Petra Creamer is an archaeologist of the Ancient Near Eastern world who researches the genesis and growth of empires and the impact of these empires on the non-elite populations under their hegemony.  Before starting at Emory in 2022, she obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania's Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World program (2021) and her B.A. in Anthropology at the Ohio State University (2014). Between 2021-2022, she held a position as a postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth College as a remote sensing specialist in the Anthropology department. In 2018-2019, she conducted research for her dissertation as a Fulbright Fellow in Berlin, Germany.

At Emory, she teaches classes on the ancient Middle East, digital methods of archaeological analysis, and ancient landscapes. She is director of the excavation project Rural Landscapes of Iron Age Imperial Mesopotamia and an associate director of the Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey in Iraqi Kurdistan, where her ongoing fieldwork addresses long-term settlement patterns and lifeways in the ancient Assyrian imperial core (c. 1350-600 BCE). She employs a variety of remote sensing applications (such as magnetometry, satellite imagery, UAV aerial imagery, and GIS) to further understand the infrastructure and urbanism of the broader Assyrian landscape, tying into her interests on the genesis and mobilization of identity in contested spaces. She has conducted fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraq, Turkey, Italy, Azerbaijan, Greece, and the U.S.A. Her current book project ties together multiple levels of looking at Assyrian imperial power - from broad landscape management down to individual burials - to understand the degree of control Assyrian elites held over those under imperial hegemony.

Students interested in getting involved in fieldwork or research should reach out to Dr. Creamer through email.