Archaeology

Rubina Raja, Member (2019) in the School of Historical Studies, has received one of the Carlsberg Foundation’s Research Prizes for 2024. She was honored, in part, for work conducted at the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria. 

A new study of ancient DNA by a team of international researchers, including Patrick Geary, Professor Emeritus in the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Historical Studies, provides insight into the development of and social structures within European rural communities following the fall of the Roman Empire. Some of these communities, about the formation of which little was previously known, would eventually become the basis for many modern European countries.

Rubina Raja, past Member in the School of Historical Studies (2019), was praised by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung award committee for her cross-disciplinary work, located at the interface between classical archaeology and religious studies.

Archaeologists, among them former Visitor David Kennedy, have uncovered nearly 400 previously undocumented stone structures they call “gates” in the Arabian desert that they believe may have been built by nomadic tribes thousands of years ago. “We...