Jennifer Swerida
Assistant professor
- Name
- Dr. J.L. Swerida
- Telephone
- 071 5276048
- j.l.swerida@arch.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0002-5212-0069

Current research
Jennifer Swerida is Assistant Professor in the Archaeology of West Asia. Her research considers the impact of mobile peoples in the history and culture of the Ancient Near East. Her work targets groups that are underrepresented in modern scholarship, despite playing formative roles in shaping and connecting societies throughout the region. Jennifer is particularly interested in studying groups that occupied areas traditionally considered marginal or peripheral to state-level societies such as deserts, mountainous terrain, and marshes. Working within the landscape-household continuum of social archaeology, she studies how people in these areas developed cultural mechanisms and socioecological strategies that enabled them to thrive and interact as peers with neighboring states.
Jennifer is Director of the Bat Archaeological Project in Oman, where she draws on the Environmental Humanities to study the Early Bronze Age remains at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat. She considers how cultural behaviors in and intentional reshaping of the site's hyper-arid landscape enabled its inhabitants to build thriving, resilient societies. She also works closely with the Oman Ministry of Heritage and Tourism and Bat community stakeholders to manage the UNESCO site while developing educational infrastructure, supporting the local economy, and creating incentives for the practice of sustainable traditional lifeways.
In her second project, Jennifer is Assistant Director of the Naxcivan Archaeological Project in Azerbaijan. Here she investigates how mobile and semi-mobile societies of the Middle and Late Bronze Age used ritual engagement with the region's mountainous landscape to craft cultural rules and identities.
Jennifer is a devoted field archaeologist. In addition to her own projects, she has experience working at sites and landscapes in Oman, Azerbaijan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria, Ethiopia, the US, and the UK.
Teaching activities
Jennifer's teaching is grounded in experiential learning and connects with her research whenever possible. She teaches courses on Archaeology of the Near East and theory-driven themes such as Empire, Cultural Landscape, and Mobility. She particularly enjoys welcoming students on her field projects in Oman and Azerbaijan, where she teaches "archaeology in the wild." Jennifer is open to supervision and internships on subjects falling within her sphere of interests.
Curriculum vitae
Jennifer earned her BA in Archaeology and Art History at Boston University, followed by an MA in Near Eastern Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Near Eastern Archaeology at the Johns Hopkins University. She held a postdoctoral at the University of Pennsylvania Museum and visiting assistant professorships at the American University of Beirut, Monmouth University, Kennesaw State University, and Bryn Mawr College. She won a major research grant from the US National Endowment for the Humanities, along with Co-PI Eli Dollarhide, for her research in cultural landscape and environmental humanities at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat, Oman. She was hired by Leiden University in 2024.
Office days
Tuesday-Friday
Assistant professor
- Faculteit Archeologie
- World Archaeology
- Near Eastern
- Creamer Petra M., Kaercher Kyra, Maynard Glynnis Babakr Nader, Jodat Ahmad, Laugier Elise J., Poolman Laurel, Proctor Lucas, Swerida Jennifer, Zane Parker & Vo Sophie (2025), PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF THE RURAL LANDSCAPES OF IRON AGE IMPERIAL MESOPOTAMIA PROJECT’S 2022–2023 SEASONS AT QACH RRESH (KURDISTAN REGION OF IRAQ), Iraq : 1-33.
- Swerida J.L, Dollarhide E.N., Fouache E., Engel M., Beuzen-Waller T., Prosperini A., Cosandey C., Le Callonnec L. , Desruelles S., Suryanarayan A., Buffington A., Bryant R., Swerida R., Nugent S.E., Jensen R.S., Creamer P.M. & Casana J. (2024), Cultural and human ecological resilience at Early Bronze Age Bat, Open Quaternary 10: 7.
- Schauensee M. de & Swerida J.L. (2024), Equipment for horses from the period IVB Level (ca. 1000-800 BCE) at Tepe Hasanlu, Iran. Hasanlu Special Studies no. 5. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
- Swerida Jennifer (2022), Revisiting ‘Settlement’: A case study of terminology and its implications in Early Bronze Age southeast Arabia, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 65: 101382 (101382).
- Michael J. Harrower, Smiti Nathan, Ioana A. Dumitru, Joseph W. Lehner, Paige Paulsen, Eli Dollarhide, Frances Wiig, Alexander J. Sivitskis, Hélène David-Cuny, Jennifer L. Swerida, Joseph C. Mazzariello, Rémy Crassard, Abigail Buffington, Sean P. Taylor, Martha C. Anderson & Suleiman Al-Jabri (2022), From the Paleolithic to the Islamic Era in Wilayah Yanqul: The Archaeological Water Histories of Oman (ArWHO) Project Survey (2011-2016), Journal of Oman Studies 22: 1-21.
- Jennifer Swerida (2022), No Place Like Home: Ancient Near Eastern Houses and Households: Structure SS1 at Bat, Oman. Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd.
- Swerida Jennifer, Dollarhide Eli N. & Jensen Reilly (2021), Settlement and Chronology in the early Bronze Age of Southeastern Arabia: The view from Umm an-Nar period Bat, Oman, Paleorient 47(2): 75-96.
- Jennifer Swerida, Charlotte Cable & Eli Dollarhide (2020), Survey and Settlement: Preliminary Results of the Bat Archaeological Project’s 2019 Field Season, Journal of Oman Studies 21: 82-101.
- Swerida Jennifer Nugent Selin (2019), Fashioned identity in the Şərur Valley, Azerbaijan:: Kurgan CR8: Oxbow Books. 11-26.
- Swerida Jennifer Thornton Christopher P. (2019), al‐Khafaji reinterpreted: New Insights on Umm an-Nar Monuments and Settlement from Bat, Oman, Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 30: 157-172.
- Swerida Jennifer & Thornton Christopher P. (2019), Umm an-Nar Architecture and Society at the Bat Settlement Slope, Sultanate of Oman, Journal of Oman Studies 20: 78-111.
- Harrower Michael J., Dumitru Ioana A., Perlingieri Cinzia, Nathan Smiti, Zerue Kifle, Lamont Jessica L., Bausi Alessandro, Swerida Jennifer L., Bongers Jacob L., Woldekiros Helina S., Poolman Laurel A., Pohl Christie M., Brandt Steven A. & Peterson Elizabeth A. (2019), Beta Samati: discovery and excavation of an Aksumite town, Antiquity 93: 1534-1552.
- BAHSELIYEV VELI, RISTVET LAUREN, GOPNIK HILARY, NUGENT SELIN & SWERIDA JENNIFER (2019), KIZKALE SETTLEMENT AND ITS NECROPOLIS (NAKHCHIVAN, AZERBAIJAN), Turkish Academy of Sciences Journal of Archaeology 25: 48-61.
- Swerida J. (Ed.) (2018), Bat and the Umm an-Nar Settlement Tradition no. 4. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
- Harrower Michael James O’Meara Kathleen M. Basile Joseph J. Hickman Clara J. Swerida Jennifer L. Dumitru Ioana A. Bongers Jacob L. Bailey Cameron J. Fieldhouse Edwin (2014), If a picture is worth a thousand words…3D modelling of a Bronze Age tower in Oman, World Archaeology 46: 43-62.