Roger Matthews

States of Clay: integrated scientific approaches to clay bureaucratic objects from Early Mesopotamia, 3700-2700 BCE

Funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the German Research Foundation (DFG), the States of Clay project is a collaboration between the University of Reading and the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, with Roger and Barbara Helwing as Co-PIs, Amy Richardson and Helen Gries as Co-Is and Heike Dohmann as postdoctoral researcher.
In the States of Clay project, we apply an integrated scientific methodology to selected clay bureaucratic objects (tablets, sealings), or CBOs, to maximise their interpretive potential for understanding early urban and state level societies of Mesopotamia. Our focus is on the millennium 3700-2700 BCE, when major sites such as Uruk (often cited as 'the world's first city'), Ur, Jemdet Nasr, Fara, Brak, Nineveh and many others rose to prominence within networks of interregional engagement across Mesopotamia and adjacent regions. While all these centres used CBOs to administer their resources in a range of ways, they each developed divergent patterns of CBO usage through space and time. In this project we are articulating these patterns of clay use across a thousand years of urban rise and fall. 

See also: Matthews, R. & Richardson, A. 2018. Cultic resilience and inter-city engagement at the dawn of urban history: protohistoric Mesopotamia and the ‘city seals’, 3200–2750 BC. World Archaeology 50.5, 723-747.

Counting, sealing, writing in Iran: deep time perspectives

Partly funded by the British Institute of Persian Studies, Roger worked with colleagues Amy Richardson, Hassan Fazeli Nashli, and Donna de Groene to produce a major article articulating and evaluating long-term trends and patterns in the uses of counting, sealing, and writing in Iran from periods covering the Early Neolithic to the end of the Iron Age. A total of 45,000 objects from 99 archaeological sites feature in this analysis, which can be viewed at:

Matthews, R., Richardson, A., de Groene, D. and Fazeli Nashli, H. 2025. Information revolutions and information transitions: counting, sealing, writing in Iran 10,000-300 BC. Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 12.2: 215-306.

Central Zagros Archaeological Project

CZAP is a collaborative UK-Iraq-Iran project investigating the Early Neolithic of eastern Iraq and western Iran through excavation of several sites. This project was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council for four years from January 2011. It has also been supported by grants from the British Academy, National Geographic Society, the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, the British Institute of Persian Studies, the Society of Antiquaries of London, and the Wainwright Fund for Near Eastern Archaeology. From October 2018 to September 2024, this project was supported by a European Research Council Advanced Grant entitled MENTICA Middle East Neolithic Transition: Integrated Community Approaches

Roger co-directs, with Wendy Matthews and Kamal Rasheed Raheem, ongoing excavations at the Early Neolithic sites of Zawi Chemi Rezan and Bestansur in Iraqi Kurdistan. Bestansur's importance is recognised by its status on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List.

Major CZAP publications include:

Matthews, R., Matthews, W., Rasheed Raheem, K. & Richardson, A.  (eds). 2020. The Early Neolithic of the Eastern Fertile Crescent: Excavations at Bestansur and Shimshara, Iraqi Kurdistan. CZAP Reports Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Matthews, R., Matthews, W. & Mohammadifar, Y. (eds). 2013. The Earliest Neolithic of Iran: 2008 Excavations at Sheikh-e Abad and Jani. CZAP Reports Vol. 1. Oxford: British Institute of Persian Studies and Oxbow Books.

The Archaeology of Iran

Funded by a Marie Skłodowska Curie Incoming International Fellowship, 2011-2013, Roger worked for ten years with colleague Professor Hassan Fazeli Nashli of Tehran University to produce a major ground-breaking volume on the Archaeology of Iran:
Matthews, R. & Fazeli Nashli, H. 2022. The Archaeology of Iran from the Palaeolithic to the Achaemenid Empire. Abingdon: Routledge.