Past Societies

Johannes Mueller (PhD, University of Freiburg, 1990) is a Professor and Director of the Institute for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology at Kiel University, Germany. He is the founding director of the Johanna Mestorf Academy, Speaker of the Collaborative Research Centre "Scales of Transformation: Human-environmental Interaction in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies" and of the Excellence Cluster "ROOTS - Social, Environmental, and Cultural Connectivity in Past Societies".

He conducts research on Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe, including the challenge of interlinking natural, social, life sciences, and the humanities within an anthropological approach of archaeology. Intensive fieldwork was and is carried out in international teams, e.g., on Tripolye mega-sites in Eastern Europa, the Late Neolithic tell site of Okoliste in Bosnia-Hercegovina, different Neolithic domestic and burial sites in Northern Germany, and Early Bronze Age sites in Greater Poland. Ethnoarchaeological fieldwork has been conducted, e.g., in India. Within the Kiel Graduate School "Human Development in Landscapes", now the Young Academy of ROOTS, and the Scandinavian Graduate School "Dialogues of the Past", Johannes Mueller promotes international PhD projects. Andrea Ricci is an archaeologist specialised in the study of the prehistory of Southwestern Asia. He completed his first MA studies at La Sapienza University in Rome (Italy) and then he received a second MA degree at Durham University (UK). After completing his PhD in the framework of the Graduate School "Human Development in Landscapes" at Kiel University, he held a post-doctoral position at the Eurasia Department of the German Archaeological Institute. He is currently a scientific coordinator of the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS at Kiel University. He has conducted field projects in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Syria.

His main research topics include the investigation of Holocene human-environmental dynamics, the process of neolithisation, and the emergence of the first forms of social and economic complexity.

Key publications: Andrea Ricci
Laneri, N., Jalilov, B., Crescioli, L., Guarducci, G., Kneisel, J., Poulmarc'h, M., Ricci, A., Valentini, S. 2019. GaRKAp 2018: The first season of the Azero-Italian Ganja Region Kurgan Archaeological Project in Western Azerbaijan. Ancient Near Eastern Studies 56, 135-162.

Ricci, A., D?Anna, M.B., Helwing, B., Aliyev, T., Lawrence, D. 2018. Human mobility and early sedentism. The Late Neolithic (mid-sixth millennium BC) landscapes of south-western Azerbaijan. Antiquity 92/366, 1-17.

Neumann, D., Gambashidze, I., Ricci, A., Mindiashvili, G., Gogochuri, G. 2018. Reassessing the hills. Results of an archaeological field survey on the Akhalkalaki Plateau, South Georgia. Eurasia Antiqua 21, 21-44.

Wilkinson, T.J., Philip, G., Bradbury, J., Donoghue, D., Dunford, R., Galiatsatos, N., Lawrence, D., Ricci, A., Smith, S. 2014. Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-Pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent during the Fourth and Third millennia BC. Journal of World Prehistory 27/1, 43-109.

Ricci, A., Helwing, B., Aliyev, T. 2012. The Neolithic on the Move: High Resolution Settlement Dynamics Investigations and Their Impact on Archaeological Landscape Studies in Southwest Azerbaijan. eTopoi. Journal for Ancient Studies, Special Volume 3, 369-375.

Wilkinson, T.J., Galiatsatos, N., Lawrence, D., Ricci, A., Dunford, R., Philip, G. 2012. Landscapes of Settlement and Mobility in the Middle Euphrates of Turkey and Syria During the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age: A Re-assessment. Levant 44/2, 139-185.

Ricci, A. 2012. 'Ancient Kura' Project. Archaeological landscape studies. The Mil-Karabakh Plain and the Kvemo Kartli Survey Projects: a preliminary account of the first two field seasons (2010-11), in: Lyonnet, B., Guliyev, F., Helwing, B., Aliyev, T., Hansen, S., Mirtskhulava, G. (eds.), Ancient Kura 2010-2011. The first two seasons of joint fieldwork in the Southern Caucasus. Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan 44. Berlin: Reimer, 1-190 (127-145).