Lauren Erker, MSc.

Diverging Paths: a socio-archaeological investigation of rural settlement in Ottoman Palestine and Transjordan
 
This project will explore the archaeology of mobility and resiliency of peasant populations in Transjordan and Palestine over the course of the Ottoman period. Themes that will be explored include migration, settlement patterns, land use patterns, differences in social structures, identity and how these manifested in the landscape. The transregional comparison that this project aims to produce will facilitate research into the events that set these regions on different evolutionary trajectories, and how the events of the late medieval period set the stage for what would unfold in the modern period. Whereas scholars have tended to focus on late Ottoman period Palestine or Transjordan, this research will be a direct comparison of rural settlements between the two regions over the entirety of the Ottoman period, with a particular focus on the pre-Tanzimat era. An integral component of this project is the development of a typology of rural sites based on the plethora of Arabic terms found in historical texts of the period, reflecting an indigenous understanding of communal history.

• 2015-2016: MSc in Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies (University of Edinburgh)
  Thesis: “Urbanism in the ‘Peripheral’ Regions of the Early Islamic Empire (500-800 AD)”
• 2010- 2014: BA in Anthropology (Metropolitan State University of Denver)

• 2019: Centennial Archaeology, Inc. (Fort Collins, CO) Field technician in the survey of the Black Hills and the Rocky Mountain National Park.
• 2019: Khirbet Beit Mazmil (Jerusalem, Israel) Field technician in the excavation of the medieval farmstead and survey of associated agricultural terraces.
• 2018: Centennial Archaeology, Inc. (Fort Collins, CO) Field technician in the survey of the Pawnee National Grasslands.
• 2016: Al-Baleed (Salalah, Oman) Field technician in the excavations of one of the medieval structures at the site.
   

• 2018: University of Bonn- German A1
• 2015-2016: University of Edinburgh- Arabic 1A and 1B
• 2015: Noor Majan Institute (Ibri, Oman)- 160 hours of Modern Standard Arabic
• 2014: Middle East Institute (Washington, D.C.)-50 hours of Modern Standard Arabic

2019: Journal of Islamic Archaeology 6.2- Book review: The History and Archaeology of Jaffa 2 edited by Aaron A. Burke, Katherine Strange Burke, and Martin Peilstöcker
 

• 2020: Erasmus Exchange Program (University of Bonn)- research stay at Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University
• 2019: IPID4All- Bonn International Graduate School (Oriental and Asian Studies)

Include, but are not limited to: Ottoman archaeology, landscape archaeology, Soviet archaeology, rural archaeology, Semitic philology, theoretical archaeology, Qur’anic studies, Islamic art and architecture, and the politics of preservation.