Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World

Lorenzo Castellano is an anthropological archaeologist interested in studying past human-environment relationships across different levels of cultural experience and practice. He received his Ph.D. from New York University in 2022, following an MA in Archaeology (2012) and a BA in Cultural Heritage Studies (2008) from the University of Milan, Italy. As Postdoctoral Scholar at the Cotsen Institute, he coordinated activities at the Ancient Agriculture and Paleoethnobotany Laboratory (AAPL), a collaborative research space dedicated to investigating past agricultural systems and studying archaeological plant remains. Prior to his time at Cotsen, he was a Postdoctoral Lecturer in Archaeology at NYU’s Department of Anthropology and at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.

As part of an overarching interest in the study of the relationships between people and environment, Castellano's research concentrates on the study of ancient agricultural systems, with a geographic focus on Western Asia. He is especially interested in the relationship between agricultural strategies and political complexity, the impact of climatic and environmental change on agricultural systems, and long-term patterns of landscape transformation. His work is strongly interdisciplinary, drawing on Archaeological Methods and Theory, Archaeobotany, Paleoenvironmental Research, and Western Asia Archaeology and History. He has participated in archaeological fieldwork and research across a wide range of chronological and cultural contexts in Italy, Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Since 2015, he has been directing excavations on the southern slope of the multi-period site of Niğde-Kınık Höyük (Turkey).