About Eli

Eli Dollarhide is an archaeologist and anthropologist who specializes in the prehistory of the Gulf region and the broader Middle East. He received his PhD in Anthropology from NYU in 2019 and is currently Research Fellow in the Humanities Research Fellowship for the Study of the Arab World at NYU Abu Dhabi. His research investigates the role of small and rural settlements in the development of Bronze Age exchange networks and political systems.

Dollarhide co-directs archaeological research at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat, Oman, which is home to one of the world’s most complete collections of tombs and settlements from the 3rd millennium BC. His research uses artifacts, architecture, and environmental data to reconstruct Bronze Age patterns of exchange within southeastern Arabia and across the ancient Middle East. He previously directed a National Geographic Society-sponsored archaeological survey around Bat that resulted in the discovery of over 400 sites. Dollarhide's research has also been supported by grants from the British Foundation for the Study of the Arabia, the Digital Globe Foundation, and the Center for the Study of Human Origins at NYU. His interests include the social construction of landscape, geospatial techniques in archaeology, the analysis of ancient ceramics, and the development of urbanism in the Middle East. At NYUAD, he is continuing excavations in Oman, studying the production and exchange of southeastern Arabia's earliest pottery through thin-section petrography, and completing a book on the Bat landscape.