Adelheid Otto

Adelheid Otto is Professor and Chair of Near Eastern Archaeology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich. After completing her doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin, she took her habilitation at LMU. She has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Vienna and Berlin, as well as a professorship (2009-2013) at the University of Mainz. She is a former president of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, editor of the MAAO series and co-editor of ZA. For the past 30 years, she has led excavations at Tall Bazi (Syria), Ur and Fara (Iraq). She works on Near Eastern cultural history, art history, chronology, historical geography, ancient beer brewing and metrology.

The project

Title: Daily and economic life of the ancient inhabitants of the Ancient Near East (3rd/2nd millennium BC) based on archaeological data

"The research program focuses on the reconstruction of the everyday and the economic life of the early urban inhabitants of the Ancient Near East during the 3rd and 2nd millennium BCE according to the archaeological and historical evidence. To this purpose, cooperative research will be conducted with Prof. Grégory Chambon at the ANHIMA laboratory of EHESS Paris (Anthropologie et histoire des mondes antiques) and will complement earlier interdisciplinary research. The consultation of the ANHIMA laboratory and of the library of Collège de France will be essential for the the research. The results of the research will be presented in 4 lectures delivered at EHESS. Lecture 1: Everyday life in Ur in the Old Babylonian period; Lecture 2: The material aspects of balance weight stones and their relevance for metrological studies. Lecture 3: Shops and other places of trade in the Ancient Near East. Lecture 4: Sealings as witnesses to glocal administrative processes."

Hosting institution: EHESS / Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques – ANHIMA

Selective Bibliography

• G. Chambon / A. Otto (ed.), Weights and Measures as a Window on Ancient Near Eastern Societies, MAAO 11, Gladbeck 2023
• A. Otto / N. Ziegler (ed.), Entre les fleuves – III. On the Way in Upper Mesopotamia. Travels, Routes and Environment as a Basis for the Reconstruction of Historical Geography, BBVO 30, Gladbeck 2023
• A. Otto, “A New Archaeological Response to an Old Question: When and how Did Ur Recover in the Old Babylonian Period? “ in N. Marchetti et al. (ed.,) Proceedings of the 12th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Wiesbaden 2023, 5–18
• A. Otto, “Marketplaces in Syro-Mesopotamia in the second millennium BC in the light of new archaeological research”, in: L. Rahmstorf & E. Stratford (ed.), Weights and Marketplaces from the Bronze Age to the Early Modern Period. Proceedings of Two Workshops Funded by the European Research Council, Weight &Value Vol. 1, Göttingen 2019, 203-217.
• A. Otto, Alltag und Gesellschaft zur Spätbronzezeit. Eine Fallstudie aus Tall Bazi (Syrien), Subartu 19, Turnhout 2006
• A. Otto, Die Entstehung und Entwicklung der klassisch-syrischen Glyptik, UAVA 8, Berlin/New York 2000