ASOR FELLOWSHIP RECIPIENTS: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
ZELJKO REZEK
What was your most memorable moment during the excavation season you participated in?
The whole season was pretty memorable, since the fieldwork took place in the Petra area in Jordan. Maybe what stands out the most was the exploration and visits to the sites of other time periods and cultures in the area. The site I have been working on is an Epipaleolithic site, dating into the terminal Pleistocene. It was a very nice experience to find and see contexts of other periods and influences–Neolithic, Bronze-Age, Nabatean, Graeco-Roman, Byzantine–in the same area, offering an insight into the deep-time changes in the culture, behavior and adaptation to the environment of human societies during the last 15,000 years.
What advice would you give a fellow recipient?
If possible, try to grasp the wider social and natural context of the past you are working on, by exploring the wider area of your field site and by putting it into a current social landscape. This gives the past another dimension.
Are you still affiliated with ASOR as a member?
Yes, through my university.
What is the current status of your career or education?
The fellowship was a considerable financial aid in going abroad for that field season. During the same trip though, I have managed to develop contacts with some of the government offices and to obtain a prospect of starting my own research. Today, I am directing my own research and fieldwork in that country, which is about adaptations of human groups to Pleistocene environments of the Levant, put in the wider context of such adaptations in the neighboring regions like North Africa and Arabia.
