2022
Fellowship SAWA Museum Academy (SMB, HTW Berlin, Sharjah Museums Authority, Goethe Institute, funded by Volkswagen Stiftung and Auswärtiges Amt der Bundesrepublik Deutschland)

Since 1/2022
Museum Assistant at Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin, SMB

02/2018 – 12/2018     
Research stay at the Faculty of Archaeology, Material Culture Studies, Leiden University

Since 10/2017     
PhD student in Near Eastern Archaeology, Freie Universität Berlin

10/2013 – 04/2016     
M.A. in Near Eastern Archaeology, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

10/2012 – 07/2013     
Erasmus at the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES), Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

2009 – 2017     
Excavations in Italy, Oman, Egypt, India, Azerbaijan and Iraqi Kurdistan

09/2007 – 06/2011     
B.A. in Cultural Heritage Studies (main subject: Archaeology of the Ancient Near East), University of Pisa

Pottery making and knowledge transmission in early complex societies of Northern Mesopotamia: a case study of the 5th /4th mill. BC ceramics of the Balikh valley

Pottery making and knowledge transmission in late prehistoric Northern Mesopotamia: a case study from the Balikh Valley, Syria (late 6th to 4th millennia BC). This research investigates the Ubaid and Late Chalcolithic 1-2 (ca. 5300 - 3900 BC) ceramics from the Balikh Valley, modern northern Syria, in order to gain a deeper understanding of pottery technology and related contexts of knowledge transmission within the region. A chaîne opératoire approach coupled with archaeometric analyses will be applied to the study of selected pottery assemblages from the Valley to reconstruct how those vessels were made at different sites, how their production was organized in relation to the physical and social landscape, and how did artisanal skills and technical knowledge travel across space and time.

This dissertation is funded by a doctoral fellowship from the Einstein Center Chronoi.

Articles

Forthcoming
G. Russo. Forthcoming. The Iron Age pottery. In Der Königspalast von Qatna. Teil III: Architektur, Stratigraphie, Chronologie, Keramik und Funde. Der östliche Zentralbereich, der Nord- und der Westbereich,edited by Anne Wissing, Eva Geith, and Sarah Lange. Qatna Studien 11. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

2022
G. Russo. 2022. Pottery-making practices between the Ubaid and the Late Chalcolithic 1 and 2: some observations on ceramics from the Balikh valley, Syria. Paléorient 48.1: 155-174 (peer-reviewed).
https://doi.org/10.4000/paleorient.1722

2021
G. Russo, S. Döpper. 2021. Die Nekropole von Al-Ayn. In Die Nekropolen von Bat und Al-Ayn und das Gebäude II in Bat, edited by Stephanie Döpper, 179-237. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
https://doi.org/10.32028/9781789699494

Herausgeber*innenkollektiv (A. Abar, G. Cyrus, M.B. D’Anna, V. Egbers, B. Huber, C. Kainert, J. Köhler, B. Öğüt, N. Rol, G. Russo, J. Schönicke, F. Tourtet). 2021. Pearls, Politics and Pistachios. Essays in Anthropology and Memories on the Occasion of Susan Pollock's 65th Birthday. Berlin: ex oriente.
https://doi.org/10.11588/propylaeum.837

2018
G. Russo, S. Amicone, C. Berthold, R. Siddall, P. Sconzo. 2018. Early Bronze Age Painted Wares from Tell el-'Abd, Syria: a Compositional and Technological Study. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 21: 359–66 (peer-reviewed).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2018.08.005

G. Russo. 2018. The Iron Age Pottery from Tell Mishrifeh (Qaṭna): Preliminary Results from the German-Syrian Excavations. In Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Vienna, April 25-29, 2016, edited by Barbara Horejs et al., 601–12. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Book reviews

2021
G. Russo. 2021. II Workshop on Late Neolithic Ceramics in Ancient Mesopotamia: Pottery in context. Edited by Anna Gómez-Bach, Jörg Becker, and Miquel Molist. Monografies del MAC 1. Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2018. Bibliotheca Orientalis 78.3-4: 499-502.
https://doi.org/10.2143/BIOR.78.3.3289928

Articles in societies newsletters

2019
G. Russo. 2019. Pottery-making in the late prehistoric Balikh valley. Nieuwsbrief van het Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. September 2019: 3-4.