Christina Tsoraki is a Research Associate at the University of Leicester working on the Leverhulme-funded Beyond the Three Age System project. She specialises in prehistoric archaeology with a focus on material culture studies, lithic technology and microwear analysis. Her research interests include depositional practices, cross-craft interactions, object biographies and household archaeology.

Between 2013 and 2017 she was a Marie Curie Intra-European Research Fellow, and a temporary lecturer in Material Culture Studies at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University. Her Marie-Curie project CRAFTS (Crafting networks in early farming societies) investigated the role of household- and community-based practices in creating and sustaining technological and social networks in early farming societies. Employing different social units of analysis such as households and neighbourhoods the project explored how the interactions afforded by technological processes contributed to the sharing of knowledge, materials and techniques among social groups (learning networks).

She is also involved as a specialist researcher (specialising in ground stone technology) in many archaeological projects in Greece, Cyprus and Turkey ranging in date from the Early Neolithic to the Hellenistic period. Since 2012 she has been the leader of the Ground Stone Team for the Çatalhöyük Research Project (Turkey) directed by Prof. I. Hodder (Stanford University, USA).

More information on Christina can be found on sarpedon.be , ResearchGate and Academia.edu

Christina Tsoraki is the ground stone specialist for the SArPedon project.

Selected publications

Tsoraki, C. 2018. The ritualisation of daily practice: exploring the staging of ritual acts at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey. In I. Hodder (ed), Religion, History and Place in the Origin of Settled Life, 238-262. University of Colorado Press.

Tsoraki, C. 2011. Disentangling Neolithic Networks: Ground stone technology, material engagements and networks of action. In A. Brysbaert (ed.), Tracing prehistoric social networks through technology: a diachronic perspective on the Aegean, 12-29. New York and London: Routledge.

Tsoraki, C. 2011. Stone-working traditions in the prehistoric Aegean: the production and consumption of edge tools at Late Neolithic Makriyalos. In V. Davis and M. Edmonds (eds.), Stone Axe Studies III, 231-44. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Li, W., C. Tsoraki, W. Lan, Y. Yang, J. Zhang and A. van Gijn 2018 (in press). New insights into the grinding tools used by the earliest farmers in the central plain of China. Quaternary International https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2018.10.005

Bickle, P., B. Chan, L. Czerniak, J. Pyzel and C. Tsoraki 2016. At home in the Neolithic: understanding diversity in Neolithic houses and households. Open Archaeology 2: 410-416

Nazaroff, A., C. Tsoraki and M. Vasic 2016. Aesthetic, Social, and Material Networks: A Perspective from the Flint Daggers at Çatalhöyük, Turkey. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 26: 65-92.

Relaki, M. and C. Tsoraki 2016. Variability and differentiation: a first look at the stone vase assemblage in the Petras cemetery. In M. Tsipopoulou (ed.), Petras Siteia. The Pre- and Proto-palatial cemetery in context. The 2nd International Petras Symposium, The Danish Institute at Athens, 14-15 February 2015, 159-178. Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens, 20. Athens: The Danish Institute at Athens.

Sadvari, J.W., C. Tsoraki, L. Dogiama and C. J. Knüsel 2015. Reading the stones, reading the bones: an integrated approach to reconstructing activity patterns at Neolithic Çatalhöyük. In I. Hodder and A. Marciniak (eds), Assembling Çatalhöyük, 59-74. Themes in Contemporary Archaeology. Leeds: Maney Publishing.