Location
Age
Area of FocusAbout Rita's Work
Rita Wright is an archaeologist and anthropologist who applies the principles of archaeometry, materials science, and technology theory to the larger question of social organization in the prehistoric Near East and South Asia.
She has conducted fieldwork in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan at archaeological sites that span the seventh through second millennia B.C., a period that included the earliest food-producing communities, the first urban settlements and politically complex, state-level societies. Wright conducts her field research at the site of Harappa (ca. 3200-1800 B.C.), an urban center of the Indus Valley (or Harappan) civilization, and co-directs a settlement survey of rural sites in its hinterlands. In her research, she draws on feminist scholarship in technology and gender studies to analyze social and productive relations in past societies.
Biography
Wright is a professor of anthropology at New York University. She is editor of Gender and Archaeology (1996) and co-editor of Craft and Social Identity (1998). She is also the author of a number of articles that have appeared in such publications as the Journal of Archaeological Science and the Encyclopedia of Urbanism.
Wright received a B.A. (1975) from Wellesley College, and an M.A. (1978) and Ph.D. (1984) from Harvard University.
Last updated January 1, 2005.
Published on August 1, 1988
