David Wengrow

Biographic Data

ID86655
NAMEDavid Wengrow
GIVEN NAMESDavid
FAMILY NAMEWengrow
SIGNATUREWENGROW D
AFFILIATIONSUniversity College London
ORCID0000-0002-0781-1063
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS40
TOTAL CITATIONS341
AUTHOR COUNT39
EDITOR COUNT1
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1996
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX8

  • Storage story: Investigating food surplus and agricultural methods in Late Ubaid Gurga Chiya (Iraqi Kurdistan)

    Open AccessKarolina Joka, Lara González Carretero et al.ARTICLEJournal of Archaeological Science…2025References: 13

  • Inequality at the Dawn of the Bronze Age: The Case of Başur Höyük, a ‘Royal’ Cemetery at the Margins of the Mesopotamian World

    Open AccessDavid Wengrow, B R Hassett et al.ARTICLECambridge Archaeological Journal2025References: 28

    On the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, archaeologists encounter evidence that challenges conventional understandings of early state formation as a transition from ‘small-scale, egalitarian’ to ‘large-scale, stratified’ societies. One such location is the Early Bronze Age cemetery of Başur Höyük, which presents evidence of grand funerary rituals—including ‘retainer burials’ and spectacular deposits of metallic wealth—in an otherwise sma…

  • Material conditions and human freedom: David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021)

    Open AccessEnzo Rossi, Annelien De Dijn et al.ARTICLEContemporary Political Theory2024Cited by: 1References: 40

  • Scale Matters: The Quality of Quantity in Human Culture and Sociality

    Open AccessNurit Bird‐david, Stephan Henn et al.BOOKScale Matters2022

    For the greater part of the 20 th century, hunter-gatherer societies were regarded as "small-scale societies" by modern sociology (see Barth ed.1978 for overview).The broad distinction between "small-scale" and "large-scale" was increasingly losing its overall analytical grip in the late 20 th century, also with regard to the classification of hunter-gatherers in these terms.Anthropologists who approached hunter-gatherers from ecological-evolutio…

  • Une autre histoire de l'humanité

    David Wengrow, Ève CharrinARTICLESciences Humaines2022

  • The dawn of everything

    Open AccessA Appadurai, David WengrowARTICLEAnthropology Today2022Cited by: 1

    The Dawn of Humanity is a sweeping account of how the human species adopted agriculture, central bureaucracies, and inequality despite numerous early experiments with other modes of subsistence, high degrees of freedom from hierarchical power, and many examples of egalitarian social organization. The problem, as the author of this guest editorial sees it, is that the historical examples in the book are chosen without an eye for falsification, the…

  • The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

    David Graeber, David WengrowBOOKThe Dawn of Everything2021Cited by: 60

  • Cachées, à la vue de tous, les origines autochtones de la démocratie dans les Amériques

    David Graeber, David WengrowARTICLERevue du MAUSS2021References: 6

    Il semble que l'histoire de la démocratie est prise en étau. Ses fervents adeptes et ses plus farouches détracteurs affirment tous qu'elle est un produit exclusif de la « civilisation occidentale » et soutiennent que la démocratie véritable et directe est à la fois tout à fait insolite dans l'histoire mondiale et qu'il est fort difficile d'y parvenir. Pourtant, les preuves manifestes de l'existence de pratiques démocratiques en Afrique, en Océani…

  • The Later Prehistory of the Shahrizor Plain, Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Further Investigations at Gurga Chiya and Tepe Marani

    Open AccessRobert Carter, David Wengrow et al.ARTICLEIraq2020

    The Shahrizor Prehistory Project has targeted prehistoric levels of the Late Ubaid and Late Chalcolithic 4 (LC4; Late Middle Uruk) periods at Gurga Chiya (Shahrizor, Kurdistan region of northern Iraq), along with the Halaf period at the adjacent site of Tepe Marani. Excavations at the latter have produced new dietary and environmental data for the sixth millennium B.C. in the region, while at Gurga Chiya part of a burned Late Ubaid tripartite hou…

  • The 2019 Theoretical Archaeology Group Meeting at UCL

    Open AccessAndrew Gardner, Andrew W Gardner et al.ARTICLEArchaeology International2020

  • Investigating Radical Deaths and the Cultures That Practiced Them: New AHRC Funded Research at the Institute of Archaeology

    Open AccessB R Hassett, David Wengrow et al.ARTICLEArchaeology International2020

    A new Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project brings together multiple strands of investigation to probe the relationship between ritual, violence, and early state formation. David Wengrow and Brenna Hassett will coordinate an international team combining biomolecular analysis (stable isotopes, ancient DNA), bioarchaeology, and archaeology to examine a remarkable set of Early Bronze Age funerary deposits (c. 3100–2800 BC), exca…

  • Viewpoint: Archaeology of Strikes and Revolution

    Open AccessRenata F Peters, David Wengrow et al.ARTICLEArchaeology International2018

    Viewpoint: Archaeology of Strikes and Revolution

  • Civilisation and Human Niche Construction

    Open AccessManuel Arroyo-Kalin, Craig Stevens et al.ARTICLEArchaeology International2018

    This short paper introduces the special section "Civilisation and the Construction of the Human Niche", organised by the ‘Domestication, Niche Construction and the Anthropocene’ research network at the UCL Institute of Archaeology

  • Avoiding the pestilence of the state: Some thoughts on niche construction, heritage, and sacred waterworks

