Understanding the development of complex societies in Lebanon during the EBA | 17 February 2021

This webinar will investigate the development of complex societies in the Lebanese coastal zone during the Early Bronze Age (EBA). New evidence shows that coastal Lebanon, with its unique mountainous setting and ample water resources, developed a distinct pathway to complexity. Dr Kamal Badreshany will discuss ceramic and architectural evidence from recently excavated sites in the region to assess the economic underpinnings of EBA communities. He will examine the distribution of EBA settlement in coastal Lebanon with a view to understanding the underlying logic, and to contrast the distribution of EBA settlements with that documented for other parts of the Levant during this time. The webinar will be chaired by Professor Graham Philip. About the speakers: Dr Kamal Badreshany leads the Durham Archaeomaterials Research Centre, an analytical research facility based in the Department of Archaeology that offers advanced chemical and materials analysis for academia and industry. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2013. His research focuses on human adaptation to changing social, economic, and environmental conditions, especially as related to increasing settlement density and the formation of the earliest states in the Levant. He specialises in the analysis of archaeological materials using archaeometric techniques, including ceramic petrography, scanning electron microscopy, XRF, ICP and X-ray diffraction, and he has published extensively on the role of ceramics in the ancient Levant. He is currently a CBRL trustee. Professor Graham Philip obtained his PhD from Edinburgh University in 1988 and worked as Assistant Director of the British Institute at Amman for Archaeology and History (1989-1992). He was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College, London, before taking up a lectureship at Durham University in 1994. His research interests fall into three main areas: landscape archaeology, artefact studies, and the nature of early complex societies. Professor Philip is currently a co-investigator on the heritage protection project Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa, working with project partners in Lebanon, Iraq and the Caucasus, and co-directs with colleagues at Yarmouk University, a project to create an environmental isoscape map for Jordan, funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council-Newton award. Until recently, he was editor-in-chief of CBRL's journal Levant.