Author: JIAAW

State of the Field 2023 Home | Full Program  |  Speakers

 

Leah Bernardo Ciddio (Michigan)
“From Its Depths: Archaeology and Colonialism through the Adriatic Mirror”

This paper explores the silences and gaps of Adriatic archaeology and situates them in an historiographic context. I incorporate inquiry into the Venetian “flavour” of the Adriatic (as remarked upon by Braudel), identify both Venetian and Roman legacies as underpinning Liberal and Fascist Italian claims to the Adriatic space, and demonstrate that those legacies are less frequently extended into the South Adriatic for multiple colonial and postcolonial reasons.

Archaeology played a prominent role in Italian colonial expansion in East/ North Africa before and during the Fascist period. Less discussed, however, is the catalyzing role of archaeology in Italy’s relationship of domination over the Western Balkans. The events of the later 20^th century give much material for ongoing discourses on national(ist) historiographies. There is, however, a relative lack of discourse that bridges the intervening sea to elaborate on how “Adriatic archaeology” has developed without taking a necessary step of collective, transnational self-reflexivity. I argue that the archaeological narratives that underpinned Italy’s domination of other Adriatic territories and nations continue to affect archaeological research and practice today in the Adriatic sphere today. After World War II, the adoption of the term “Adriatic koine” was presented as a neutral descriptor of interaction in the ancient Adriatic, one that did not position any one group as dominating another. Yet the koine narrative, frequently used today, is not without flaw nor does it adequately acknowledge ongoing disparities in the realms of archaeology or cultural heritage, which often fail to engage Adriatic peoples equitably – a failure further exacerbated by the fact that some Adriatic countries are EU members while others are not, and some Adriatic countries are still viewed through an Orientalist lens while others are branded (internally and from without) as passably more “western” or “European”, an image reinforced in the spheres of heritage and tourism.  As multiple, often EU-funded cultural projects celebrate shared heritage amongst other “Adriatic brethren”, this is typically an incomplete exercise, wherein Albanians are less frequently offered a seat at the Adriatic table despite their modern engagement with and across the Adriatic, as recent migrants to/ a new diaspora in Italy.

Stephen Collins-Elliott (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
“The Sisyphean Bind of Romanization: Post-Colonial Approaches, Cultural Essentialism, and Grand Narratives in Roman Archaeology“

The field of Roman archaeology is no stranger to post-colonial approaches. Since the 1970s, colonialist narratives of acculturation or assimilation on the part of the conquered in favor of a Roman identity have frequently been rejected, with many alternative theories of cultural change proposed in their wake. However, this older colonial model (albeit somewhat modified) persists. In introductory textbooks on ancient Roman archaeology and art available in the United States, the narratives presented frequently promote the status quo of the older colonialist model, wherein ancient Roman culture, via art, architecture, and artifact assemblages, is exported to the world. A certain problem then emerges, in which the attempt to overcome the grand narrative of “Romanization” becomes a Sisyphean task. By the very act of criticizing a colonial model of cultural change, its discourse is perpetuated, since one cannot engage in its critiques without first having been taught it as a core, default narrative of the field.

Here, I argue that the root of this dynamic lies in the very disciplinary definition of Roman archaeology itself. For, the implicit assumption of cultural essentialism continues to embody current approaches to archaeology in the Mediterranean, encoding objects and styles a priori with an ethnic identity. Therein also arises the failure of alternative theories to provide new grand narratives that are compelling and accessible to a general undergraduate audience, one who, far from having a background on post-colonialism and sociological or anthropological models of human interaction, may not even have a preconceived notion of what the Roman empire is and how it is manifested in the ancient Mediterranean. Finally, I outline pedagogical strategies to reframe Roman archaeology as a study of the relationship more generally between cultural change and empire in the ancient world, above all in non-essentialized terms.

