NANCY HIGHCOCK

Contact

Email: nancy.highcock@ashmus.ox.ac.uk
ORCID: 0000-0002-1238-8263
University of Oxford webpages
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Biography

Nancy Highcock is the Jaleh Hearn Curator for Ancient Middle East (Assistant Keeper) in the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum.

She is an Associate Faculty Member of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

Prior to her appointment at the Ashmolean in 2024, she was the Curator for Ancient Middle East at the British Museum and was a post-doctoral lecturer and teaching associate in Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Cambridge.

Nancy is a Field Supervisor at the Türkmen-Karahöyük Archaeological Project, Konya, Türkiye (co-directors Michele Massa, Bilkent University and James Osborne, the University of Chicago).

She has also worked at the sites of Niğde-Kınık Höyük and Tell Atchana in Türkiye.

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Research

My research interests centre on the material culture and social history of ancient West Asia, with a particular focus on ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia and the relationships between the two regions in the Bronze and Iron ages. I am especially interested in ancient trade and exploring the ways in which long-distance merchants forge new multicultural and multilinguistic communities whilst maintaining ties with their homelands. I examine the choices merchants made with what to bring with them and what to leave behind both in terms of material culture and wider social systems, including religious beliefs and practices.

I am also working with an international group of archaeologists on how long-distance trade impacts city populations and levels of inequality over time. As part of my work on trade entrepôts and merchant communities, I also look at gendered economic practices and women’s agency in the production and consumption of both local and foreign goods.

At the Ashmolean, I am interested in how we can better integrate voices and stories from non-elites with larger narratives about ancient West Asia and the eastern Mediterranean. I am also exploring how new research, including scientific analysis, can offer fresh perspectives and breathe new life into legacy museum collections and archaeological assemblages for a diverse range of audiences both in-person and online. I am also beginning work on exploring the important role that Oxford and the Ashmolean played in the development of, and growing interest in, Anatolian archaeology at the turn of the 20th century.

Teaching

Mesopotamia & Egypt from the Emergence of Complex Society to c. 2000 BC (with Liam McNamara)

Lectures in FHS Paper 4: Urbanism and Society

Keywords

Archaeology; Archaeology of Asia, Africa and the Americas; Archaeology of Europe, the Mediterranean and the Levant; Collaborative projects; Gender Equality; History and Archaeology; History, Ancient; Iraq; Media enquiries; Middle East; Museum Studies; Museums; Reduced Inequalities; Sustainable Cities and Communities; Syrian Arab Republic; Teaching provision; Turkey