Timothy Matney

Where do you work?

I work in the Interdisciplinary Anthropology Program at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio.

What do you do?

I am an archaeologist specializing in the ancient Near East [now called the Middle East]. My research interests, which for the past five years have been centered in southeastern Turkey, revolve around questions of early urbanism, city planning, and the social use of domestic space. Also, I am currently codirector of excavations at Titris Höyük, an Early Bronze Age city near the Euphrates River, and director of a second project at the Late Bronze-to-Late Iron Age (circa 1500 to 600 B.C.) city of Ziyaret Tepe, on the Tigris River in Turkey.

What inspired you to do what you do?

My interest in archaeology started with a childhood full of travel. I especially remember my family vacations to Greece, Rome, and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula when I was young. My parents have always loved museums and historic places and have passed that passion on to me.

Besides your work, what other interests do you have?

Apart from my work, most of my time is dedicated to my family. My wife and I have two small children (daughter Rowan, 4, and son Aidan, 2), who keep me quite busy. I have also been active in museums and museum-based education for years and enjoy talking to children’s groups about archaeology, history, and museology.

What keeps you interested in your work?

Despite all the logistic and bureaucratic hassles of doing fieldwork in a foreign country, the time when I am there actually digging or surveying is exhilarating. It is deeply satisfying to see an abstract research agenda and a set of broad theoretical questions being transformed into action in the field.

What was your most exciting moment in the field?

In 1996, at Titris Höyük, after two months of work with a professional team of 15 and dozens of local workers, I climbed our nine-meter-high [9.8-yard-high] photographic tower and looked down over a thousand square meters [two thousand square yards] of an Early Bronze Age city where eight weeks before there had been an empty, flat wheat field.

From the tower, you could see the limestone wall foundations of a 15-room house, complete with paved entranceway, open courtyards, installations for grinding grain and cooking, and storage areas. It didn’t take too much imagination to wander mentally through the rooms and passages and try to grasp what life might have been like living in such a cosmopolitan setting so many centuries before.

What goals have you set for yourself?

Having now spent a decade or so working in the Early Bronze Age (circa 3000 to 2000 B.C.), I would like to continue my work on city planning and domestic housing in the ancient Near East by excavating similar remains at sites from different periods. To this end, I began the project at Ziyaret Tepe in 1997.

How would you suggest getting started in your field?

Becoming an archaeologist really begins for most people in college as undergraduates. To run a field project in most Near Eastern countries, you need a doctorate degree and an academic post, but there are also plenty of opportunities for volunteer work as excavators. A number of associations, such as the Society for American Archaeologists, regularly publish lists of fieldwork opportunities.

What resources can you suggest to the layperson interested in your field?

There are a number of good introductions to Near Eastern archaeology. For Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq, inland Syria, and southeastern Turkey), Michael Roaf’s Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Near East is beautifully illustrated and synthesizes a great deal of archaeological information over a broad time span. I might also recommend Nicholas Postgate’s Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History, which discusses Mesopotamian society, using both textual and archaeological sources.

An excellent Web link is Abzu, the University of Chicago Oriental Institute’s guide to resources for ancient Near Eastern studies.

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