Michele Massa holds a PhD degree from University College London (2016) and an MSc in GIS and Spatial Analysis from the same university (2008). Before joining Bilkent’s Archaeology Department, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at Chicago University (2020-2022). A Near Eastern archaeologist, his academic interests include theoretical approaches to social complexity (urbanism, conflict, labour specialization), landscape archaeology, digital archaeology, remote sensing analysis and archaeometallurgy. A common thread to Michele’s academic work is his interest in making past societies relevant to the present, something that he has pursued through collaboration with public archaeologists, cultural heritage managers and social anthropologists across several projects. Between 2017 and 2022 he was the co-director of KRASP (Konya Regional Archaeological Survey Project), an interdisciplinary program that investigated the dynamic relation between nature and society in south-central Anatolia across the Holocene (9500 BCE-present). He is currently the co-director of the Türkmen-Karahöyük Archaeological Project, an interdisciplinary research programme dedicated to investigating a major Bronze, Iron Age and Hellenistic centre in the Konya Plain.
Recent publications
Şahin F. and M. Massa (2024). Mass-Hunting in Southwest Asia at the Dawn of Sedentism – New Evidence from Şanlıurfa, Southeast Türkiye, Antiquity.
Creamer P., Alperstein J., Massa M., Osborne J., and J. Casana (2024). Magnetic Gradiometry Survey at the Urban Center of Türkmen-Karahöyük (Turkey), Archaeological Prospection.
Massa M., Osborne J. (2024). Peak Sanctuaries and Sacred Mountains in Anatolia during the Iron Age. American Journal of Archaeology 128(1): 33-58.
Research Interests
Near Eastern and eastern Mediterranean pre-, proto- and early historical archaeology; Landscape & Environmental archaeology; Digital archaeology; Archaeological approaches to social complexity; Funerary archaeology; Survey methodology
CV is available here