Michael Galaty

Michael Galaty conducts field research in Albania, Greece, and Kosovo. He is a prehistorian with interests in the origins of social inequality, the rise of the state, and political-economic change, as well as archaeometry, including ICP-MS, PXRF, and ceramic petrography.

Albania

Galaty has worked in the Balkan nation of Albania since 1998. From 1998 to 2003, he co-directed Albania’s first-ever large-scale, intensive regional survey, the Mallakastra Regional Archaeological Project (MRAP). MRAP surveyed the hinterland of the large Classical city of Apollonia, located in central Albania. The project was designed to investigate interactions between colonial Greeks and local Illyrians, with a focus on changes in regional settlement patterns through time. From 2004 to 2008, Galaty co-directed the Shala Valley Project (SVP). The SVP surveyed the Shala Valley, located in the northern Albanian Alps, and home to the Shala fis ("tribe"). Northern Albania’s unique tribal system formed in the Late Medieval period and depends on a complex body of oral customary law, called the Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit. The SVP also discovered and excavated a prehistoric hillfort, called Grunas. In 2013, the SVP published a final report titled Light and Shadow: Isolation and Interaction in the Shala Valley of Northern Albania (UCLA Cotsen), which won the Society for American Archaeology’s 2014 Book Award in the Scholarly Category. Finally, from 2010 to 2014, Galaty co-directed the Projekti Arkeologjik i Shkodrës (PASH). PASH was designed to study the sudden appearance of hill forts and burial mounds in northern Albania, along the shores of Lake Shkodra, sometime around 4000 BC.

Greece

Galaty has worked in Greece since the early 1990s, having conducted dissertation research at the Mycenaean Palace of Nestor at Pylos. He maintains an active interest in Mycenaean archaeology and consults on several Mycenaean research projects, including the Iklaina Archaeological Project (IKAP) and a project to document and publish fully the Linear B tablets from Pylos, including PXRF analysis, which Galaty oversees. Galatyco-directs The Diros Project, a program of survey and excavation focused on Neolithic Alepotrypa Cave in the Mani region. The Diros Project conducted excavations at the site of Ksagounaki, located just outside Alepotrypa, finding evidence for a large Copper Age village and an unexpected Mycenaean ossuary.

Kosovo

In 2018, in collaboration with the Kosovo Institute of Archaeology, Galaty launched a new research project in western Kosovo, Regional Archaeology in the Peja and Istog Districts of Kosova (RAPID-K). The project will begin with intensive survey and documenting of sites in the region. The city of Peja sits just on the other side of the mountains from Shkodra and Shala. A main goal of the project is to understand interaction between Kosovo and Albania and similarities and differences in their respective archaeological records.

Affiliations

• Anthropology
• Museum of Anthropological Archaeology
• Classical Studies
• IPGRH
• CREES

Selected Awards

• winner of the Society for American Archaeology’s 2014 Scholarly Book Award, for Light and Shadow: Isolation and Interaction in the Shala Valley of Northern Albania (Cotsen, 2013). Annual competitive award given each year “to honor a recently published book that has had, or can be expected to have, a major impact on the direction and character of archaeological research.”
• winner of the 2010 “Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award” from the Archaeological Institute of America.
• a research grant in the amount of $14,540.00 from the National Geographic Society for Regional Archaeology in the Peja and Istog Districts of Kosova (RAPID: Kosova), June, 2018.  
• as primary investigator, a Senior Archaeology Research Grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS1220016) in the amount of $162,249.00 over three years (2012-2014), to fund the Projekti Arkeologjik i Shkodrës (PASH), an interdisciplinary regional studies project, including archeological and geological survey and excavation, focused on the Shkodra Plain in northern Albania.
• as co-primary investigator (with A. Papathanasiou), an International Collaborative Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in the amount of $35,000.00 to support the summer 2014 field season of The Diros Project.
• as primary investigator, “Acquisition of laser ablation for ICP-MS and a handheld XRF for the W.M. Keck Center for Instrumental and Biochemical Comparative Archaeology, Millsaps College,” $384,535.00, National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation program (BCS0922855).  Beginning October 1, 2009.
• from the School for Advanced Research (through a grant from the National Science Foundation), funds to support a “Research Team Short Seminar” at the school’s campus in Santa Fe, NM in February 23-26, 2010.  The seminar brought together the Shala Valley Project’s eight principal investigators to discuss final publication of results.
• as primary investigator, a Senior Archaeology Research Grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS0713730) in the amount of $76,988.00, to fund the 2007 field season of the Shala Valley Project, an interdisciplinary regional studies project employing methods of archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic survey, focused on the tribal cultures of Northern Albania.
• as primary investigator, a Collaborative Research Grant (RZ50715) from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the amount of $34,117.00, to fund archival historical research for the Shala Valley Project, 2006-2008.