Ana Delgado Hervás (Universitat Pompeu  Fabra)  and Mateo González Vázquez (Universität Trier)
“Uncovering the Past and Present of Mediterranean Rural Landscapes. A View from the Iberian Peninsula”

The study of rural landscapes in the Mediterranean region during the 1st millennium BCE has  gained increasing attention in recent decades, yet the field has traditionally focused on urban  and colonial centers. The lack of focus on rural areas has led to a limited understanding of the  social and economic dynamics of these communities and their role in the broader historical  narrative. Advances in non-invasive archaeological methods and preventative archaeology  related to public works and development projects have led to a growing body of evidence on  peasant communities, their lifestyles, and land use and management. However, due in part to  the slow adoption of the so-called “grey literature” from preventative excavations, which is  typically disregarded in academic circles, this information has not been accompanied by  theoretical frameworks that concentrate on the strategies, practices, and lifestyles of peasant  groups and communities. As a result, the study of rural spaces continues to be dominated by  “urbanocentric” perspectives that view rural areas and their inhabitants as mere providers of  food for “central places” and as marginal historical players. 

In the case of Iberia, the emphasis has been on how “rural landscapes” transformed into “rural  territories” and how the establishment of Emporion in the sixth century BCE was connected to  the organization of a more intensive and “efficient” agricultural land exploitation and  management system, with a focus on cereal production. However, models that depict this area  as being severely colonized are frequently weak and influenced by mainstream academic  discourse that denigrates rural groups, elevates “the Greeks,” and sees power relations as  innately structural. Archaeology has contributed to this prejudice by focusing on the center of  the colonial foundation and ignoring the surrounding area for more than a century. In order to  question these conventional viewpoints and provide new information, a research project has  been launched in the rural area of Emporion using a variety of techniques, including  excavation, geophysical and pedestrian surveys, and GIS mapping. The goal of this project is  to include the histories of these peasant communities more fully in the main historical narrative and move beyond the overly simple views based on the ideas of chora and territorial hierarchy  that have traditionally been used to look at these places.

Lara Fabian
“Antiquity and the Narrativization of the Black Sea“

In August 2011, Russia’s then prime minister Vladimir Putin goes scuba diving in the Black Sea, returning to the surface holding fragments of two amphorae. “Treasure!” he announces. The world media—and most archaeologists—scratch their heads in confusion. “Vladimir Putin’s Greek urns claim earns ridicule” reads one characteristic headline. However, and particularly in light of the war in Ukraine, the deeper story behind Putin’s photo-op merits closer consideration. 

This deeper story is unfamiliar to many archaeologists working in the Anglo-American and Western European traditions, where the Black Sea—a vibrant corner of the Mediterranean system—falls at the fringes of disciplinary interest. A narrow range of topics (e.g., Greek colonization, Black Sea grain exports, Scythian-Greek interaction) have of course been thematized. But the space has rarely played a central role in disciplinary discourses: a reality that has its roots in internal disciplinary preoccupations as well as in wider geopolitical realities. 

In stark contrast, the Black Sea has been a central object of inquiry for scholars of the ancient world working in the intellectual traditions of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the wider ‘post-Soviet’ world. This research has been, as all scholarship on antiquity is, profoundly entangled with contemporaneous political projects. 

In this paper, I lay out broad trajectory of the construction of the northern and eastern Black Sea within the Russophone tradition, moving from creation of a home-grown (отечественная) study of classical antiquity under Catherine the Great, through the flourishing of regional studies in the late Russian Empire, the struggle to tell acceptable histories in the Soviet period, and the eventual fracturing of narratives in the post-Soviet period. 

My goal in this paper is twofold. Firstly, this oft-overlooked history provides valuable insight into the diversity of ways that ancient history has been, and continues to be, operationalized in imperialist projects. Secondly, as we consider the state of our discipline, this paper invites us to reflect on how (and why) we should integrate spaces that have hitherto fallen through the cracks of our disciplinary frameworks.

Benjamin Luley (Gettysburg College)
“Comparing Colonialism: Between Classics and Anthropology in Roman Mediterranean Gaul”

Despite certain important structural similarities between the Roman Empire and other imperial powers (e.g., violent conquest of indigenous populations, taxation and exploitation, varying degrees of settler colonization, etc.), scholars have often hesitated or resisted altogether applying the term “colonialism” to the Roman Empire. At the same time, within the discipline of anthropology, the archaeology of colonialism as a subject of research, as well as an engagement with “decolonization” theories and methodologies have become increasingly popular in the past two decades. In part, the debate over the status of the Roman Empire as an example of “colonialism” is part of a larger debate about the role that Mediterranean archaeology will play in the 21st century: to what extent will it remain as a specialized sub-field within Classical Studies –- a field structurally built around only two Mediterranean societies, that of Greece and Rome -– and to what extent will it seek to engage with larger debates about human societies comparatively across space and time?

