As all archaeologists know well, while investigating with laborious effort thousands of years in the distant past, we can miss how decades pass in our own lifetimes. This one-day symposium, with leading names of the research community on the Neolithic period, will honour Mihriban Özbaşaran on the occasion of her retirement. Mihriban Özbaşaran has trained a large number of students and specialists in this short time, carried out qualified research, and made irreplaceable contributions to archaeology in Turkey.
Prof. Dr. Mihriban Özbaşaran
During her studies in classical archaeology, she became fond of prehistory and worked as a student and field manager at the prehistoric sites of Değirmentepe and Yarımburgaz and at the early period Aşıklı Höyük excavation. After directing an excavation for the first time at Musular, she became the director of the Akarçay Tepe and, with an international team, unearthed important evidence for the first sedentary and pottery-making communities that lived along the banks of the Euphrates. In 2005, at Ian Hodder’s invitation, she led the Istanbul team at Çatalhöyük, which was the first Turkish team to institutionally contribute to the research at the site. Taking charge of the Aşıklı Höyük Research Project in 2006, she formed a new team and research questions, ensuring the formation of an archaeological generation and understanding that will leave a mark on the forthcoming decades. Mihriban Özbaşaran is also one of the founders of Türkiye’s first project on archaeological inventory documentation, the TAY Project. Özbaşaran is among the architects of the Onlineolithic project, which was created during the pandemic and focuses on the diverse nature of the Neolithic period, as well as an editor of the open-access Turkish Journal of Archaeological Sciences, which began publication 4 years ago, aiming to change archaeological understandings to reach and influence archaeology in our country.
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This is a hybrid event, you may attend it via Zoom. Please, register here.
