About

Michael Harrower is an archaeologist whose research concentrates on long-term histories of civilizations in Africa and Arabia. His research has concentrated on spatial, political, and ideological dynamics of water, and most recently focuses on ancient trade. Methodologically, he is a specialist in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and satellite imagery mapping. His fieldwork in Oman and Ethiopia included a NASA-funded study of long-term water histories using a combination of archaeological survey (exploration) and satellite imagery analysis. In Ethiopia, investigations have concentrated on pre- through late-Aksumite (1,000 BC to 700 AD) settlement patterns, and excavations of the newly discovered ancient town of Beta Samati. In Oman, his research has involved wide-ranging archaeological survey along with satellite imagery mapping of copper and chlorite (softstone) resources, production, and trade networks. His core teaching responsibilities include archaeology of the ancient world up to the rise of cities and civilizations (World Prehistory), along with analytical techniques, concepts, and epistemology in archaeology (Archaeological Method and Theory). His teaching also concentrates on spatial archaeology (including applications of satellite imagery and various computer mapping technologies), geoarchaeology, archaeology of water, and the archaeology of Africa and Arabia.

Research topics

• Geography
• Archaeology
• Sociology
• Ecology
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Demography
• Earth science
• Economic geography
• Soil science
• Remote sensing
• Paleontology
• Geology
• Physical geography
• Statistics
• Geochemistry
• Biology
• Geomorphology

Selected publications

• Drone-based thermal imaging of subsurface architecture: methodological insights and discoveries at Iron Age Raki (Oman)

  Journal of Archaeological Science Reports · 2026-01-10

  articleOpen access

  • Thermography is a promising method in arid environments with near surface features. • Thermal imagery reveals settlement plan of Iron Age copper production site Raki 2. • Raki 2′s full plan is substantial and combines dense and dispersed architecture. • Domestic architecture at Raki 2 paralleled at other Iron Age sites. This paper presents thermal imagery of Raki 2, a large Iron Age copper production site near Yanqul, Oman. The site, composed of massive amounts of copper slag, exhibits rectilinear architecture built of stone and slag that is not fully visible at the surface. A far more complete architectural layout of the site is revealed using thermal imagery due to the variable thermal emissivity of anthropogenic features like walls that visibly contrast against surrounding sediments. The settlement is unwalled, composed of clusters of densely organized small spaces, isolated structures, and several large, enclosed spaces, variably organized over the intact extent of a gravel terrace. This view of the layout of an entire Iron Age settlement adds to examples known from previous survey and excavation. Raki 2′s architectural organization is more heterogenous than previously documented sites, lacks an enclosure wall, and appears to include additional domestic structures, not merely copper producing installations. This helps us understand the built environment of large-scale copper production during a peak of sociopolitical complexity during the Iron Age.

  PublisherDOI

• Archaeology of Water in Islamic Southern Arabia

  Archaeopress Publishing Ltd eBooks · 2025-09-18

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• South Arabia’s prehistoric monument landscape shows social resilience to climate change

  PLoS ONE · 2025-05-28 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  In arid regions across northern Africa, Asia and Arabia, ancient pastoralists constructed small-scale stone monuments of varying form, construction, placement, age, and function. Classification studies of each type have inhibited a broader model of their collective and enduring role within desert socio-ecosystems. Our multivariate analysis of 371 archaeological monuments in the arid Dhofar region of Oman identifies environmental and cultural factors that influenced variable placement and construction across a 7000-year history. Our results show that earlier monuments were built by larger, concurrent groups during the Holocene Humid Period (10,000-6000 cal BP). With increasing aridification, smaller groups constructed monuments and eventually switched to building them in repetitive visits. Our model emphasizes the core role of monuments as a flexible technology in social resilience among desert pastoralists.

  PublisherDOI

• Methodological Advances in Understanding Environmental Constraints on Sustainability and Industrial Periodicity of Ancient Copper Smelting in Southeast Arabia

  Open Quaternary · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Industrial periodicity is a hallmark of modern and ancient extractive economies. In Southeast Arabia, current evidence demonstrates that intensive periods of copper production are bracketed by century- to millennia-scale periods of little to no production. Explanations for this periodicity range from environmental degradation (e.g., deforestation related to unsustainable fuelwood provisioning) to shifts in local and distant trade networks to internal sociocultural factors. In this paper, we give an overview of the current understanding of this problem and introduce new data from the Archaeological Water Histories of Oman (ArWHO) project’s research along Wadi Raki, one of the largest and best preserved ancient industrial landscapes in Arabia. Methods used to generate this data include remote sensing, pedestrian surveys, targeted excavations, and laboratory analyses of production debris and wood charcoal to examine the periodicity of copper production. Our work provides a new baseline understanding of environmental and sociopolitical factors that drove changes in the tempo of industrial copper production in Southeast Arabia.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Garnet zoning patterns record multiple processes of chemical transfer during subduction

