancient Near East", Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, Talk/Oral Presentation, Paper, Chicago, Oriental Institute, Invited, 03/08/2008-03/09/2008  
  • "Death by Unnatural Causes: human sacrifice in the archaeology of the Euphrates region 3000-2000 BCE. ", Annual Meetings of ASOR, Talk/Oral Presentation, Refereed , San Diego, American Schools of Oriental Research, 11/14/2007-11/17/2007  
  • " Two presentations: "Burials" and "Chronology." ", ARCANE Project workshop, Talk/Oral Presentation, , Blaubeuren, Germany, Karls Eberhad University, Tubingen, Invited, 03/31/2007-04/05/2007  
Other Presentations
  • "Pots, Plots and Pasture-lands – Exploring the Material Manifestations of a Political Ethos", Public Lecture, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Fall 2008   
  • "Provenance and Archaeology.", USC- Getty program on the History of Collecting and Display. , Getty, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 11/09/2007  
  • "The Essential Logic of Pastoralism. Lecture 1. De-essentializing the Nomad; Lecture 2. Wool, Writing and Religion: The role of Pastoralism in the Uruk Expansion. Lecture 3. ", Invited lecture series, College de France, Paris, France, 05/01/2007-06/01/2007  
  • ""Of Texts and Televsion." ", Invited lecture , Stanford Archaeology Workshop, Stanford, California, 05/04/2006  
  • "Invited paper "Evocative Topography: Life, Knowledge and Ritual in a Landscape of Death." ", Sepolti tra i vivi. Evidenza ed interpretazione di contesti funerari in abitato., La Sapienza, Rome, Italy, 04/26/2006-04/29/2006  
  • ""Gods, Goods and Globalization." ", Lunchtime talks, Institute for Economic Research on Civilizations, USC., USC, 04/07/2006  

Publications

Book
  • Porter, A. Mobilizing the Past.
  • Porter, Anne and Schwartz, Glenn (Ed.). Human and Animal Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns.
Book Chapter
  • Porter, A. Extreme Measures: Subverting Sacrifice and Status in the land of the four river banks, 2500-2200 BCE. In Human and Animal Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns.
  • Porter, A. (2008). Akkad and Agency, Archaeology and Annales: Considering Change in Third Millennium BCE Mesopotamia. Agency and Identity in the Ancient Near East: New Paths Forward. London: Equinox.
  • Porter, A. (2008). Beyond dimorphism: ideologies and materialities of kinship as time-space distanciation. Pp. 199-223 in Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives. (Vol. OIS 5). pp. 199-223. Chicago: Oriental Institute Publications.
  • Porter, A. (2007). You say Potato, I say …Typology, Chronology and the Origin of the Amorites. Sociétés humaines et changement climatique à la fin du Troisième Millénaire: une crise a-t-elle eu lieu en Haute-Mésopotamie?. (Vol. XVIII,). pp. 69 -115. De Boccard, Paris.: Varia Anatolica.
  • Porter, A. (2007). The Ceramic Assemblages of the Third Millennium in the Euphrates Region. Céramique de l’Âge du Bronze en Syrie II. Beirout: Institut Français d’Archéologie du Proche-Orient.
Conference Proceeding
  • Porter, A. (2007). "Evocative Topography: Experience, Time and Politics in a Landscape of Death." Sepolti tra i vivi. Evidenza edinterpretazione di contesti funerari in abitato. Atti del ConvegnoInternazionale, (Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" 26-29 Aprile 2006),. In G. Bartoloni and M.G. Benedettini. (Ed.), pp. 15. Rome. Scienze dell'Antichità.
Journal Article
  • Porter, A. (2002). The Dynamics of Death. Ancestors, Pastoralism and the Origins of a THird millennium City in Syria. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research/ASOR. Vol. Vol 325, pp. pp.1-36.
  • Porter, A. (2002). Communities in Conflict: Death and the Contest for Social Order in the Euphrates River Valley. Near Eastern Archaeology/ASOR. Vol. 65/3, pp. 156-173.
Proceedings
  • Porter, A. (2004). The Urban Nomad: Countering the Old Cliches. pp. p. 69-74. Amurru III/ERC.

Honors and Awards

  • Arrison Family Foundation for Publication of Banat Excavation Reports, 2000-2001  
  • NSF grant 9706385 for Geophysical Surveys at the Banat complex, 1996-1997  
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