The Society for Archaeological Sciences Charles K. Kolb Award 2022

The winner of the SAS’s 2022 Charles C. Kolb Award is Sergio Taranto and colleagues for their article

The Society for Archaeological Sciences (SAS) offers one award every year for the best published paper on science-based archaeological research in ceramics in honor of Charles C. Kolb. The purpose of the award is to promote and acknowledge research excellence in the field of archaeological ceramics and highlight the key role of interdisciplinarity. The winner of the SAS’s 2022 Charles C. Kolb Award is Sergio Taranto and colleagues for their article entitled “Investigating the function of late-Neolithic ‘husking trays’ from Syrian Jazira through integrated use-alteration and phytolith analyses”, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The paper was top-ranked by the award committee as “a very fresh and exciting piece of work” that sheds new light on Neolithic culinary practices in the Near East. It advocates a truly interdisciplinary approach and reflects an extremely robust methodology, involving the excellent integration of well-designed and nicely implemented and discussed experimental work. It integrates many sources of evidence, in a very well informed way, including use-wear evidence, phytoliths and experimental data to shed light on different aspects of Neolithic life in the region.

Taranto, S., Portillo, M., Gómez Bach, A., Molist Montaña, M., Le Mière, M., Lemorini, C., 2023. Investigating the function of late-Neolithic “husking trays” from Syrian Jazira through integrated use-alteration and phytolith analyses. J. Archaeol. Sci. Rep. 47, 103694. doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103694

The paper is part of the special issue “Plants meet artefacts: developing interdisciplinary approaches for the identification of plant gathering, processing and use in the archaeological record”, edited by A. Arranz-Otaegui, M. Cubas, J.J. Ibáñez and D. Rosenberg. https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-archaeological-science-reports/special-issue/10M64K0QG10