Photo: Tumulus 99, one of three tumuli excavated during the project.

Congratulations to Michael L. Galaty and Lorenc Bejko, co-editors of Archaeological Investigations in a Northern Albanian Province: Results of the Projekti Arkeologjik i Shkodrës (PASH), which has won the Archaeological Institute of America’s 2025 Anna Marguerite McCann Award for Fieldwork Reports.

“We are very happy that the award selection committee has recognized and appreciated our efforts and our multidisciplinary approach,” wrote Bejko. “This has a great significance for the careers of the entire team involved in the PASH project. AIA represents not only one of the largest archaeological organizations worldwide, but also embraces the highest professional standards in the field. For these reasons, the AIA award is not just any award, but a recognition of excellence, the product of a highly competitive process.”

PASH is a hardcover, two-volume set—the result of a five-year excavation and survey project in northern Albania, an area of the world where little systematic archaeology had been done, and a multi-year collaboration with the University of Tirana. The book, published in 2023 by UMMAA Press, is linked to additional resources on the U-M Press Fulcrum system and to raw data stored open access in U-M’s Deep Blue Data repository.

"The AIA's Anna Marguerite McCann Award for Fieldwork Reports specifically recognizes books that describe the results of fieldwork,” noted Galaty. “UMMAA Press is one of the few presses left that focuses on publishing these kinds of data-rich, well-illustrated reports, which are, traditionally, the lifeblood of archaeology. In our case, though, the print book is also backed by an electronic book linked to a huge data archive. It is wonderful to see this kind of difficult, expensive publishing recognized with a prestigious award, like the McCann Award."

Volume 1 contains reports on the regional survey and test excavations at three settlements and three tumuli. In Volume 2, the authors describe the artifacts, including chipped stone and pottery from the prehistoric to the post-medieval periods, as well as results of faunal, petrographic, chemical, carpological, and strontium isotope analyses.

These two volumes place northern Albania—and the Shkodër Province in particular—at the forefront of archaeological research in the Balkans.

The authors of PASH will be formally recognized at the AIA awards ceremony, during the group’s annual meeting on Saturday, January 4, 2025, in Philadelphia. Read more here.

Click here to read more about the book and about UMMAA Press, and to purchase. Visit the UMMAA website to learn more about the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Michigan.

PASH data on the U-M’s Deep Blue Data repository:
https://doi.org/10.7302/ccpt-fn83