Ian Lindsay

Ian Lindsay received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2006 and joined the Purdue University faculty in 2007.

Personal Website

Specialization

Origins of political complexity; ceramic analysis; landscapes as media for political authority; household archaeology; GIS and remote sensing; Caucasus

Positions at Purdue University

2014 – present Associate Professor
2007 – 2014 Assistant Professor

Research

Prof. Lindsay’s research focuses on the origins of complex societies in the South Caucasus. He is co-director of an international collaborative expedition called Project ArAGATS, together with scholars from Cornell University, Stanford University, the University of Chicago and the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Republic of Armenia. Over the past 15 years, Prof. Lindsay’s research in the Tsaghkahovit Plain of northwestern Armenia has focused on domestic contexts at the base of Late Bronze Age hilltop fortresses, investigating the role of local communities in the creation of new sociopolitical institutions during the mid-2nd millennium BC. Most recently, he is initiating a survey project in the upper Kasakh River valley adjacent to the Tsaghkahovit Plain to study fortified landscapes during the Bronze and Iron Age periods as a means to better understand the shifting role of militarism and warfare in political subjectivity, social cohesion/fragmentation, and identity between the 3rd and 1st millennia BC. In this new phase of research, Dr. Lindsay is employing unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to generate detailed, high-resolution aerial images of the survey area, and to facilitate photogrammetric analysis of archaeological landscapes via 3D modeling and orthomosaic images.

Prof. Lindsay is also past president of the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC), an independent not-for-profit organization fostering research collaborations in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Funding for Lindsay’s research has come from the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Social Science Research Council’s Eurasia Program, and Purdue University.

Recent Publications

Lindsay, Ian and Ningning Nicole Kong
2020  "Using ArcGIS Collector Mobile App for Settlement Survey Data Collection in Armenia.” Advances in Archaeological Practice.

Badalyan, Ruben, Alan F. Greene, Armine Harutyunyan, Lori Khatchadourian, Ian Lindsay, Maureen Marshall and Adam T. Smith
2020  “Project ArAGATS 1998-2018: Twenty Years of Archaeological Investigations into the Bronze and Iron Ages of Armenia.” Aramazd: Armenian Journal of Near Eastern Studies 10(1-2): 61-81.

Cromartie, Amy, Claire Blanchet, Chéïma Barhoumi, Erwan Messager, Odile Peyron, Vincent Ollivier, Pierre Sabatier, David Etienne, Samuel Nahapetyan, Arkady Karakhanyan, Lori Khatchadourian, Adam T. Smith, Ruben Badalyan, Bérengère Perello, Ian Lindsay, Sébastien Joannin
2020   The Vegetation, Climate, and Fire History of a Mountain Steppe: A Holocene reconstruction from the South Caucasus, Shenkani, Armenia. Quaternary Science Reviews.

Manning, Sturt W., Adam T. Smith, Lori Khatchadourian, Ruben Badalyan, Ian Lindsay, Alan Greene, Maureen Marshall
2018  “A New Chronological Model for the Bronze and Iron Age South Caucasus: Radiocarbon Results from Project ArAGATS, Armenia.” Antiquity 92(366): 1530-1551.

Lindsay, Ian
2016  Settlement Mobility and the Politics of Ritual among Late Bronze Age Fortress Communities: Recent Findings from the Site of Tsaghkahovit, Armenia. In Fitful Histories and Unruly Publics, edited by Kathryn O’Neil Weber, Emma Hite, Lori Khatchadourian, and Adam T. Smith, pp. 190-216. Leiden: Brill.

Badalyan, Ruben, Adam T. Smith, Ian Lindsay, Armine Harutyunyan, Alan Greene, Maureen Marshall, Belinda Monahan and Roman Hovsepyan
2014  “A Preliminary Report on the 2008, 2010, and 2011 Investigations of Project ArAGATS on the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Republic of Armenia.” Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan.

Lindsay, Ian, Jeffrey Leon, Adam T. Smith and Conner Wiktorowicz
2014 "Geophysical Survey at Late Bronze Age Fortresses: Comparing Methods in Diverse Geological Contexts of Armenia." Antiquity 88: 578-595.

Lindsay, Ian and Alan Greene
2013 “Sovereignty, Mobility, and Political Cartographies in Late Bronze Age Southern Caucasia.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 32(4): 691-712.

Greene, Alan and Ian Lindsay
2012 “4 Mobility, Territorial Commitments, and Political Organization among Late Bronze Age Polities in Southern Caucasia.” Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 22(1): 54-71. doi: 10.1111/apaa.12003