Event: WEDS TALKS: A Diachronic Perspective on Farming in Ancient Anatolia: Twelve Millennia of Agriculture In Two Centuries of Paleoethnobotanical Research

ABSTRACT: Plants have much to say about people. Their presence in the archaeological record are testaments to the lives of past human communities who have planted, harvested, used them, and have entwined their imagination with images and stories of them. This talk explores the deep history of Anatolia—modern Turkey—by tracing changes in farming strategies across the region’s shifting socio-cultural and environmental landscapes. While covering a broad chronological scope, the focus will be particularly on the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, a period marked by the rise and fall of Anatolia’s first territorial power, the Hittite Empire, and the new socio-political networks that emerged following its collapse. Drawing on a systemic survey of published scholarship, this talk also offers a critical reflection on the diverse ways paleoethnobotanical data can create historical narratives

BIO: Lorenzo is an archaeologist specializing in the study of human-environment interactions, with a particular focus on ancient agricultural systems. He is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, where he coordinates the Ancient Agriculture and Paleoethnobotany Laboratory (AAPL). He earned his PhD from the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) in 2022 and subsequently served as a postdoctoral lecturer in archaeology at NYU’s Department of Anthropology. Lorenzo’s research concentrates on the politics and ecology of farming in Western Asia, exploring the intersections between agricultural strategies and political structures, the impact of climatic and environmental change on farming systems, and landscape history.