In this talk, I suggest that analyzing Roman rule in the conquered provinces as an example of colonialism allows us to better evaluate the local experiences of non-Roman peoples living under violently imposed foreign rule, while also allowing Mediterranean archaeologists to contribute to a wider understanding of the structural similarities and differences of empires and expansive states across space and time. Looking specifically at the example of the ongoing excavations at the site of Lattara (modern Lattes, France) in what was Roman Mediterranean Gaul, I ask what a “decolonized” archaeology of the Roman provinces might look like. In part, “decolonizing” so-called “Roman” archaeology involves above all recognizing the power imbalances implicit in Roman rule in the provinces, something brought out by the term “colonialism” itself. Furthermore, I suggest that “decolonizing” the Roman Empire can also involve a continued investigation of subaltern populations, while also moving away from thinking of this as “Roman archaeology” at all and instead looking more diachronically at transformations and continuities in the lifeways of local peoples across both the Iron Age and Roman period.

Ileana Micarelli (University of Cambridge)
“Osteobiographical Investigation of Disability and Care in Classical Italy“

The bioarchaeological characterisation of disabled individuals from the past is particularly challenging  because it pushes the boundaries of the interpretation of pathologies recognisable on human remains.  In this communication, I will investigate the bioarchaeological approaches for recreating the “Past to  life”. In so doing, the osteobiographical approach offers a possible framework in which human remains  are studied to understand not only the embodied experience during life but also to frame people as  playing diverse social roles (e.g. patient, healer, doctor, carer) in different times during life. Considering  the meaning of disease, treatment methods and, quite possibly, caregiving customs (i.e. written sources),  the Italian Peninsula in Classical times offers the ideal scenario. This abstract aims: (1) to use the  osteobiographical approach to explore a life narrative of a male (labelled T90/5) in need of care from  the site of Selvicciola (4th-7th c. CE, Italy), and (2) to contextualise the impact of his health status on  his community. Via methods standard in anthropology, T90/5 was analysed to assess the biological  profile. Visual inspection, CT-scan and X-rays were used for palaeopathological assessment and  biomolecular analyses to investigate the diet. The results show that a mature male survived at least two  traumatic events and an injury of the left femur neck shortly before death. Surviving multiple traumas  should be interpreted as a severe chronic condition. This caused several problems during the first phases  (blood loss, infections) and long-term recovery. To survive, T90/5 was cared for by the community not  only to avoid severe conditions in a pre-antibiotic era but also to sort out biomechanical activities. Stable  carbon and nitrogen analyses on bone collagen show a dietary intake consistent with the rest of the  group. His burial was a lithic stone coffin, close to other burials, indicating he was buried like the other  community members. Osteological investigations (paleopathological assessment, biomolecular analyses) and burial evidence of social inclusion indicate a probable adoption of alternative tasks for  subject participation in community life. This osteobiographical investigation offers insight into the  embodied experience of impairment of an individual from a Mediterranean community.

Eva Mol (University of York), Andrew Gardner (UCL), Lindsey Allen (Kings College London), Corinna Riva (UCL)
“New Agendas in Decolonised Mediterranean Archaeologies?”

This abstract would fall in both the definitions and responsibilities- themes and is perhaps not a typical abstract, more an invitation to share thoughts about archaeologies of the Mediterranean from a UK-perspective. Last year, running from January until June 2022, we organised a bi-weekly seminar called ‘Disorienting the Classical’ (link online here) at the London Institute of Classical Studies. The series were born out of a discussion on dropping the ‘Classical’ from the ICS-name and what we would gain from this, and from the encouraging decolonisation-rupture in the field in 2020/1, fuelled by Covid19 and the Black Lives Matter movement. Many panels and seminars were held that year, with great and inspiring debates, reading lists, activism, and with departments making some radical structural changes. However, that was 2020, today we see that the initial positive attitude is waning rapidly, the readiness for action fading, while people complain against wokeness on universities and ban books about critical race theory. How did Mediterranean archaeology relate to this debate?

