Professor Daniel Potts

DPhil (Copenhagen), PhD (Harvard), BA (Harvard)
Edwin Cuthbert Hall Professor of Middle Eastern Archaeology
dan.potts@arts.usyd.edu.au

Born in the United States, my undergraduate education at Harvard was followed by study with Prof. H.J. Nissen at the Freie Universiät Berlin (1975-76), after which I returned to Harvard for my PhD. After completing my education I taught in Europe for 11 years (Univ. of Copenhagen, 1980-81; 1986-1991; Freie Universität Berlin, 1981-1986). I have been teaching at the University of Sydney since 1991. My fieldwork has been conducted mainly in Iran (1973, 1975; 2002- ongoing), Saudi Arabia (1977-78, 1982-1983) and the United Arab Emirates (1986-1998).

Archaeology and early history of the Near East including:

• Iran
• Mesopotamia
• The Arabian Peninsla and the Indo-Iranian borderlands
• Early states and empires
• Cuneiform sources
• Early technologies
• Hellenism in the East

• Archaeological Investigations in Southwestern Iran
• Excavations in Fars Province, Iran
• Studies on the Persian Gulf
• Historical geography and economy of Iran in the centuries following Alexander’s conquest
• Women in pre-Islamic Arabia

Books

• Feast of dates: The date palm in the United Arab Emirates. London: Trident Press.2002.
• Excavations at Tepe Yahya, 1967-1975: The Third Millennium. Cambridge: Peabody Museum Press [Bulletin of the American School of Prehistoric Research 45]. 2001.
• Ancient Magan: The secrets of Tell Abraq. Pp. 144. London: Trident Press.
  1999.
• The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and transformation of an Ancient Iranian State. Pp. 490. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. 1999.

• 1998. Masqoqat ma qabel al-Islam fi sharq al-Jazirah al-Arabia. Sharjah: Publications of the Dept. of Culture & Information, Government of Sharjah (Arabic translation of Potts, The Pre-Islamic Coinage of Eastern Arabia.
• Copenhagen: Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 14, 1991 and Supplement to the Pre-Islamic Coinage of Eastern Arabia. Copenhagen: Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 16, 1994). Pp. 308.
• 1997. Mesopotamian Civilization: The material foundations. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pp. 366.
• 1994. Supplement to the Pre-Islamic Coinage of Eastern Arabia. Copenhagen: Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 16. Pp. 88.
• 1991. Further excavations at Tell Abraq: The 1990 season. Copenhagen: Munksgaard. Pp. 155.
• 1991. The Pre-Islamic Coinage of Eastern Arabia. Copenhagen: Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 14. Pp. 119.
• 1990. A prehistoric mound in the Emirate of Umm al-Qaiwain: Excavations at Tell Abraq in 1989. Copenhagen: Munksgaard. Pp. 157.
• 1990. The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, Vol. 1. From prehistory to the fall of the Achaemenid empire; Vol. 2. From Alexander the Great to the coming of Islam. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pp. 419 + 369.
• 1989. Miscellanea Hasaitica. Copenhagen: Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 9. Pp. 95.

Edited Books

• 2004. Treasures of the Nicholson Museum. Sydney: Nicholson Museum, with K.N. Sowada.
• 2003. Archaeology of the United Arab Emirates: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on the Archaeology of the U.A.E. Abu Dhabi: Ministry of Information and London: Trident, edited by D.T. Potts, Hasan Al Naboodah and Peter Hellyer.
• 2002. Ingenious man, inquisitive soul: Studies in Iranian and Central Asian archaeology for C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky on the occasion of his 65th birthday by a selection of his students, colleagues and friends. Leuven: Peeters (= Iranica Antiqua 37). Pp. 456, edited by D.T. Potts.
• 1998. with C.S. Phillips and S. Searight, Arabia and her neighbours. Turnhout: Brepols. Pp. 372.
• 1988. Araby the Blest: Studies in Arabian archaeology. Copenhagen: Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 7.
• 1983. Dilmun: New studies in the archaeology and early history of Bahrain. Berlin: Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient 2.

