Dr. Sabina Cveček

Sabina Cveček is a socio-cultural anthropologist (PhD 2021, University of Vienna) specializing in the interpretation of non-state social organization in eastern Mediterranean prehistory through an interdisciplinary perspective. She is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the Field Museum in Chicago and at the Austrian Archaeological Institute at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

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Her MSCA project entitled “X-KIN: Exploring patterns of prehistoric kinship from socio-cultural anthropological perspectives” addresses questions of i) how can the material structures such as settlements, buildings, artifacts, and biological markers be read as ‘material codes’ of prehistoric kinship and ii) how can ethnographic reports exemplify rather than verify variability in kinship during prehistory. 

 

Sabina uses multiple lines of prehistoric evidence (analyzed by archaeologists) and ethnographic insights (collected by ethnographers) to uncover shared patterns and draw new insights. Since 2016, Sabina has worked alongside prehistoric archaeologists within an interdisciplinary DOC-team research project focusing on households at the dawn of the Bronze Age from anthropological perspectives, funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences.  She has gained experience as an archaeological anthropologist, having worked alongside prehistoric archaeologists in the field (Greece, Turkey).

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Sabina is the author of Çukuriçi Höyük 4: Household Economics in the Early Bronze Age Aegean” (2022, Austrian Academy of Sciences Press), a book that bridges archaeological evidence with cross-cultural ethnographic insights. Sabina received the City of Vienna Award (2023) in the category of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Law as well as a Sowi:doc 2021 Award at the University of Vienna for the best PhD thesis.

 

Sabina was an ATHENS fellow at the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Athens, Greece (2021), an IFK_Junior Fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna, Austria (2020/2021), and a visiting researcher at The International Max Planck Research School for the Anthropology, Archaeology, and History of Eurasia (IMPRS ANARCHIE) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany (2019). Sabina is also an elected fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (since 2022) and a co-chair of the Archaeology and Gender in Europe (AGE) Network of the European Association of Archaeologists (2023-2026).