May 22: Dr. Steffen Laursen (Moesgaard Museum, Denmark)

“The ’Royal’ Mounds of A’ali in Bahrain - New Light on the 1^st Dynasty of Dilmun, c. 2000-1800 BC”

Dr. Steffen Laursen is a curator at Moesgaard Museum that for the past 60 years has been engaged in the archaeology of the Gulf. Currently, Steffen is engaged with the research project Collapse: the “Eclipse of the East” and the rise of the Dilmun State in Bahrain, c. 2000 BC. This project seeks to understand the causal relationships between the enigmatic collapse of urban polities across Middle Asia in a dramatic horizon known as the “Eclipse of the East" (c. 2000-1900 BC) and the coterminous rise of the Dilmun state (modern-day Bahrain). By empirically investigating this collapse horizon through the lens of Dilmun’s contradictory ascent to statehood and the processes governing it Steffen hopes to offer new insights into the collapse of complexity in the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Iran, Oman and beyond. One of the most important imperial strands of this project is the excavations of Royal Mounds of A’ali.