Teaching

Introduction to Near Eastern Archaeology; Mesopotamia; Iran; 2nd and 3rd year honours seminars; supervised 9 PhD’s to completion.

Supervision

• Magee, P. 1995. Cultural change, variability and settlement in southeastern Arabia from 1400 to 250 B.C.: A view from Tell Abraq.
• Blau, S. 1998. Finally the skeleton: An analysis of archaeological human skeletal remains from the United Arab Emirates.
• Sparks, R.T. 1998. Stone vessels in the Levant during the second millennium B.C.: A study of the interaction between imported forms and local workshops.
• Lovell, J.L. 1999. The late Neolithic & Chalcolithic periods in the Southern Levant: New data from the site of Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan.
• Tidmarsh, J.C. 2000. The Hellenistic and early Roman pottery from Pella in Jordan.
  Weeks, L.R. 2000. Pre-Islamic metallurgy of the Gulf.
• Petrie, C.A. 2002. Regional economy in the late 1st and early 2nd millennia AD: Akra, NWFP, Pakistan.
• Ziolkowski, M.C. 2002. The historical archaeology of the coast of Fujairah, United Arab Emirates: From the eve of Islam to the early twentieth century.
• Thompson, E. 2004. A structural analysis of early Sasanian rock reliefs in Fars.

• Since 1980 I have lectured at the annual Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (e.g. in London, Heidelberg, Cambridge, Ma., Leuven, Prague, Helsinki); the annual meeting of the American Oriental Society (Los Angeles, Houston, Cambridge, Ma.); the annual Seminar for Arabian Studies (Cambridge, Oxford, London, Manchester, Durham); and at many non-annual conferences (e.g. Paris, 1977; Lyon, 1982; Bahrain, 1983; Rome, 1983; Turin, 1985; Göttingen, 1987; Strasbourg, 1989; Riyadh, 1999; Sharjah, 1999; Abu Dhabi, 2002; Marburg, 2003; Gent, 2003; Muscat, 2004; Limassol, 2004).
• I have also delivered guest lectures at many universities, including Amsterdam, Arizona, the Australian National University, Berlin, Chicago, Columbia, Copenhagen, Harvard, Indiana, Lund, Lyon, Michigan, Montreal, NYU, Oxford, Pennsylvania, the Sorbonne, Tehran, Toronto, Tübingen, UC Berkeley, UCLA, University College London,Uppsala and Wellesley.

• Member, Editorial Board, Iranica Antiqua (Gent, Belgium) (2003-)
• Contributing Editor, The Review of Archaeology (Salem, Mass., USA) (2002-)
• Member, Editorial Board, Encyclopedia of Archaeology (Academic Press, San Francisco, USA) (2001-)
• Founding Series Editor, Adapa: Monographs in Near Eastern Archaeology (Near Eastern Archaeology Foundation, Sydney) (2001-)
• Member, Editorial Board, Near Eastern Studies (Peeters, Leuven, Belgium) (2000-)
• Founding Co-Editor, Abi'el: Studies in Arabian Archaeology and History (Brepols, Turnhout, Belgium) (1995-)
• Member, Editorial Board, Topoi Orient-Occident (Maison de l'Orient, Lyon, France) (1991-)
• Member, Editorial Board, Athlone Publications in Egyptology and Near Eastern Archaeology (Athlone, London, U.K.) (1990-)
• Founding Editor-in-Chief, Arabian Archaeology & Epigraphy (Blackwell Munksgaard, Oxford, U.K. and Copenhagen, Denmark); abstracted or indexed in Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Research Alert, Current Contents: Arts Humanities, Geographical Abstractss and Periodica Islamica (1989-)
• Founding Co-Editor, Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications (Museum Tusculanum, Copenhagen, Denmark) (1986-present)
• Honorary Curator, Nicholson Museum (Univ. of Sydney); Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities (since 1994); Fellow, Society of Antiquaries, London, UK (since 1993)
• In 1990 I founded the journal Arabian Archaeology & Epigraphy and have been its editor-in-chief now for 15 years. The only journal devoted to the archaeology and inscriptions of all of the