Staff

The scholars and professionals advancing our research and collections.

Tasha Vorderstrasse she/her/hers

Manager, Continuing Education Program

Research Interests

Islamic Studies; Nubian Culture; Armenian Culture; Central Asian Culture; Colonial and Post-Colonial Studies; Archaeology

Tasha Vorderstrasse headshot

About

Tasha Vorderstrasse is the Manager, Continuing Education Program at the at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago. She received her PhD in Near Eastern archaeology from the University of Chicago in 2004. Her work forcuses on understanding the identity of past communities through archaeological and textual evidence as well as the interconnections between different regions. She administers and teaches in the ISAC adult education program, and also does teacher workshops and tours of the ISAC Museum for UChicago students and other groups on a variety of topics from post-colonialism and the ISAC to legal history, medicine, and queens and princesses in the ancient world. Her classes for the ISAC have included Nubian Queens, Red Sea and Indian Ocean Trade, and Frank Lloyd Wright's unrealized plans for Baghdad. She recently curated the ISAC Museum special exhibition Antoin Sevruguin: Past and Present and edited the catalog. In 2015, she was the co-curator of the ISAC Museum special exhibition A Cosmopolitan City: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Old Cairo. She has excavated throughout the Middle East, primarily in Turkey, but was also the co-director of the ISAC excavations at the site of Ambroyi in Armenia.

Education

BA Anthropology Washington University in St. Louis
1995
MA Near Eastern Archaeology University of Chicago
1998
PhD Near Eastern Archaeology University of Chicago
2004

ISAC Publications

2015
A Cosmopolitan City

Editor(s): Tasha Vorderstrasse, Tanya Treptow.

Series / Volume

Oriental Institute Museum Publications 38

Select Publications

Books

  • Tasha Vorderstrasse. Al-Mina: A Port of Antioch from Late Antiquity to the End of the Ottomans. Publications de l’Institut historique-archéologique néerlandaise de Stamboul 104. Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in het Nabije Oosten, 2005.

Edited Volumes

  • Tasha Vorderstrasse and Jacob Roodenberg (eds.). Archaeology of the Countryside in Medieval Anatolia. Publications de l’Institut historique-archéologique néerlandaise de Stamboul 113. Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in het Nabije Oosten, 2009.

Articles

  • "Imagining Balkh: The Chinese Perception of Central Asia during the Tang Dynasty." In The City of Balkh: History and Culture of a Great Islamic Capital, ed. A. Azad, E. Herzig, P. Hoyland, P. Marquis, and P. Wordsworth, 65–83. London: Bloomsburg Publishing, 2026. 
  • “Archaeology of Aksumite Coin Circulation in Ethiopia and Eritrea.” In Coins and Money in the Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Alan Stahl, ed. M. Eisenberg, L. Mordechai, and D. Yoon, Numismatic Studies 50. New York: American Numismatic Society, 2026.
  • “British Museum Arabic Ostraca from Abydos in Context.” in Abydos in the First Millennium AD, edited by O’Connell, Elisabeth R., 259–270. British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 9. Leuven: Peeters, 2020.
  • “Chinese Ceramics.” in Ashkelon 8: The Islamic and Crusader Periods, by Hoffman, Tracy, 506–520, 506–520. Ashkelon 8. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2019.
  • “A Reliquary Cross from Northwest Anatolia: Reflections on Mortuary Practice, Literacy, and Spelling Variants.” Anatolica: Annuaire Internationale pour les Civilisations de l’Asie Anterieure 42 (2016): 171–198.