Dr. Sera Yelözer
Prehistoric Archaeologist
I study the small things people carried, wore, repaired, exchanged, and buried with their dead.
I am an archaeologist working on personal ornaments, identity, craft, and material culture in prehistoric Anatolia and the wider Mediterranean. My research focuses especially on beads and body adornment: objects that may seem small but often hold some of the richest evidence for how people understood themselves and one another.
My work asks a simple question with deep consequences: how do people create meaning through the objects they wear and carry?
Explore
Research
Fieldwork, laboratory analysis, and current projects on ornaments and identity.
View Research >Publications
Peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and edited volumes.
View Publications >Talks & Media
Lectures, podcasts, and public engagement.
Watch & Listen >Blog
Reflections on research, fieldwork, and academic life.
Read the Blog >About
I am an archaeologist and historian specialising in personal ornaments, identity, craft technologies, and material culture in prehistoric Anatolia and the wider Mediterranean.
One of the questions at the heart of my research begins with a family object: a small stamp-seal used by my great-grandmother in early twentieth-century Trabzon in place of a signature she could not write.
Teaching
I teach archaeology as a way of asking questions about human life: how people make homes, shape identities, remember the past, dress their bodies, use objects, and create meaning in everyday worlds. My courses combine lectures, seminars, museum visits, and object-based learning to help students engage with material culture as something deeply entangled with human experience.
Learn More About My Teaching >Publications
My publications focus on prehistoric personal ornaments, Neolithic identities, craft technologies, gender, childhood, burial practices, and material culture in Anatolia and Western Asia. For easier reading, selected publications are grouped by theme here. A full academic list is available in my CV. Most publications are also available open access on my Academia and ResearchGate pages.
My latest article, co-authored with Emma Baysal, examines what decolonisation means for Western Asian archaeology when viewed from Türkiye. We discuss the relationships, inequalities, and less-visible structures that continue to shape archaeological knowledge and practice.
I also wrote a short blog post introducing the article. You can read the overview or read the open-access article here
Talks
Objects are part of how people live, relate to one another, and make sense of who they are. In archaeology, this means that even very small things, such as beads and ornaments, can help us ask big questions about identity, memory, and belonging. In this talk, I discuss how ornaments in prehistoric Anatolia may have helped people create identities, relationships, and connections between individuals, communities, and generations.
Media
Some of my work happens through writing and fieldwork; some of it happens by delivering papers and bringing people together. I have co-organised online lecture series, conference sessions, and academic meetings that create spaces for shared discussion on Neolithic archaeology, identity, material culture, and archaeological theory.
I also believe archaeology should travel beyond academic publications. Through blog posts, essays, translations, and public-facing writing, I aim to make prehistoric archaeology more accessible, more imaginative, and more connected to contemporary questions.