  Earth and Planetary Science Letters · 2024-03-02 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Subduction is the principal mechanism by which volatiles are transferred from the Earth's surface to its interior. In garnets from eclogites and blueschists formed within the subduction setting, fine-scale, oscillatory elemental zoning is a common feature, sometimes considered to record open-system fluid exchange during prograde metamorphism. We present oxygen isotope data for garnets with such zoning from five exhumed subduction zone complexes. Short length scale fluctuations in elemental and oxygen isotope zoning (which are themselves spatially decoupled) cannot be linked to open-system fluid exchange during garnet crystallization in all samples; these data do not provide evidence for a genetic relationship between elemental oscillations and fluid fluxing. However, garnets from one setting do provide clear evidence for syn-growth ingress of elementally and isotopically buffering fluids, a process that operated simultaneously with the formation of elemental oscillations. Our findings indicate multiple mechanisms of chemical transfer operate at the grain–rock scale during subduction, and that some subduction zone rocks may experience only limited interaction with external prograde fluids. These results are consistent with a picture of highly heterogenous volatile transfer during subduction, and suggest that some proportion of the fluid inventory inherited at shallow depths may be transferred to sub-arc depths.

  PublisherDOI

• :<i>The Boundaries of Ancient Trade: Kings, Commoners, and the Aksumite Salt Trade of Ethiopia</i>

  Journal of Anthropological Research · 2024-06-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Iron Age Copper Metallurgy in Southeast Arabia: A Comparative Perspective

  Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology/Interdisciplinary contributions to archaeology · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Mapping spatial patterning of Bronze Age towers in Oman according to water flow accumulation

  Arabian archaeology and epigraphy · 2023-08-15 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Water played an undeniably significant role in the origins of complex societies across the Near East, but political complexity in regions like Southeast Arabia diverges dramatically from the more well‐known histories of Egypt, the Levant and Mesopotamia. Through quantitative analysis, this paper investigates spatial associations between water availability and Umm an‐Nar towers in Adh Dhahirah Governorate of Oman. We hypothesise that ancient Umm an‐Nar people targeted high water flow accumulation areas for major settlements with towers. Our results lead us to reject the null hypothesis of no spatial association between tower settlements and water and help clarify the role of water in the rise of complex polities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Garnet zoning patterns record multiple processes of chemical transfer during subduction

  2023-08-24

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Subduction facilitates the transfer of volatiles from the Earth’s surface to its interior. However, the rock-scale processes that govern the efficiency of deep volatile transfer are not fully understood. Garnets from subduction zone rocks commonly have fine-scale, oscillatory elemental zoning that is typically considered to record external fluid ingress/transfer. Elemental and oxygen-isotope zoning in garnets from five exhumed subduction zone complexes show that in subduction zone rocks these records are not necessarily coupled; oxygen isotope evidence of ingress of buffering fluids, obvious only in rare cases, is decoupled from shorter length scale elemental and oxygen isotope zonings (which also show no coupling with each other). This finding suggests multiple mechanisms of internal chemical transfer operate at the grain and rock scale during subduction, and that rocks may commonly experience only limited interaction with external fluids. The results presented are consistent with a picture of volatile transfer in subduction that is spasmodic, highly localized, and variably efficient at evacuating fluids inherited from the surface then released by metamorphic dehydration.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Basilica of Betä Sämaʿtiʾ in its Aksūmite, Early Christian, and Late Antique Context

  Journal of Near Eastern Studies · 2023-04-01 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  The ancient Kingdom of Aksūm, located in Ethiopia and Eritrea, was one of the most influential civilizations of the first millennium ce. More than a dozen Aksūmite structures attest to the spread of Christianity from the fourth to the seventh centuries ce. Among these structures, a basilica recently discovered at the site of Betä Sämaʿtiʾ in northern Ethiopia first constructed during the fourth century ce constitutes one of the earliest examples of Christian architecture in Ethiopia. In this paper, we place the basilica of Betä Sämaʿtiʾ in the context of early Ethiopian Christian architecture while highlighting the importance of this new finding for broader studies on the early developments of the basilica form in the Afro-Eurasian Late Antique world. In doing so, we shed light on the connection between Syriac Christianity and the Kingdom of Aksūm and the neighboring Kingdoms of Nobadia, Makuria, and Alodia, which emerged in Nubia after the collapse of Meroe in the fourth century. We also emphasize the adaptation of indigenous pagan elements in influencing the first monotheistic structures of Ethiopia, offering an overview of the shift from paganism to monotheism in the Horn of Africa.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ioana A. Dumitru

  Aarhus University

  17 shared

• Joy McCorriston

  11 shared

• Smiti Nathan

  11 shared

• George Guice

  8 shared

• Jacob Bongers

  University of East Anglia

  8 shared

• Joseph C. Mazzariello

  Impact Technology Development (United States)

  6 shared

• A. Catherine D’Andrea

  Simon Fraser University

  5 shared

• Martha C. Anderson

  5 shared

Education

• PhD, Anthropology

  The Ohio State University

  2006

• MA, Anthropology

  The Ohio State University

  2001

• BA, Archaeology

  Simon Fraser University

  1998