Susan Pollock received her PhD in Anthropology, with a specialization in Near Eastern archaeology, at the University of Michigan. She is a professor at Binghamton University and guest professor in the Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie at the Freie Universität Berlin. She has long-standing research interests in the development of state and urban societies in Western Asia and their roots in Neolithic villages in the region. She has focused on studies of households and political economies as well as feminist research in archaeology. Within Topoi (C-III) she is conducting a project on commensality – the act of eating and drinking together in shared spaces – in early state and urban societies in Mesopotamia. Elsewhere in Topoi (A-II) she is involved in the study of technological and social change in early villages in southern Turkmenistan and in discussions of collective identities and the political dimensions of archaeological practice (CSG-V).