Marcella Frangipane
University of Rome
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Primary Section: 51, Anthropology Membership Type:
International Member
(elected 2013)
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Biosketch
Marcella Frangipane is Full Professor of Prehistory and Protohistory of the Near and Middle East in the Department of Antiquities at the Sapienza University of Rome. She also teaches at the Doctoral School in Archaeology (Prehistory) and the High School of Specialisation in Archaeology in the same University. Her principal field of research is the study of the early formation of unequal and hierarchical societies in the Near East, and in Mesopotamia and Anatolia in particular. She is well known for her long-term project in the mound of Arslantepe-Malatya (Eastern Turkey), which, under her direction, has shed new light on the emergence of power and the origin of the State and bureaucracy. She was born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1948, and grew up partly in Palermo and partly in Rome, where she graduated at the University cum laude. She has been educated at the Paleoethnology school of Salvatore Puglisi and Alba Palmieri, and embraced their rigorous excavation methodology and anthropological plus historical approach. A three years scholarship in Mexico at the beginning of her career put her in contact with stimulating innovative trends in Anthropology. Frangipane has been the director of the School of Specialization in Oriental Archaeology in Rome from 2000 to 2003. She has been conferred a Honorary PhD by the University of Malatya and a title of 'Cavaliere' for scientific merits by the President of the Italian Republic. She is also Corresponding Member of the Deutsches Archaeologisches Institut in Berlin.
Research Interests
I am investigating on the role and impact of early cities in the ancient world, particularly in the Near East; on the relationship between urbanisation and State formation in the same region; on the economy of early states and early centralised societies; on the problem of archaeologically recognising cultural identities and processes of inter-cultural connections.