In our series we tried to reflect on this constructively, by a tripartite structure of orienting, disorienting, and reorienting the Classical in today’s world and in academia (the theoretical concept is borrowed from Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology). How did we become familiarised and oriented to particular topics, and how has that orientation led to a much narrower working space than we often realize? Through interviews, panels, lectures, discussions with colleagues and students, by including many different voices and research angles, we have tried to critically analyse the movement, our current position, and where we should be heading. We believe we are in the right moment to reflect on all this and ask what should remain about the Classical as well as what we should do with the fragmented Mediterranean Archaeology that seemed to have largely eschewed these debates (Mol 2020). What’s in a name? What do we lose and what do we gain if we take radical measures? What roles should Mediterranean archaeology play? We would like to offer our UK-perspective and would love discussing this further with other colleagues and students and share thoughts and agendas.

James Newhard (College of Charleston) and Allison Sterrett-Krause (College of Charleston)
“Consilience and Resilience: Mediterranean Archaeology at an American Undergraduate University”

In North America, Mediterranean archaeologists typically find employment in higher education or museums. Because these positions require advanced degrees, graduate education is often assumed as the default environment for exploring curricular structure, relationships with cognate disciplines, intersections with outside communities, and issues of relevancy. However, given that graduate students of Mediterranean archaeology come from some form of undergraduate experience, it is logical to explore this preparation to gain a broad sense of how Mediterranean archaeologists develop from the beginning of their higher education experience. 

The College of Charleston’s Interdisciplinary Program in Archaeology (IPA) provides an opportunity for a deep assessment of a program that trains future Mediterranean archaeologists alongside peers studying other parts of the world. The IPA is structure around a consortium of 10 different departments spread across four of the seven schools of the institution. A review of the Program’s curricular structure explores the ownership of disciplinary knowledge among archaeologists with academic homes in Classics, Anthropology, Art History, Geology, History, Historic Preservation, and other units. The IPA offers one model for how numerous stakeholders reach consensus regarding what skills or perspectives will be required of future archaeologists writ large, of future Mediterranean archaeologists specifically, and how and by whom those skills and perspectives are delivered. The IPA at Charleston need not be taken an archetype for emulation, but it demonstrates the intricacies of power- and knowledge-sharing between Mediterranean-focused and other archaeologists and suggests pathways that could lead to a revisioning of Mediterranean archaeology’s position within the structure of higher education.

Giulia Saltini Semerari (University of Michigan), Meritxell Ferrer (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Mireia Lopez-Bertran (Universitat de Valencia)
“Gender Archaeology and the Ancient Mediterranean“

The questions and priorities developed in forty years of gender archaeology have been adopted by researchers of the ancient Mediterranean intermittently, and often (though not always) with only a partial understanding of the potential offered by this body of literature. Gender archaeology in the ancient Mediterranean is thus misaligned with broader trends within the discipline because of its narrow scope (which tends to focus on adult elite women, skew towards static descriptions, and use a limited range of archaeological datasets) and its lack of explicit engagement with disciplinary practices. This is unfortunate, because the Mediterranean offers unique opportunities to explore a number of key theoretical and practical issues raised by gender archaeology. In particular, the importance of connectivity in the trajectories of coastal Mediterranean populations, paired with a general high density of information, provides an ideal case study to investigate in detail how culture contact impacts (and is shaped by) gender dynamics. Further, its dense and fragmented geographical and cultural space allows for the comparative investigation of variability – in terms of both local developments and the response to external inputs. The ancient Mediterranean thus holds great potential for the integration of gender as one key variable within broader historical narratives and for the creation of more nuanced theoretical understandings of culture contact. In this presentation, after a brief review of the state of gender archaeology in the Mediterranean, we outline one recent project that is addressing this issue at one critical turning point in Mediterranean history: the transition from the Early Iron Age to the Classical period. As a collaborative project bringing together scholars from different countries and academic status, this project also raises the question of creating inclusive and fair disciplinary practices – and issue that is dear to gender archaeology but is often neglected in Mediterranean archaeology.

