New Research on Old Collections in Southwest Asian Archaeology

Mette Bangsborg Thuesen is a project curator in the Middle East Department at the British Museum. She earned her PhD from Freie Universität Berlin, focusing on pottery traditions and daily life in Late Antiquity. She has contributed to various archival and digitisation projects and carried out archaeological fieldwork across West Asia. Giulia Russo holds a PhD in the Archaeology of Southwest Asia from the Freie Universität Berlin. She specializes in pottery-making practices in Mesopotamia during the Chalcolithic period. Her fieldwork experience spans Asia, Africa, and Europe. From 2022 to 2023, she worked as a curatorial assistant at Berlin’s Vorderasiatisches Museum.

• List of Figures List of Tables  Preface – St John SimpsonChapter 1: Introduction – Mette Bangsborg Thuesen & Giulia Russo SECTION I: UNDERSTANDING THE PRODUCTION AND USE-LIFE OF OBJECTS IN MUSEUM COLLECTIONSChapter 2: Writing the biography of artefacts retired in museums. A methodological approach to the study of Mesopotamian statuary – Imane AchoucheChapter 3: A multidisciplinary approach to the study of zoomorphic figurines from Ur – Enrica InversiChapter 4: Gaining clarity from old glass: Some surprising results from heritage collections at the British Museum – Charlotte Nash-Pye SECTION II: RE-ASSESSING OLD DOCUMENTATION AND PERSPECTIVES ON ARCHIVAL AND COLLECTION PRACTICESChapter 5: Plain yet significant: The making of a new typology of unglazed pottery from Takht-e Suleiman – Mette Bangsborg ThuesenChapter 6: New approaches to old stratigraphy: The Sequence-of-Events analysis – Georg CyrusChapter 7: ‘Basements with insatiable appetites’ - Archaeological collections, museum storerooms, and sustainability – Giulia Russo