• Office: WRI A123
• Phone: 702-895-5237
• Fax: 702-895-4823
• E-mail: levent.atici@unlv.edu
• Ph.D. Harvard U., 2007
• Curriculum Vitae

Interests: Paleolithic archaeology, zooarchaeology and taphonomy, foraging economies, the origins of animal domestication and the emergence of farming communities, the evolution of pastoral economies, the emergence of social complexity and state-level societies.

My research focus has been the Epipaleolithic forager adaptations in Mediterranean Turkey with special reference to the roots of the economic and socio-political transformations of societies in the Near East during the Neolithic. Dynamics leading to this “revolutionary” transformation would become more comprehensible when viewed from a broader perspective, i.e. from those periods that precede and follow it. For this, I have been engaged in research covering both ends of the spectrum, particularly focusing on the preceding Epipaleolithic period. More recently, my research agenda has expanded to include various social and economic characteristics of Central Anatolian Bronze Age societies, particularly focusing on ethnicity, colonialism, and the roles played by different socio-economic and political organizations, such as small villages and large urban centers, from a zooarchaeological perspective. Toward this end, I currently undertake complementary research at two Bronze Age sites—Kultepe and Kalehoyuk, a major Assyrian Trade Colony center and a small village site, respectively, in the arid Central Anatolian Plateau.

1. 2006. Who let the dogs out? Bone destruction and its broader implications in interpreting the Bronze Age pastoral economies at Kaman Kalehoyuk. In: Anatolian Archaeological Studies. Pp. 121-131. Vol. XV. Tokyo: Middle East Culture Center in Japan.
2. 2006. Middle Range Theory in Paleolithic archaeology: the past and the present, Journal of Taphonomy, Vol. 4(1): 27-44.
3. 2005. Centralized or decentralized: the mode of pastoral economy at Early Bronze Age Kaman Kalehoyuk. In: Anatolian Archaeological Studies. Pp. 119-127, Vol. XIV. Tokyo: Middle East Culture Center in Japan.
4. 2003. Early Bronze Age fauna from Kaman Kalehöyük (Central Turkey): a preliminary analysis. In: Anatolian Archaeological Studies. Pp. 99-102, Vol. XII. Tokyo: Middle East Culture Center in Japan.
5. 2002. (with  A.J. Stutz). Mortality Profile Analysis of the Ungulate Fauna from Okuzini: A Preliminary Reconstruction of Site Use, Seasonality, and Mobility Patterns. In: La Grotte d'Okuzini: Evolution du Paleolithique Final du Sud-Ouest de l'Anatolie [Okuzini Cave: The Evolution of the Final Paleolithic in Southwest Anatolia]. ERAUL 96, edited by I. Yalcinkaya, M. Otte, J. Kozlowski and O. Bar-Yosef, pp. 101-108. Universite de Liège, Liège.
6. 2002. (with I. Yalçinkaya, M. Otte, and M. B. Kosem). La Grotte D'Okuzini: L'Industrie Osseuse [Okuzini Cave: The Bone Industry]. In: La Grotte d'Okuzini: Evolution du Paleolithique Final du Sud-Ouest de l'Anatolie. ERAUL 96, edited by I. Yalcinkaya, M. Otte, J. Kozlowski and O. Bar-Yosef, pp. 277-283. Universite de Liège, Liège.