Kommishan Cave in northern Iran is one of a number of pottery-bearing rock shelters in a narrow geographic corridor linking the Middle East with Central Asia, occupied by Mesolithic hunters and Neolithic agropastoral groups following the last Ice Age.

I am an archaeologist with expertise in Old World prehistory and stable isotope geochemistry. My research is focused on reconstructing the evolutionary and cultural prehistory of an important geographic corridor linking the Middle East with Central Asia. I hold a two-year postdoctoral award at the University of Pennsylvania Museum where I am developing a high-resolution radiocarbon chronology for the transition from hunting and gathering to food production in the plains and highland valleys adjacent the Caspian Sea in northern Iran and southern Turkmenistan. I am examining the molecular and isotopic composition of organic residues surviving in pottery and fired clay fragments recovered from Hotu and Belt caves in northern Iran. These rock shelters were excavated by University of Pennsylvania Museum anthropologist Carlton Coon in the early 1950s, and provide well-documented evidence of transition from hunting to herding and the earliest evidence of the firing of clay vessels in the Middle East. I am currently conducting a pilot study and experimental program to increase the efficacy of the use of stable carbon isotope values in characterizing organic residues surviving in the earliest pottery vessels from this region of the world. I have previously conducted molecular and isotopic analyses of residues surviving in pottery recovered from 22 early settlements in the Fertile Crescent.

I am especially interested in research that intersects the natural and social sciences, and working on interdisciplinary projects to produce complementary lines of evidence that better address long-standing archaeological research questions. I have taught undergraduate courses in biological anthropology, archaeology and world prehistory at Trent University and the University of Toronto.  I am associate with Trent University’s Archaeological Research Centre and Vice-President responsible for membership development of the Society for Archaeological Sciences.

                                  greggmic@sas.edu   Philadelphia: 215.253.8747  Toronto: 416.485.0205