State of the Field 2023 Home | Full Program  |  Speakers

State of the Field 2023 Home | Full Program | Abstracts

 

Biographies for Speakers and Discussants

 

Cicek Tascioglu Beeby is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University. She specializes in the art, archaeology, and social history of Greece. At the center of Cicek’s research lies the human body. She has done extensive work on funerary contexts and the manipulation of the human body after death, including bioarchaeology, funerary adornment, cremation, and secondary practices involving human bones. Her interest in the epistemology of the human body has also prompted her to explore embodied space and performance, archaeology of the senses, gender and sexuality, and the construction of personhood in the ancient world. She is particularly interested in the social implications of the representation of bodies in Greek and Roman art and literature, currently focusing on how marginalized bodies—such as women, people with disabilities, and “barbarians”—contribute to the Classical aesthetics of power and privilege. She also works in the fields of museum studies and public humanities, advocating disruptive curatorial practices that bring into question exclusionary histories of museums.   

Leah Bernardo-Ciddio is a Ph.D. Candidate at in the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Archaeology at the University of Michigan. She holds an M.Phil. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Oxford, and earned her B.A. in Classical Studies and History at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her dissertation examines the production and circulation of matt-painted pottery across and around the Adriatic in the Iron Age. She has worked on field projects at or around Ossaia, Gabii, Roccagloriosa, Roca Vecchia, and the Basentello Valley in Italy, and has conducted lab-based study in Lecce and Taranto, Italy and Tirana and Korce, Albania.

Joseph Carrino is a doctoral student at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University. He received a B.A in History from Rutgers University – Newark and an M.Phil. in Classics from the University of Cambridge. His M.Phil. thesis examined the economic conditions of early and mid-Imperial Italy by examining the macellum – a Roman covered market complex. Carrino has excavated in the Sabina, Italy as part of the Upper Sabina Tiberina Project. He has also spent a semester at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome (ICCS), during which he also interned at the archaeological collection of the American Academy in Rome. Additionally, he has worked in the Education department of the Newark Museum of Art, where he helped design and run tours, and taught a Roman Civilization course at Rutgers University – Newark. His current research interests include socio-economic development and exchange, cross-cultural interactions, and connectivity studies, especially at the local level across the Mediterranean. Moreover, he is interested in how microhistories can tell big stories of change attendant on empire.

Stephen Collins-Elliott is Associate Professor and Associate Head of the Department of Classics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He received his B.A. in Classics and Mathematics from the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from Florida State University, during which time he received a Fulbright grant to Italy to work at the ceramology lab of the University of Siena. His work focuses on artifact assemblages and broader economic, historical, and cultural questions on the rise of Rome over the longue durée, focusing on applied statistics and probability. He co-directs the project, Gardens of the Hesperides: The Rural Archaeology of the Loukkos Valley, which analyzes the impact of the Roman occupation on the rural economy around Lixus, the earliest city in northwestern Africa, through regional survey and targeted excavations of small rural sites.

Lara Fabian is an archaeologist and historian working on the Iranian-Mediterranean interface zone in the Achaemenid through Sasanian periods, with a particular focus on the South Caucasus. She earned her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania with a dissertation on the archaeology, history, and historiography of Caucasian Albania, a polity in the eastern Caucasus. Since 2017, she has been working as part of the ERC-funded “Beyond the Silk Road” project at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, where she has participated in the production of a three-volume handbook on the economies of Eurasia between 300 BCE and 300 CE. She co-directs a collaborative Azerbaijani-American fieldwork project in the Talish mountains of Azerbaijan, which looks at highland communities in the Late Iron Age.

Lisa Fentress is an Honorary Visiting Professor at University College London. She was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, University College London and St Hugh’s College, Oxford (D.Phil. 1979 Roman Archaeology). She was a Visiting Professor at University College London, Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Mellon Professor at the American Academy in Rome, and is a former President of the International Association of Classical Archaeology (AIAC). In 2003, she set up Fasti Online, an international database of Mediterranean archaeological excavation which was the winner of the inaugural Archaeological Institute of America Award for Outstanding Digital Archaeology. She was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America’s gold medal for distinguished archaeological achievement in January 2022. Her primary concentration has been on the application of archaeology to history of the longue durée in both the Italian peninsula and the countries of North Africa. She has directed or co-directed survey and excavation projects in the Albegna Valley, Cosa; the abbey of San Sebastiano at Alatri and Villa Magna in Italy; Sétif in Algeria, Jerba; Utica in Tunisia; and currently, Volubilis in Morocco.

