Lau, Hannah Kwai-Yung 

University of California LA

Research Topic: Mobility and Resource Cooperation in the Late Neolithic Halaf Period

Dr. Lau holds a PhD in Archaeology from UCLA (2016). Her research examines how people have coordinated resource exploitation in the past and how such cooperation among ancient people, particularly in agropastoral production, elicited change or was changed by shifts in sociopolitical relationships. Her analyzes of zooarchaeological, including biogeochemical analyses, material from the Halaf period site of Domuztepe (ca. 6000–5450 cal. BCE) in southeastern Türkiye document social and economic cooperation and coordination among participants in both daily subsistence activities and large-scale communal feasting events. Her project at ANAMED “Mobility and Resource Cooperation in the Late Neolithic Halaf Period” is a comparative project aimed at contextualizing the movement she identified in her previous work at Domuztepe within the larger Halaf cultural sphere by examining agropastoral production, evidence of exchange and interaction in raw and finished goods, and evidence of collective action events. Combined, these processes will shed light on this important period of Near Eastern history during which people began to innovate with new forms of social organization that mature into more traditionally archaeologically-identifiable forms in the succeeding Chalcolithic period.