Staff profile

Biography and Research Topics

I joined the department in 2023. Before that, I received my PhD in 2016 from Harvard University (Dept. of Anthropology). From 2017 through 2022, I was a lecturer in archaeology in the Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT and was a Humboldt Fellow (2018-2020) associated with the University of Kiel. 

I am a zooarchaeologist interested in a range of human-animal relations in the past, including domestication, the development of taboos, animal management strategies, the value of livestock, and the ways in which livestock wealth supported the development of complex societies. I approach these broad topics using traditional zooarchaeological techniques, geometric morphometrics, and stable isotopic analysis. Although I engage with a broad anthropological approach, most of my work has focused on animal economies in the ancient Near East. I have conducted field and faunal projects in Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Iraqi Kurdistan. I am also working on faunal remains from early modern Kenya.

My book, Evolution of a Taboo (Oxford University Press, 2021) explores the long and complicated history of pigs in the cultures of the Near East from the Paleolithic to today. More recently, I have been focusing on how the management strategies of sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs evolved in concert with (and contributing to) the development and persistence of so-called "complex societies" in the Levant. This work rests on zooarchaeological datasets as well as theoretical work on the theory of value and political economies. 

• Ancient Near East
• Animal Domestication
• Complex Societies
• Human-Animal Relations
• Political Economy
• Zooarchaeology

Authored book

• Price, M. D. (2021). Evolution of a Taboo: Pigs and People in the Ancient Near East. Oxford University Press

Chapter in book

• Price, M. Pigs in Between: Pig Husbandry in the Late Neolithic in Northern Mesopotamia. In Archaeozoology of Southwest Asia and Adjacent Areas XIII. Lockwood Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2d7x51d.6
• Price, M. (2022). Food and Israelite Identity. In J. Fu, C. Shafer-Elliott, & C. Meyers (Eds.), T&T Clark Handbook of Food in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel (423–463). https://doi.org/10.5040/9780567679826.ch-024

Journal Article

• Price, M. D., & Wolfhagen, J. (2024). Wool they, won’t they: Zooarchaeological perspectives on the political and subsistence economies of wool in northern Mesopotamia. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 74, Article 101590. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101590
• Price, M., & Makarewicz, C. A. (2024). Wealth in Livestock, Wealth in People, and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Jordan. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 34(1), 65-82. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774323000136
• Price, M., & Jaffe, Y. (2023). Ending the war on error: towards an archaeology of failure. Antiquity, 97(396), 1598-1606. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.120
• Price, M., & Jaffe, Y. (2023). To err is human: assessing failure and avoiding assumptions. Antiquity, 97(396), 1617-1619. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.166
• Price, M. D., Perry-Gal, L., & Reshef, H. (2023). The Southern Levantine pig from domestication to Romanization: A biometrical approach. Journal of Archaeological Science, 157(September), Article 105828. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2023.105828
• Corcoran-Tadd, N., Price, M., & Caramanica, A. (2023). The Political Economy of Livestock in Early States. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 33(1), 119-136. https://doi.org/10.1017/s095977432200021x
• Jaffe, Y., Caramanica, A., & Price, M. D. (2023). Towards an antifragility framework in past human–environment dynamics. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10(1), Article 915. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02413-3
• Price, M., Meier, J., & Arbuckle, B. (2021). Canine Economies of the Ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean. Journal of Field Archaeology, 46(2), 81-92. https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2020.1848322
• Price, M., Fisher, M., & Stein, G. (2021). Animal Production and Secondary Products in the Fifth Millennium BC in northern Mesopotamia. Paléorient (En ligne), 47(2), 9-41. https://doi.org/10.4000/paleorient.1032
• Price, M., & Hongo, H. (2020). The Archaeology of Pig Domestication in Eurasia. Journal of Archaeological Research, 28(4), 557-615. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-019-09142-9
• Price, M., Rowan, Y. M., Kersel, M. M., & Makarewicz, C. A. (2020). Fodder, pasture, and the development of complex society in the Chalcolithic: isotopic perspectives on animal husbandry at Marj Rabba. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 12(4), Article 95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01043-z
• Price, M. D., & Evin, A. (2019). Long-term morphological changes and evolving human-pig relations in the northern Fertile Crescent from 11,000 to 2000 cal. bc. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 11(1), 237-251. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-017-0536-z
• Price, M., Makarewicz, C., & Chesson, M. (2018). Domestic Animal Production and Consumption at Tall al-Handaquq South (Jordan) in the Early Bronze III. Paléorient (En ligne), 44(1), 75-92
• Price, M., Grossman, K., & Paulette, T. (2017). Pigs and the pastoral bias: The other animal economy in northern Mesopotamia (3000–2000 BCE). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 48, 46-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2017.06.001
• Wolfhagen, J., & Price, M. D. (2017). A probabilistic model for distinguishing between sheep and goat postcranial remains. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 12, 625-631. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.02.022
• Price, M. D., Hill, A. C., Rowan, Y. M., & Kersel, M. M. (2016). Gazelles, Liminality, and Chalcolithic Ritual: A Case Study from Marj Rabba, Israel. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 376, 7-27. https://doi.org/10.5615/bullamerschoorie.376.0007
• Price, M., Wolfhagen, J., & Otárola-Castillo, E. (2016). Confidence Intervals in the Analysis of Mortality and Survivorship Curves in Zooarchaeology. American Antiquity, 81(1), 157-173. https://doi.org/10.7183/0002-7316.81.1.157
• Price, M., & Arbuckle, B. (2015). Early Pig Management in the Zagros Flanks: Reanalysis of the Fauna from Neolithic Jarmo, Northern Iraq. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 25(4), 441-453. https://doi.org/10.1002/oa.2312
• Price, M., Buckley, M., Kersel, M., & Rowan, Y. (2013). Animal Management Strategies during the Chalcolithic in the Lower Galilee: New Data from Marj Rabba. Paléorient (En ligne), 39(2), 183-200