Visiting Scholar: Steven Rosen

Steven A. Rosen
Q&A with Cotsen Visiting Scholar

Steven A. Rosen is the first of the Cotsen Visiting Scholars. He comes to the Cotsen Institute from Ben–Gurion University in Israel. He will be teaching a graduate seminar in the spring quarter on the archaeology of pastoral nomadism, in his official capacity as Cotsen Visiting Scholar. Rosen will also be teaching a course on lithic analysis for UCLA Extension in the winter quarter. He very kindly offered to answer some questions on his fieldwork and research for this issue of Backdirt. He will write a research article for the Spring/Summer 2000 issue.

Can you tell us about your current research interests and fieldwork?

My current research focuses on the archaeology of pastoral nomads in the Negev. I am interested in the long term development of this adaptation and am trying to look at it from several different perspectives: the ecological, the economic, the social. One project, already begun as a pilot, involves investigation of a pastoral cult site in the Negev dating to around the third millennium BC. A second, in the planning stages, has to do with pastoral production of grinding stones for export to the Mediterranean zone cities in the same period. I also have a continuing interest in stone tools from the historic periods and have been excavating a major lithic workshop at Titris Hoyuk.

Your upcoming article on pottery and metallurgy in the Levant has a provocative title, "Invention as the Mother of Necessity." Can you tell us about its thesis?

Archaeological perceptions of causality can basically be summed up as "Necessity is the mother of invention," that is, things change in a stimulus-response manner. While I would not dispute that this happens, there are many other trajectories for change, and the assumption of linear causality for technological change ignores an entire spectrum of variation that cannot be explained by any normal notion of necessity. Neither ceramics nor metallurgy were 'necessary' innovations. Both were embedded in a complex cultural matrix, and neither can be understood without understanding the cultural background.

What research (or other) opportunities at UCLA attracted you to the Cotsen Visiting Scholar program?

The attraction of UCLA was first and foremost the colleagues that I knew I would have here. My first trip here, on the Ben–Gurion University–UCLA exchange, at the time of the Northridge earthquake, acquainted me with various members of the Institute and impressed me greatly. Some two years ago, several members of the Institute came to Ben–Gurion to participate in a BGU–UCLA symposium I organized ("Text and Artifact: Alternative Approaches to Archaeological Interpretation"), and I got to know people a bit better. Finally, I was encouraged by a number of people here to apply for the Cotsen Visiting Scholar program, and it was the true warmth of these encounters that encouraged me to apply.

The Cotsen Visiting Scholars brings an archaeologist (recent Ph.D. to senior scholar) to teach one graduate seminar, conduct research and writing, and participate in the activities of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA during one academic year.