Lin Foxhall, FSA, MBE, is a Professor of archaeology and ancient Greek History. She has written on women, men, and gender in the classical world. She is an Honorary Professor at the University of Leicester, and in 2017 she was appointed to the Rathbone Chair of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Liverpool. Foxhall studied for her bachelor’s degree at Bryn Mawr College. She received her master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She was awarded her Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool in 1990 for a thesis entitled, Olive Cultivation Within Greek and Roman Agriculture: The Ancient Economy Revisited. She is the Principal Investigator on the ‘Tracing Networks’ Project. She is the co-director of the Bova Marina project. Foxhall joined the University of Leicester in 1993, and was made Professor of Greek Archaeology and History in 1999.

Tyler Franconi is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University. He holds a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in classical archaeology, and has held previous academic positions at the University of Oxford, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Alberta. He has excavated at a number of different sites in Italy, Tunisia, and the USA, and currently co-directs the Upper Sabina Tiberina Project, which investigates the long-term development of rural settlement and economy in the Sabine region of Italy, located today in the province of Rieti of the region of Lazio. Tyler’s research more generally focuses on the economic and environmental history of the Roman Empire, with particular interests in the frontier regions of Britain and Germany. His research in these zones investigates the changing relationship between Roman economic exploitation and environmental dynamism from the time of initial conquest into the early medieval period.

Benjamin Luley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and is currently the Chair of the Department of Classics at Gettysburg College. He completed his B.A. in Anthropology and History with honors at Penn State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. His research interests focus on the impact of the Roman Empire on the colonized peoples of the western Mediterranean, particular the region of Mediterranean Gaul. More generally, he is interested in the archaeology of colonialism and rethinking paradigms of inequality and equality for understanding the diversity of human social organization across space and time. Luley has excavated in France, Italy, Tunisia, and the United States and has been working at the archaeological site of Lattara (modern Lattes, France) since 2006. Since 2017 he has helped to lead the excavations of the Roman-era port of the settlement at Lattara. In 2020 he published a single-authored book on his research at Lattes with Oxbow Books, entitled, Continuity and Rupture: An Archaeology of Colonial Transformations at Ancient Lattara.

Ileana Micarelli is Marie Sklodowska-Curie European Fellow in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at University of Cambridge. She has a Master’s in Bioarcheology and M.Sc. in Medieval Archaeology; and, she earned her Ph.D. at the Department of Classics and Environmental Biology in Sapienza, University of Rome. Over the last two years, she has been the Assistant Researcher at the Department of Environmental Biology researching on Bioarcheology, Paleopathology and, specially, focusing on themes related to Bioarcheology of Care and Disability. From 2008 she has been involved in numerous archaeological campaigns ranging different time periods/areas from the Roman to Medieval Ages (Europe and Africa). During her current Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project (B-CARED) at the McDonald Institute, she is specializing in archaeological theory related to disability and care in past populations.

Eva Mol earned her Ph.D. at Leiden, University the Netherlands. Before moving to the United Kingdom to work at the University College London, she completed postdoctoral fellowships at Chicago Classics and at the Joukowsky Institute. She is now at the University of York as Assistant Professor in Roman archaeology. In addition, she is a senior editor at the Cambridge University Press Journal Archaeological Dialogues. She published articles on digital archaeology & theory and archaeology & ethics, and has a forthcoming book out at Oxford University Press on style and assemblages in Roman Archaeology. She is currently working on a new monograph about mythology and Mediterranean archaeology.

Dimitri Nakassis is professor and chair of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder. He received his degrees from the University of Michigan (BA) and the University of Texas at Austin (MA, PhD), and has held positions at Trinity University, the Florida State University, and the University of Toronto. He’s the author of Individuals and Society in Mycenaean Pylos (2013) and is co-director of the Western Argolid Regional Project and the Pylos Tablets Digital Project. He is currently at work on a project that proposes a new way of understanding Late Bronze Age “Mycenaean” Greece that begins by rejecting interpretations premised on its essential unity.

