Siavash Samei
Assistant Professor of Anthropology/Sociology
Offices & Programs
Education
BA: Anthropology, University of Georgia
MA: Anthropology, University of Connecticut
PhD: Anthropology, University of Connecticut
BIOGRAPHY
Siavash Samei is an Iranian environmental archaeologist studying the long-term interplay between climate, environmental, and the migratory lifeways and subsistence economies of herding and foraging societies in mountainous landscapes of West and South Asia from the Paleolithic period to present day. His research also bears several theoretical approaches and interdisciplinary methods on issues concerning the archaeological visibility of migratory landscapes. These include ecological modeling, archaeological and ethnographic field methods, the study of archaeological animal bones, and stable isotopes. He received a B.A. from the University of Georgia and an M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Connecticut. Prior to joining Centre College, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute and a visiting professor at The College of Wooster.
RESEARCH
Samei maintains active field, lab, and museum-based research and teaching projects in Armenia, India, Iran, and the United States. Currently, he is a co-director of the Tübingen–Armenian–American Paleolithic Project (TAAPP) in Armenia and the Pastoralists of the Aravalli Mountains Ethnoarchaeology Project (PArMEP) in Rajasthan, India. He is also a member of two international archaeological collaborations in Iran: Mission Archéologique Franco-Iranienne en Iran du Sud-Est (MAFISE) and Human Evolution in the Zagros Mountains (HEZM).