Currently I am working on several writing projects.
The first is a book tentatively entitled The Sovereign Assemblage which examines the roles that objects play in political life. Drawing on a series of case studies situated in the Caucasus region, the book argues that the sense, sensibility, and sentiments at work in our relations with the object world bears a remarkable burden in shaping, constraining, and overturning our understanding of the polity and our place in a politically constituted public.
The second project is a multi-authored field report on the investigations of Project ArAGATS in the Tsaghkahovit Plain of central Armenia from 2008-2011. This report will detail the findings of three seasons of excavations at the sites of Gegharot and Tsaghkahovit, including summaries of our current understanding of the region’s settlement history from the Early Bronze Age through the Iron 3 (Achaemenid) Period.
The third project, in the very beginning phase, is a catalog to accompany a planned exhibit on the rise of complex societies in the highland South Caucasus from the Middle Bronze Age to the Urartian Period.
The fourth project, in contrast, is in the very final phase. Work has largely been completed on the volume The Archaeology of Power and Politics in Eurasia: Regimes and Revolutions (forthcoming, Cambridge). This volume, co-edited with Charles Hartley and Bike Yazicioglu, developed out of the 3rd University of Chicago Conference on Eurasian Archaeology held in 2008.
Books
2009 The Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies I: The Foundations of Research and Regional Survey in the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia (with R. Badalyan and P. Avetisyan). Oriental Institute Press, Chicago.
2003 The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities. The University of California Press, Berkeley.
Edited Books
forthcoming Regimes and Revolutions: Materiality and Authority Across Eurasia from Past to Present. Co-edited with Charles Hartley and G. Bike Yaz?c?o?lu. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
2007 Social Orders and Social Landscapes: Proceedings of the 2005 University of Chicago Conference on Eurasian Archaeology. Co-edited with L. Popova and C. Hartley. Cambridge Scholars Press, Newcastle.
2006 Beyond the Steppe and the Sown: Proceedings of the 2002 University of Chicago Conference on Eurasian Archaeology. Co-edited with D. Peterson and L. Popova. Colloquia Pontica Series. Brill, Leiden.
2003 Archaeology in the Borderlands: Investigations in Caucasia and Beyond. Co-edited with K. Rubinson. The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Publications at UCLA, Los Angeles.
Select Articles
2011 Archaeologies of Sovereignty. Annual Review of Anthropology 40: 415-432.
2010 Magnetic Survey in the Investigation of Sociopolitical Change at a Late Bronze Age Fortress Settlement in Northwestern Armenia (with I. Lindsay and R. Badalyan). Archaeological Prospection 17:15-27.
2008 Village, Fortress, and Town in Bronze and Iron Age Southern Caucasia: A Preliminary Report on the 2003-2006 Investigations of Project ArAGATS on the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Republic of Armenia (with R. Badalyan, I. Lindsay, L. Khatchadourian, and P. Avetisyan). Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan 40:45-105.
2005 Prometheus Unbound: Southern Caucasia in Prehistory. Journal of World Prehistory19(4): 229-279.
2004 The End of the Essential Archaeological Subject. Archaeological Dialogues 11(1): 1-20.
2001 The Limitations of Doxa: Agency and Subjectivity from an Archaeological Point of View. Journal of Social Archaeology 1(2): 155-171.
2000 Rendering the Political Aesthetic: Political Legitimacy in Urartian Representations of the Built Environment. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 19: 131-163.
1999 The Making of an Urartian Landscape in the Ararat Plain: A Study of State Architectonics. American Journal of Archaeology 103(1): 43-69.
1995 The Production of Space and the House of Xidi Sukur (with N. David). Current Anthropology 36(3): 441-471.