International Council
for Archaeozoology

Archaeozoology of Southwest Asia Working Group

ASWAaa Group picture, Nicosia - Cyprus in 2017.

The Archaeozoology of Southwest Asia and Adjacent Areas (ASWA[AA]) Working Group was formed during the 1990 ICAZ International Conference in Washington D.C. Its purpose is to promote communication between individuals working on faunal remains from sites in western Asia and adjacent areas (e.g., northeast Africa, eastern Europe, central Asia, and south Asia). It carries out its mandate by sponsoring biennial international conferences.

The ASWA e-mail list that has been in operation for several years has recently been shut down because the server became infected with virus. List members are encouraged to register with ZOOARCH (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/zooarch.html) whose moderators have kindly agreed to also distribute information on Near Eastern archaeozoology.

ASWA Working Group Meetings:

  1. Groningen, The Netherlands (organized by Hijlke Buitenhuis and A.T. Clason), June 1992
  2. Tübingen, Germany (organized by Hans-Peter and Margarethe Uerpmann), September 1994
  3. Budapest, Hungary (organized by Laszlo Bartosiewicz and Alice Choyke), September 1996
  4. Paris, France (organized by Marjan Mashkour), June 1998
  5. Amman, Jordan (organized by Abdel Halim al-Shiyab), April 2000.
  6. London, England (organized by Louise Martin), August/September 2002.
  7. Ankara, Turkey (organized by Vicky Ioannidou and Hijlke Buitenhuis), June 2004
  8. Lyons, France (organized by Lionel Gourichon and Emmanuelle Vila), June 2006
  9. Al Ain, Abu Dhabi emirate, United Arab Emirates (organized by Marjan Mashkour and Mark Beech), November 2008
  10. The 10th international meeting of the ASWA working group was held in Brussels, from June 28 to June 30, 2011, at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS), Brussels – Belgium. Following the meeting, a workshop on 'Animal exploitation in Neolithic Central and Western Anatolia' took place on July 1. For more details, please have a look at the conference website.
  11. The 11th international meeting of the ASWA working group took place June 23rd to June 28th, 2013, at the Mount Carmel Campus of the University of Haifa, Israel. For more information, visit the conference website.
  12. The 12th international meeting of the ASWA working group took place June 10th to 14th, 2015, at the University of Groningen. For more information and to view the program, visit the conference website.
  13. The 13th international meeting of the ASWA working group was held in Nicosia, Cyprus, on the 7-9 June 2017. The meeting was co-organized by Jean-Denis Vigne, Vasiliki Kasianidou and Angelos Hajikoumis, with collaborations of Remi Berthon, Jwana Chahoud and Julie Daujat. Visit the conference website for more details.

    14. Images from the 2017 ASWA meeting in Nicosia, Cyprus. From left: Dinner in Nicosia, Presentation by Jean-Denis Vigne at the French Institute of Cyprus, Animals in the Nicosia Museu. Credit for all photos: E. Vila

  14. The 14th international meeting of the ASWA working group was held in Barcelona, Spain, on 3-7 June, 2019. Visit the meeting website for details.
  15. The 15th international meeting of the ASWA working group will be held in Tokyo, Japan, from November 28 - December 2, 2022. Visit the conference website.

ASWA Working Group Publications:

Note: The publishers for Volumes 3-8 of Archaeozoology of the Near East have granted permission for these works to be made available Open Access. As we work on uploading the contributions to an archive, we will build a full set of links here. For the moment, you may follow the links provided with each volume below to access the chapters. You may also download all the volumes from Dropbox here. The Dropbox folder also contains all chapters from Animals and Man in the Past. Essays in honour of Dr. A.T. Clason, which the publisher has agreed to share Open Access.

Archaeozoology of the Near East edited by H. Buitenhuis and A.T. Clason (1993). Universal Book Services/Dr. W. Backhuys, Leiden.

Archaeozoology of the Near East II edited by H. Buitenhuis and H.-P. Uerpmann (1995). Backhuys Publishers, Leiden.

Archaeozoology of the Near East III edited by H. Buitenhuis, L. Bartosiewicz, and A.M. Choyke (1998). ARC Publication 18. Archeological Research and Consultancy, Groningen, The Netherlands. [Access all chapters]

Archaeozoology of the Near East IV edited by M. Mashkour, H. Buitenhuis, A.M. Choyke, and F. Poplin (2000). ARC Publication 32. Archeological Research and Consultancy, Groningen, The Netherlands. [Access Volume 4A and Volume 4B]

Archaeozoology of the Near East V edited by H. Buitenhuis, A.M. Choyke, M. Mashkour, and A.H. Al-Shiyab (2002). ARC Publication 62. Archeological Research and Consultancy, Groningen, The Netherlands. [Access all chapters]

Archaeozoology of the Near East VI edited by H. Buitenhuis, A.M. Choyke, L. Martin, L. Bartosiewicz, and M. Mashkour (2005). ARC Publication 123, Groningen, The Netherlands. [Access all chapters]

Archaeozoology of the Near East VIII. Proceedings of the eighth international symposium on the archaeozoology of south-western Asia and adjacent areas (Lyons 2006) edited by E. Vila, L. Gourichon, A.M. Choyke, and H. Buitenhuis (2008). Travaux de la Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée 49, Jean Pouilloux, Lyon. [Access all chapters]




Archaeozoology of the Near East IX. Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium of the ICAZ Archaeozoology of Southwest Asia and Adjacent Areas Working Group, Al Ain, Abu Dhabi Department Authority Cultural and Heritage (ADACH) November 15-20 2008, Edited by Marjan Mashkour and Mark J. Beech (2017). 2 volumes. Oxbow Books. ISBN: 9781782978442 Available at: http://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/archaeozoology-of-the-near-east-9.html

Archaeozoology of the Near East X. Proceedings of the Tenth International Symposium on the Archaeozoology of South-Western Asia and Adjacent Areas. Ancient Near Eastern Studies Supplement Series, 44. Edited by De Cupere B., Linseele V., Hamilton-Dyer S. (2013). Peeters Publisher. Available at: http://www.peeters-leuven.be/boekoverz.asp?nr=9315




Bones and Identity: Zooarchaeological Approaches to Reconstructing Social and Cultural Landscapes in Southwest Asia. International Symposium on the archaeozoology of Southwestern Asia and adjacent areas Haifa 2013. by Nimrod Marom Edited by Reuven Yeshuran, Lior Weissbrod and Guy Bar-Oz (2016). Oxford, Oxbow Books ISBN 9781785701726




Archaeozoology of the Near East XII Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium of the ICAZ Archaeozoology of Southwest Asia and Adjacent Areas Working Group, Groningen Institute of Archaeology, June 14-15 2015, Edited by C. Çakırlar, J. Chahoud, R. Berthon, S. Pilaar Birch (2018) University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Available at: https://www.barkhuis.nl/product_info.php?products_id=236




Archaeozoology of Southwest Asia and Adjacent Areas XIII: Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Symposium, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus, June 7–10, 2017




ASWA's Liaison to ICAZ (since 2019) is Hitomi Hongo.