The Tribe of Dan has always appeared to biblical scholars and archaeologists as something of an enigma. For decades, certain scholars, beginning with Yigael Yadin, have proposed a connection between the Denyen/Danaoi Sea People and the Danites of Ancient Israel, arguing that the former became the latter and were adopted into Israel at a later date…[Read more]

Elodie Paillard, ‘Greek Theatre in Roman Italy: From Elite to Autocratic Performances’, in E. Csapo, H.R. Goette, J. R. Green, B. Le Guen, E. Paillard, J. Stoop, P. Wilson, Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World, De Gruyter, 2022

This article is a report of a roundtable discussion organised by the authors at the UK Classical Association conference, Cambridge, April 2023, under the aegis of #WCCWiki, the Women’s Classical Committee’s Wikipedia-editing project. It presents a summary of the participants’ wide-ranging uses of Wikipedia editing at schools, universities, and…[Read more]

The Linear B administrative texts of Late Bronze Age Greece were written on clay tablets, whose production therefore formed the first stage in the process of document creation, though it generally remains unclear whether the tablets’ writers were also their makers. This study combines experimental archaeology with autopsy of the tablets from P…[Read more]

The Linear B administrative texts of Late Bronze Age Greece were written on clay tablets, whose production therefore formed the first stage in the process of document creation, though it generally remains unclear whether the tablets’ writers were also their makers. This study combines experimental archaeology with autopsy of the tablets from P…[Read more]

The early history of the study of Parthian art may be profitably divided into three overlapping phases. The first phase, ‘Ordering’, begins with Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s dismissive assessment of Parthian art, at this point known mainly from coins, as derivative and barbaric. The second phase, ‘Exploration’, begins in the mid-ninet…[Read more]

This course provides a detailed examination of the life and administration of the Roman emperor Augustus (reigned 31 B.C. to A.D. 14), a time of pivotal social and economic change that forever altered the trajectory of Roman history. Augustus and his administration will be examined from a variety of viewpoints, drawing on a rich dataset that…[Read more]

This course explores the art and archaeology of the Greek world from the Late Bronze Age to the Roman period. The course focuses on architecture, sculpture, painted pottery, and wall painting as its main object classes and situates artistic and stylistic developments within their social, political, and historical context. We will consider issues…[Read more]

The Late Bronze Age was a period of heightened international diplomacy throughout the eastern Mediterranean littoral and the Near East. A direct result of this supra-regional interconnectivity is argued to have been the formation of an independent hybrid visual style, the ‘International Style’, an iconographic idiom which occurs sparingly on art…[Read more]

This is the first translation of the two graffiti texts found at the exit of Wadi el-Ḥôl (“Wadi of Terror”) in the Qena bend area of Egypt. Their signs represent a transitional stage between Minoan Phaistos Disk and Linear A. These texts were found by John and Deborah Darnell during their 1993-94 excavation season (Darnell, and all 2005). Th…[Read more]

This course offers a survey of the archaeology of settled landscapes in the ancient Mediterranean world,
including both the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean basin. In particular, the course will focus on
city-country dichotomies in order to study the patterns of development, demography, and land use in
selected case study areas. While…[Read more]

This course provides an introduction to the visual culture and art forms of the Italo-Roman world from the
Early Iron Age to the beginning of Late Antiquity. The course examines the developmental arcs of art
forms in various spheres (public, private, sacred, funereal) and considers key media (sculpture, painting,
mosaic, decorative arts).…[Read more]

A work-in-progress, this is an extended bibliography on Messene covering the period from 1831 and up to today. It includes the excavation reports and archaeological/historical publications of ancient and byzantine Messene in Messenia, SW Peloponnese. Please send via mail or message any corrections, suggestions and additions.

The Arroyo Abatement project took place at the Double Diamond Ranch, 8 miles North of Cuba, New
Mexico, in June 2010. Funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior,
Bureau of Land Management, and approved by the Rio Puerco Alliance, the objective
was to restore the property from the ravaging effects of water erosion caused…[Read more]

The Arroyo Abatement project took place at the Double Diamond Ranch, 8 miles North of Cuba, New
Mexico, in June 2010. Funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior,
Bureau of Land Management, and approved by the Rio Puerco Alliance, the objective
was to restore the property from the ravaging effects of water erosion caused…[Read more]

This article analyses orthographic variation in the Linear B tablets from the Mycenaean palace of Pylos. Despite the general consistency in spelling found in Linear B texts from all sites, variation was in certain cases both permissible and entirely normal, even within the work of a single writer. Examining the patterns of orthographic variation…[Read more]

The text on Nestor’s Cup (750-700 BCE) is not Greek as many claim but is actually Alphabetic Akkadian. Its three-line text is a debate about the cause of a drought. The first line blames the life network goddess Ayu and her eagle vultures while the second line blames emotion magic with its owls (like the Athenian owl). Alphabetic Akkadian was t…[Read more]

The course provides an extensive survey of the archaeology of the Roman world, as well as an introduction to archaeological methods. Students will acquire the analytical skills necessary to interpret material culture and learn how to use archaeological remains to reconstruct various aspects of ancient societies. Emphasis for this class is on the…[Read more]