CIOA Press Publication Wins G. Ernest Wright Award at ASOR

The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology is proud to announce that author Glenn M. Schwartz has received the G. Ernest Wright Award at this year’s American School of Oriental Research’s (ASOR)  annual meeting for his book Animals, Ancestors, and Ritual in Early Bronze Age Syria: An Elite Mortuary Complex from Umm el-Marra. Published by the CIOA Press earlier this year, Schwartz’s book is a final report of excavations of Early Bronze Age remains at Tell Umm el-Marra (perhaps ancient Tuba), on the Jabbul plain of northern Syria, conducted between 1994 and 2010. 

Named after the late archaeologist George Ernest Wright, the award is given to authors considered to have worked on the most substantial volumes dealing with archaeological material, excavation reports, and material culture from the ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean within the last two years. This year’s award ceremony took place on November 22 in Boston. 

Schwartz previously won the G. Ernest Wright Award in 2017 for Rural Archaeology in Early Urban Northern Mesopotamia: Excavations at Tell al-Raqa’i. In Animals, Ancestors, and Ritual in Early Bronze Age Syria, he explores the lesser-known site of Umm el-Marra, which compliments early cities such as Ebla, Mari, and Brak. Unique in the archaeology of third-millennium BC Syria, the Umm el-Marra necropolis of elite humans and animals allows for the reconstruction of funerary practices in detail and illuminates the importance of ancestor veneration, social memory, and animal agency in the development of Syria’s first urban civilization.  

Glenn M. Schwartz is currently Archaeology Program Director and Whiting Professor of Archaeology at Johns Hopkins University Deprartment of Near Eastern Studies.