James Newhard, RPA, is Director of Archaeology, Director of the Center for Historical Landscapes, and Professor of Classics at the College of Charleston. As a landscape archaeologist, he focuses on the interplay between environmental and human history. As an informaticist, his work focuses on the application of data and geospatial science within archaeology and history. He has served in leading roles on archaeological projects in Turkey, the US, and Greece. In 2005, Dr. Newhard served as the inaugural Director of Archaeology and has served as either Director of Archaeology or Chair of Classics for the better part of his career. Newhard earned a dual Bachelor of Arts in Classical Art & Archaeology and Classical Languages from the   University of Missouri, an M.A. in Classics from the University of Cincinnati, and a Ph.D. in Classical Studies from the University of Cincinnati.

Giulia Saltini Semerari is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Assistant Curator in the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She arrived in Michigan after one postdoc in Amsterdam and one in Tübingen, and a Ph.D. at the University of Oxford. Her main research interest is Mediterranean connectivity in the early first millennium BC, with a focus on the central Mediterranean. To address this, she conducted an international, collaborative project (AMICI) applying a spectrum of bioarchaeological and archaeological analyses to indigenous and early colonial cemeteries in southern Italy. A new project on Adriatic connectivity is set to start in 2023. She is also the vice-director of the fieldschool at the indigenous-Greek site of Incoronata (southern Italy), where she is responsible for metal finds and textile tools. A second research interest is the archaeology of gender, and she has recently co-organized a new research initiative on gender in the Early Iron Age Mediterranean.

Anna Soifer is a doctoral candidate at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2017 with a B.A. in Archaeology and Classics. She received honors in Archaeology for a thesis examining the socio-political implications of Etruscan and Etrusco-Campanian antefixes, focusing specifically on the analysis of a set of barely published Capuan antefixes in the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum. While at Hopkins, she also participated in the Archaeological Museum’s ‘Recreating Ancient Greek Ceramics’ project. Anna has excavated with the S’Urachi Project, Sardinia (2018-), the Uronarti Regional Archaeological Project, Sudan (2019), the Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project, Italy (2015-17), serving as the site registrar in 2017, and at the Buried Gardens of Kampsville, Illinois with the CAA (2012). She has also interned in the Study Collection at the American Academy in Rome, and has worked on the digital illustration of artifacts and architecture from Umm el-Marra, Syria. Her current research interests include  ancient craft and industry, knowledge transfer, communities of practice, and ceramic analysis, particularly in the context of understanding community development and interaction in Pre-Roman Italy.

Peter van Dommelen is a Mediterranean archaeologist, whose research and teaching revolve around the rural and indigenous Mediterranean past and present. The regional focus of his work lies in the western Mediterranean, where he carries out long-term fieldwork on the island of Sardinia. He studied Archaeology and Classics at the University of Leiden (the Netherlands), specializing in Theoretical and Classical Archaeology (MA, 1990; PhD, 1998); he also studied Anthropology and Material Culture at UCL (1990-91). He taught Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Glasgow between 1997 and 2012, before coming to Brown University. He has served as Director of the Joukowsky Institute since 2015.

Mateo González Vázquez completed his undergraduate studies in History at the Universitat de Barcelona, his M.Phil. at the University of Oxford, and his Ph.D. from Universitat de Barcelona. He has been a visiting scholar at Brown University, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, and Cincinnati. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the Universität Trier in Germany, working on a DFG-funded project that explores maritime connectivity in the Mediterranean during Classical Antiquity and as a co-PI on the four-year project “Contact Landscapes and Rural Communities around Emporion (10th-2nd century BC).” He co-directs work at several sites in L’Escala, Baix Empordà, and he has been a member of the archaeological mission team at Monte Testaccio (Rome) since 2011. His research is focused on the history and archaeology of the Western Mediterranean, with a particular interest in economic structures, local responses, and imperial power mechanisms from the Iron Age to the Roman era.

State of the Field 2023 Home | Full Program | Abstracts