Ingenuity in the Oasis: Archaeobotanical, Geospatial, and Ethnoarchaeological Investigations of Bronze Age Agrarian Community Choices in the Northern Oman Interior
Smithi Nathan
PhD in Archaeological Anthropology
Entered 2011
I'm a Ph.D candidate in the Anthropological Archaeology Program. Currently, I am a field director with Bat Archaeological Project (BAP) and I am conducting my dissertation fieldwork on Hafit-perid (3100-2700 BCE) agricultural communities in the UNESCO World Heritage Area. I'm interested in ancient food choices, specifically regarding plants, during the transition to agriculture in communities around the Indian Ocean. In addition to BAP, I'm Systematic Survey Supervisor for the Archaeological Water Histories of Oman (ARWHO) Project and Archaeobotanist for the Southern Red Sea Archaeological Histories (SRSAH) Project.
Areas of Research/Interest
Oman, Near East, Ethiopia, oasis agriculture, food choices, geospatial techniques, GIS, archaeobotany, ethnoarchaeology, community decision-making, heritage, outreach
CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in Geospatial Data Discovery, Access, Management, and Curation at Johns Hopkins University