Susanna Cereda

University of Vienna

Research Title: What’s Under the Carpet? – A Deposit-Oriented Approach to the Study of Monumental Architecture at the Site of Arslantepe (Malatya, Türkiye)

Ms. Cereda is a PhD candidate in the Department of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology at the University of Vienna. She completed her BA and MA at the Sapienza University of Rome, developing an interest in the archaeology of the built environment and in the way space was structured, organized, and used in the past. After spending a six-months period as visiting student at the University of Cambridge, where she approached the study of geoarchaeology and, in the specific, micromorphology, Ms. Cereda moved to Vienna to begin her doctorate. Her ANAMED project forms part of her PhD research, which focuses on the 4th millennium BCE monumental architecture in the site of Arslantepe (Malatya, Türkiye). These structures are investigated by examining the nature and composition of their floors, as well as the spatial organization of the material traces embedded in them, through a combined use of geochemical and micromorphological analyses. Ultimately, her dissertation aims to investigate the way people interacted with these structures in the past: from their construction, use, and maintenance to less tangible aspects, such as the way space was perceived and how it may have, in turn, influenced its occupiers.