Temple University

Müge Durusu-Tanrıöver studies the archaeologies, landscapes, and arts of the eastern Mediterranean, with a specific focus on the hybrid material practices created on the borderlands of Bronze and Iron Age empires. Her research and publications to date concentrated on the Hittite Empire, with a specific emphasis on the imperial strategies of the center that can be traced in material culture and artistic production, as well as the responses of the border regions to Hittite imperialism. Müge is an active field archaeologist. Since 2019, she has been directing the Polatlı Landscape Archaeology and Survey Project (PLAS), for which she received funding from several institutions, including the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR).  

PhD, Brown University, 2016 
MA, Bilkent University, 2010 
BFA, Bilkent University, 2006 

Selected Awards: 

ASOR Charles Harris Project Grant (for PLAS 2023 Field Season)

Archaeological Institute of America Richard C. MacDonald Iliad Endowment for Archaeological Research (2021) 
Project Title: Conflict, Domination and Resistance in Late Bronze Age Anatolia 

Suna & İnan Kıraç Research Center for Mediterranean Civilizations (AKMED) Project Support Program (2019) 
Project Title: Tracing the Hittite Empire’s Western Frontier: Recording the Hittite Heritage of Polatlı, Ankara  

ARIT Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, American Research Institute in Turkey (2015) 
Project Title: Between Arzawa and Hattusa: Locating the Second Millennium BCE Material Culture from the Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Project 

Fulbright Foreign Student Program for Doctoral Degree (2010) 

Selected Works: 

Durusu-Tanrıöver, Müge. 2024. “Thick Places: Urban Place-Making in the Hittite Empire” Journal of Urban Archaeology 9: 17-32.

Durusu-Tanrıöver, Müge. 2023. “Signs of Climate Crisis as an Ancient Empire Unravelled” Nature 614 (No. 7949): 625-626.

Harmanşah, Ömür, Peri Johnson, Müge Durusu-Tanrıöver, Ben Marsh. 2022. “The Archaeology of Hittite Landscapes: A View from the Southwestern Borderlands.” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 10(1): 1-48. 

Durusu-Tanrıöver, Müge. 2021. “Ways of Being Hittite: Empire and Its Borderlands in Late Bronze Age Anatolia and Northern Syria.” Studia Orientalia Electronica 9(2): 3-27. 

Durusu-Tanrıöver, Müge. 2020. “Adapting Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) to Suboptimal Field Conditions Presented by Large-Scale Landscape Monuments: The Case of the Yalburt Yaylası Sacred Pool Complex.” Cedrus: The Journal of Mediterranean Civilisations Studies VIII: 135-146. 

Durusu-Tanrıöver, Müge. 2019. “Now You See Him, Now You Don’t: Anthropomorphic Representations of the Hittite King.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 78 (2): 287-306. 

Alcock, Susan E., Dufton, J. Andrew, and Müge Durusu-Tanrıöver. 2016. "Archaeology and the MOOC: Massive, Open, Online and Opportunistic". Journal of Social Archaeology 16 (1): 3-31.