Mitchell S Rothman

Dr. Mitchell S Rothman received a BA from the University of Michigan, an MA from Hunter College CUNY, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, all in Anthropology. He retired as an Emeritus professor from Widener University after 27 years service in 2017. He has been a Contributing Scholar at the Penn Museum for more than two decades. His interests lie in the evolution of societal complexity in the Middle East.

During the first 35 years of his archaeological career that focus was manifested in studying the origin of state-level societies in Mesopotamia. His books, Chiefdoms and Early States in the Near East (with Gil Stein), Tepe Gawra: the Evolution of a Small, Prehistoric Center in Northern Iraq, Uruk Mesopotamia and its Neighbors: Cross-cultural Interaction in the Era of State Formation,  On the High Road: the History of Godin Tepe, Iran (with Hilary Gopnik), and Storage in Ancient Complex Societies: Administration, Organization, and Control (with Linda Manzanilla) speak to this interest. In the past 15 years his research has moved to ancient societies of the mountainous zone of the South Caucasus north of Mesopotamia. His book, Shengavit: a Kura-Araxes Center in Armenia (with Hakob Simonyan), is a product of this new focus. These works represent fieldwork- surveys and excavations- in Iran, Turkey, and Armenia.