Publications in journals
Benati, G., C. Guerriero, Forthcoming. The Origins of (a Culture of) Cooperation. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization (Working Paper version).
Baten, J., G. Benati, A. Sołtysiak. 2023. Violence Trends in the Ancient Middle East between 12,000 and 400 BCE. Nature Human Behaviour, doi: 10.1038/s41562-023-01700-y. [Data & codes: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8010025]
Benati, G., C. Guerriero, 2023. Combining Social Sciences, Geoscience and Archaeology to Understand Societal Collapse, Quaternary Science Reviews 314, 108217. [Open access: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.108217]
Benati, G., C. Guerriero, F. Zaina, F. 2022. The Origins of Political Institutions and Property Rights. Journal of Comparative Economics 50, 946-968. doi: 10.1016/j.jce.2022.07.002.
Baten, J., Benati, G., Ferber, S. 2022. Rethinking Age-Heaping again for understanding its possibilities and limitations. The Economic History Review 75, 960-971 [Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13139]
Benati, G. and C. Guerriero. 2022. The Origins of the State: Technology, Cooperation and Institutions. Journal of Institutional Economics 18, 29-43. [Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137420000569].
Benati, G. and C. Guerriero. 2021. Climate Change and State Evolution. PNAS 118, e2020893118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2020893118
Benati, G., Guerriero, C., Zaina, F. 2021. The Economic and Institutional Determinants of Trade Expansion in Bronze Age Mesopotamia. Journal of Archaeological Science 131: 105398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2021.105398.
Marchetti, N., Al-Hussainy, A., Benati, G., et al. 2019. The Rise of Urbanized Landscapes in Mesopotamia: The QADIS Integrated Survey Results and the Interpretation of Multi-Layered Historical Landscapes, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 109, 214-237. [Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/za-2019-0016].
Marchetti, N, Angelini, I., Artioli, G., Benati, G., et al. 2018. NEARCHOS. Networked Archaeological Open Science: Advances in Archaeology through Field Analytics and Scientific Community Sharing, Journal of Archaeological Research 26, 447-469. [Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-017-9112-4].
Lecompte, C., Benati, G. 2017. Nonadministrative Documents from Archaic Ur and from Early Dynastic I-II Mesopotamia: A New Textual and Archaeological Analysis, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 69, 3-32. https://doi.org/10.5615/jcunestud.69.2017.0003
Benati, G., Lecompte, C. 2016. From Field Cards to Cuneiform Archives: Two Inscribed Artifacts from Archaic Ur and Their Archaeological Context, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 106, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1515/za-2016-0001
Benati, G. 2015. Re-modeling Political Economy in Early 3rd Millennium B.C. Mesopotamia: Changing Patterns of Socio-economic Organization in Archaic Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar, Iraq), Cuneiform Digital Library Journal 2015: 2. [Open Access: http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/2015/cdlj2015_002.html].
Benati, G. 2014. The Beginning of the Early Dynastic Period at Ur, Iraq 76, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1017/irq.2014.5
Benati, G. 2013. The ‘Archaic I’ Phase of the Ziqqurat Terrace at Ur: A Contextual Re-Assessment. Mesopotamia 48:197–220.
Working papers
Benati, G., C. Guerriero, 2025. Climate Change, Cooperation and State-Building. R&R Economica (Previous versions: Working Paper1; Working Paper2).
Benati, G., F. Carugati, G. Leon-Ablan. 2025. Temples and Tablets: How Religious Organizations Led the First Information Technology Revolution (earlier version).
Benati, G., S. Lozano. 2025. The Network Structure of the Urban Revolution (draft upon request).
Benati, G., C. Guerriero, 2025. Against Historical Determinism: A Time Inconsistency Theory-Based Approach to the Study of Ancient State-Building. (Working Paper).
Baten, J., G. Benati, A. Sołtysiak. 2022. A Game of Bones: Security, State Capacity and Nutritional Welfare in the Middle East, 10.000–400 BCE. Working Paper.
Baten, J., G. Benati, A. Kjellstroem. 2021. Violence in the Viking World: New Bioarchaeological Evidence. Working Paper.
Work in progress
Guerriero, C., G. Benati, G., A. Gholami, G. Lago, B. Luppi, F. Parisi. 2025. Primordial Legal Origins.
Benati, G., M. Fochesato. 2023. Giant Steps: Sources of Economic Inequality in the Cradle of Civilization.
(Selected) Publications in books
Benati, G. 2022. Clash of the Titans: The Economics of Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia Between Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Models. In M. Frangipane et al. (eds.), Ancient Economies in Comparative Perspective, Springer.
Benati, G. 2022. Economic Growth and Development in the Ancient Near East, in D. A. Warburton (ed.), The Earliest Economic Growth in World History, Peeters.
Benati, G., C. Lecompte. 2021. The Scale and Extent of Political Institutions in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia: The Case of Archaic Ur, in A. Bramanti et al. (eds.), Current Research in Early Mesopotamian Studies. Zaphon.
Benati, G., M. Bonechi. 2020. The Fiscal Capacity of the Ebla State in the Early Bronze Age: Taxation and Political Structure, in J. Mynarova, S. Alivernini (eds.), Economic Complexity in the Ancient Near East. Charles University Prague Press.
Benati, G. 2018. The Construction of Large-scale Networks in Late Chalcolithic Mesopotamia: Emergent Political Institutions and Their Strategies”. In N. Marchetti, D. Domenici (eds.), Urbanized Landscapes in Early Syro-Mesopotamia and Prehispanic Mesoamerica, Harrassowitz. [Open Acces Volume]