The scholars leading research and teaching on the ancient world.
Archaeology; Anatolia and the Levant; Bronze and Iron Ages
James Osborne’s principal research focus is a theoretically informed use of geospatial analysis as a means of evaluating the archaeological record of Bronze and Iron Age societies in the Near East. He specializes in political authority, built environments, and the relationships between them, focusing on what GIS and remote sensing analysis of settlement patterns, urban form, and the configuration of architecture can tell us about the nature, degree, and experience of state power. More recently, however, James has devoted less energy to the space/power relationship, and moved into the domains of cultural mobility, diaspora and transnationalism, and resistance studies. These interests are all present in his 2021 monograph The Syro-Anatolian City-States: An Iron Age Culture, which was the 2023 winner of the American Schools of Overseas Research’s G. Ernest Wright Award for “most substantial book in the archaeology of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean.”
In the field James is addressing issues of identity and connectivity through the Türkmen-Karahöyük Archaeological Project (TKAP), which began in 2024. He is Co-Director of this excavation with Michele Massa, Associate Professor at Bilkent University (Türkiye). At 30 ha in area and 35 m in height, Türkmen-Karahöyük is the largest tell in the Konya Plain, a rich alluvial floodplain in southcentral Anatolia that is littered with tells of all periods. Türkmen-Karahöyük was occupied from roughly 3000 BCE to 50 BCE, and during the Late Hellenistic period its suburban occupation and cemetery areas combine to form a site of 150-200 ha. Türkmen-Karahöyük provides an ideal vehicle with which to explore issues of longstanding thematic interest. The sudden rise of one of Anatolia’s largest cities provides a superb venue for studying the development of urbanism out of Konya’s much better understood processes of Neolithization, and the involvement of the Konya Plain with the Hittite and Neo-Assyrian Empires allows James to further develop his interest in how local communities negotiate their relationship with imperial sovereignty.
James has served as Editor of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies since 2019.
Series / Volume
ISAC Seminars 16
Books
James F. Osborne. The Syro-Anatolian City-States: An Iron Age Culture. Oxford Studies in the Archaeology of Ancient States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
🏅2023 Winner of the American Schools of Overseas Research’s G. Ernest Wright Award for most substantial book in the archaeology of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean.
⭐See reviews by Naoise Mac Sweeney, The Classical Review; Sabine Fourrier, Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies; Erhan Tamur, Ancient Near Eastern Studies; Virginia Herrmann, Bulletin of the American Schools of Overseas Research.
Edited Volumes
Jonathan M. Hall and James F. Osborne (eds.). The Connected Iron Age: Interregional Networks in the Eastern Mediterranean, 900–600 BCE. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022.
⭐See reviews by Ulla Rajala, Antiquity; Eleni Kopanaki, The Classical Review; Grace Erny, Bryn Mawr Classical Review; Megan Daniels, American Journal of Archaeology.
Articles
The Türkmen-Karahöyük Archaeological Project (TKAP) is a long-term research program in the Konya Plain in Türkiye that is supported by Bilkent University (Ankara, Türkiye) and ISAC. The project began…
