American Schools of Oriental Research awards the 2014 G. Ernest Wright Book Prize to Complex Communities
The American Schools of Oriental Research is pleased to announce that Benjamin W. Porter’s “Complex Communities: The Archaeology of Early Iron Age West-Central Jordan” has won the 2014 G. Ernest Wright Book Prize. Porter offers a unique, dynamic and sophisticated analysis of small-scale societies living on the margins of sustainability in his 2013 book, published by the University of Arizona Press. Porter’s book is impressive for its synthesis of diverse data sets, but Professor Porter goes beyond mere synthesis to engage a complex theoretical topic, which he successfully frames into a useful model of community development that will be valuable to many studying similar issues in a variety of diverse time periods and regions. Porter’s research is theoretically well informed, yet is also grounded in the analysis of archaeological materials. This book is an exemplary model of the integration of archaeology, textual studies and social theory, and offers a significant new contribution to the study of community complexity and resilience.
The G. Ernest Wright Book Prize is given to the editor/author of the most substantial volume(s) dealing with archaeological material, excavation reports and material culture from the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean. This work must be the result of original research published within the past two years.
