Rate My Professor Cameron Petrie

Professor Cameron A. Petrie is Professor of South Asian and Iranian Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, appointed to the professorship in 2022, and Head of Department from 1 July 2025. He is a Fellow of Trinity College and Director of Studies there. Petrie obtained his PhD from the University of Sydney (1998-2002) and held the Katherine and Leonard Woolley Junior Research Fellowship at Somerville College, Oxford (2003-2006). His career at Cambridge began as Research Councils UK Fellow in South Asian and Iranian Archaeology (2005), followed by Lecturer (2010), Senior Lecturer (2014), and Reader (2016).

Petrie's research centers on the archaeology of South Asia, particularly India and Pakistan, and Iran, with specializations in human-environment relationships, complex societies, state formation, origins of agriculture and sedentary societies, ceramic production and distribution, environmental reconstruction, urbanism, agricultural intensification, material culture, and computational and quantitative methods including GIS. He directs the ERC-funded TwoRains project on climate change impacts and human responses in northwest India, and contributes to the Mapping Archaeological Heritage of South Asia (MAHSA) and TIGR2ESS-India projects. His fieldwork spans Neolithic to medieval periods across Central Asia, Mesopotamia, the Near East, and South Asia. Key publications include edited volumes such as Ancient Iran and Its Neighbours: Local Developments and Long-range Interactions in the Fourth Millennium BC (2013), Sheri Khan Tarakai and Early Village Life in the Borderlands of North-West Pakistan (2010), and The Mamasani Archaeological Project Stage One (2009); recent articles feature 'Over the Hills and Far Away: Modeling Mobility and Connectivity Across the Iranian Plateau in Late Prehistory (c. 10,000–2000 BC)' (2026), 'Stable isotopes constrain the genesis of Thar Desert gypsum playas' (2025), and 'Animal movement on the hoof and on the cart' in the Indus Civilisation (2024). Petrie serves as editor of the journal IRAN, Trustee and Director of The Antiquity Trust, and Trustee of the Ancient India and Iran Trust, Cambridge.