Lara Fabian

Lara Fabian is an archaeologist studying Rome’s eastern borderlands and the spaces beyond imperial control, focusing on the South Caucasus as well as the Circumpontic and Caspian zones. Her research looks at the relationships between local communities, the Roman and Arsacid empires, and the Sarmatian (mobile pastoralist) world. She also engages with the intellectual history of archaeology in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the contemporary Eurasian space. She is completing her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania (2018), having conducted dissertation research in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Russia with the support of a CLIR-Mellon Fellowship (2015) and CAORC Multi-Country Research Fellowship (2016). She is the co-director of the collaborative Azerbaijani-American ‘Lerik in Antiquity Archaeological Project,’ which has since 2016 explored a highland landscape in the southern mountains of Azerbaijan. She has conducted other fieldwork in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iraqi Kurdistan, Italy and England.

Papers:

1 Page

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies Volume 3: Frontier-Zone Processes and Transimperial Exchange

The Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies offers in three volumes the first comprehensive discussion of economic development in the empires of the Afro-Eurasian world region to elucidate the conditions under which large quantities of goods and people moved across continents and between empires. Volume 3: Frontier-Zone Processes and Transimperial Exchange analyzes frontier zones as particular landscapes of encounter, economic development, and transimperial network formation.
1 Page

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies Volume 2: Local, Regional, and Imperial Economies

The second volume of the Handbook describes different extractive economies in the world regions that have been outlined in the first volume. A wide range of economic actors – from kings and armies to cities and producers – are discussed within different imperial settings as well as the tools, which enabled and constrained economic outcomes.

1 Page

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies Volume 1: Contexts

The three-volume Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies is the main deliverable of the BaSaR project. It aims to offer a comprehensive discussion of economic development in the empires of the Afro-Eurasian world region and elucidate the conditions under which large quantities of goods and people moved across continents and between empires.
29 Pages

Notes of Material Importance: Archival Archaeology in the South Caucasus

- published in Archive Journal (August 2017)

This article explores the role of archaeological archives in untangling the ancient history of the South Caucasus. Archaeological datasets are uniquely diachronic. They reflect historical and environmental processes that occurred in antiquity, as well as the research questions, excavation methods and recording practices that surround their discovery. Archaeologists working in the South Caucasus, a region