Paul Wordsworth

Qualifications

BA (UCL), MA (UCL), PhD (Copenhagen)

Academic Background and Previous Positions

I am a research fellow with the Nizami Ganjavi Programme at the Oriental Institute, working on the archaeology of the early Islamic Caucasus and Central Asia. Prior to this I held the position of Research Officer on the AHRC-funded Balkh Art and Cultural Heritage Project at the University of Oxford.

I completed my doctoral studies at the University of Copenhagen, having gained my BA and MA in archaeology at University College, London.

My current fieldwork is now based in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. I direct the Archaeological Exploration of Bərdə Project in Central Azerbaijan, and I have been working with the Ancient Merv Project in Turkmenistan over the last ten years.

Undergraduate Teaching Areas

I teach Approaches to History (Art and Archaeology)

Research Interests

The archaeology of medieval/early Islamic Central Asia and the Caucasus; Landscape Archaeology and GIS; Historical Archaeology; early Islamic vernacular architecture.

Publications

Wordsworth, P. (forthcoming - 2016). “Settlement and Water Use in Islamic Central Asia”. In B. Walker (ed.) Oxford Handbook of Islamic Archaeology. Oxford University Press.

Wordsworth, P. (forthcoming – 2016). “Traditions of monumental decoration in the earthen architecture of early Islamic Central Asia”. In S. Pradines (ed.) Earth in Islamic Architecture. Historical and Anthropological Perspectives. Leiden: Brill.

McPhillips, S. and Wordsworth, P. (eds.) (in press - 2015). Landscapes of the Islamic World: archaeological, historical and ethnographic approaches. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Wordsworth, P. (in press - 2015). “Sustaining Travel - the economy of medieval stopping-places across the Karakum Desert, Turkmenistan”. In McPhillips, S. and Wordsworth, P. (eds.), Landscapes of the Islamic World: archaeological, historical and ethnographic approaches. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Wordsworth, P. 2015. “Merv on Khorasanian trade routes from the 10th-13th centuries”. In R. Rante (ed.) Greater Khorasan. Studies in the History and Culture of the Middle East 29. Berlin: De Gruyter. 51-62.

Barton, J. and Wordsworth, P. 2012. “Multi-Scalar GIS at Merv, Turkmenistan: bringing it all together.” Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA). Proceedings of the 36th International Conference, Budapest, 2nd-6th April 2008.

Richter, T., al-Naimi, F. A., Yeomans, L., House, M., Collie, T., Bangsgaard Jensen, P., Rosendahl, S., Wordsworth, P. and Walmsley, A. 2012. “The 2010–2011 excavation season at al-Zubārah, north-west Qatar” (poster). Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 42: 1-10.

Richter, T. Wordsworth, P. and Walmsley, A. 2011. “Pearl fishers, Townsfolk, Bedouin and Sheikhs: Economic and Social Relations in Islamic Al Zubarah”. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 41: 1-16.

Williams, T. and Wordsworth, P. 2011. “Merv to the Oxus: a desert survey of routes and surviving archaeology”. Archaeology International 12: 27-30.