    Open AccessDavid WengrowARTICLEArchaeology International2018

    The egalitarian character of traditional irrigation ('subak') systems in Bali has been widely documented and discussed by anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists. In a recent study, Stephen Lansing and Karyn Fox have considered how the principles of niche construction theory might help to understand the genesis of these systems, as well as certain of their institutional characteristics. Here I discuss how this approach might be extended, …

  • Mid- to late-Holocene archaeology, environment and climate in the northeast Kurdistan region of Iraq

    Open AccessAnke Marsh, Dominik Fleitmann et al.ARTICLEThe Holocene2018Cited by: 4References: 14

    This work presents new data from phytolith and speleothem analyses that cover the middle to late Holocene from northeastern Iraq in the Kurdistan region. Coupling these data with previous work, we demonstrate how the region’s environment and climate developed during a time when agriculture became not only established but settlements started to transform into larger urban areas. Results demonstrate a wetter phase during the middle Holocene relativ…

  • Comment changer le cours de l’histoire (ou au moins du passé)

    David Graeber, David Wengrow et al.ARTICLERevue du Crieur2018Cited by: 3

  • Roundtable

    Open AccessDavid Wengrow, David GraeberARTICLEAmerican Anthropologist2018Cited by: 2References: 4

  • Many Seasons Ago: Slavery and Its Rejection among Foragers on the Pacific Coast of North America

    Open AccessDavid Wengrow, David GraeberARTICLEAmerican Anthropologist2018Cited by: 15References: 43

    Anthropologists have traditionally classified foragers on the Pacific coast of North America into two major culture areas, characterized by strikingly different social and ethical systems. These are "California" and the adjacent "Northwest Coast." Foragers in the northern part of California exhibit many elements of Weber's "Protestant ethic," such as the moral injunction for community leaders to work hard, seek spiritual purpose by introspection,…

  • Avoiding the Pestilence of the State: Some Thoughts on Niche Construction, Heritage, and Sacred Waterworks

    Open AccessDavid WengrowARTICLEArchaeology International2017

    The egalitarian character of traditional irrigation ( subak ) systems in Bali has been widely documented and discussed by anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists. In a recent study, Stephen Lansing and Karyn Fox considered how the principles of niche construction theory might help to understand the genesis of these systems, as well as certain of their institutional characteristics. Here I discuss how this approach might be extended, to in…

  • Gurga Chiya and Tepe Marani: New Excavations in the Shahrizor Plain, Iraqi Kurdistan

    Open AccessDavid Wengrow, Robert Carter et al.ARTICLEIraq2016

    Gurga Chiya and Tepe Marani are small, adjacent mounds located close to the town of Halabja in the southern part of the Shahrizor Plain, one of the most fertile regions of Iraqi Kurdistan. Survey and excavation at these previously unexplored sites is beginning to produce evidence for human settlement spanning the sixth to the fourth millennia, c . 5600–3300 cal. b.c . In Mesopotamian chronology this corresponds to the Late Neolithic through to Ch…

  • Cultures of Commodity Branding

    David Andrés Castillo, Andrew Bevan et al.BOOKCultures of Commodity Branding2016Cited by: 8

    Introduction: Commodity Branding in Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives, David Wengrow 2. Making and Marking Relationships: Bronze Age Brandings and Mediterranean Commodities, Andrew Bevan 3. The Work of an Istanbulite Imitasyoncu, Magdalena Craciun 4. The Attribution of Authenticity to and Fake Branded Commodities in Brazil and China, Rosana Pinheiro-Machado 5. The Real One: Western Brands and Competing Notions of Authenticity in Soc…

  • Farewell to the 'childhood of man: Ritual, Seasonality, and the Origins of Inequality

    Open AccessDavid Wengrow, David GraeberARTICLEJournal of the Royal Anthropologica…2015Cited by: 102References: 68

    Evidence of grand burials and monumental construction is a striking feature in the archaeological record of the Upper Palaeolithic period, between 40 and 10 kya (thousand years ago). Archaeologists often interpret such finds as indicators of rank and hierarchy among Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. Interpretations of this kind are difficult to reconcile with the view, still common in sociobiology, that pre-agricultural societies were typically egali…

  • The origins of monsters: Image and Cognition in the First Age of Mechanical Reproduction

    David WengrowBOOKThe origins of monsters2014

    "It has often been claimed that "monsters"--supernatural creatures with bodies composed from multiple species--play a significant part in the thought and imagery of all people from all times. The Origins of Monsters advances an alternative view. Composite figurations are intriguingly rare and isolated in the art of the prehistoric era. Instead it was with the rise of cities, elites, and cosmopolitan trade networks that "monsters" became widesprea…

  • Radiocarbon dating and the Naqada relative chronology

    Open AccessMichael W Dee, David Wengrow et al.ARTICLEJournal of Archaeological Science2014Cited by: 3References: 4

  • Cultural convergence in the Neolithic of the Nile Valley: A prehistoric perspective on Egypt's place in Africa

    Open AccessDavid Wengrow, Michael W Dee et al.ARTICLEAntiquity2014Cited by: 17References: 39

    The African origins of Egyptian civilisation lie in an important cultural horizon, the 'primary pastoral community', which emerged in both the Egyptian and Sudanese parts of the Nile Valley in the fifth millennium BC. A re-examination of the chronology, assisted by new AMS determinations from Neolithic sites in Middle Egypt, has charted the detailed development of these new kinds of society. The resulting picture challenges recent studies that em…