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Associate Professor; Director, Center for Archaeology
Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean Bronze
and Iron Age art and archaeology
Ph.D., Bryn Mawr College, 1994
My work focuses on artistic interconnections in the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean world, particularly among the Aegean, Cyprus, Anatolia, and the Levant. In studying ancient visual communication, not only are creation and viewing important, but also recycling and reuse form bases for the transfer of ideas and aesthetics. Textiles, ceramics, architecture, and architectural sculpture form topics of ongoing research.
Part of my research concerns the craft and visual appearance of texts as well as the relationship between writing and the art and technology of seals. On this topic, Script and Se al Use on Cyprus in the Bronze and Iron Ages (Archaeological Institute of America Colloquia and Conference Papers 4, 2002), investigates the connections among Cypriot, Aegean, and Near Eastern ways of writing and recording by considering both the content of the images and documents and their functional contexts. An in depth discussion of the dynamics of the art and craft of writing on Cyprus in the Late Bronze Age as compared with its neighbors forms the substance of another project. A work in progress explores the relationship between the island and its bureaucratic neighbors.
Places of interconnection and processes of exchange play into all aspects of my research, teaching, and fieldwork. The sites of Melissa and Vounari in Phlamoudhi village on Cyprus, excavated in the 1970s by the late Professor Edith Porada, are parts of a Late Bronze Age settlement area with links north, south, east, and west. They were reoccupied in the Archaic and Classical periods. Survey of the area also provides evidence for Roman and Medieval period life in the region. Since 2000, the aim of the Phlamoudhi Archaeological Project has been to study, display, and publish finds from these sites. In 2005, an exhibition in the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia simulated visits to the sites in the Phlamoudhi village area. The Guide to Phlamoudhi (Wallach Art Gallery, New York, 2005) accompanied the show. Settlement and Sanctuary on Cyprus, based on the symposium held for the opening of the exhibit, will be published by the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) in 2007. ASOR will also publish the final excavation reports.
755 Schermerhorn Hall
Telephone: (212) 854-4723
E-mail: jss245@columbia.edu
Art and Archæology of the Bronze Age Mediterranean: learn.columbia.edu/bronze_age_mediterranean
Phlamoudhi-Melissa: http://www.learn.columbia.edu/phlamoudhi
Center for Archaeology: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/archaeology/
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