Donald Haggis, Professor of Classical Archaeology and Nicholas A. Cassas Term Professor of Greek Studies in the Department of Classics, was awarded a $200,000 grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, in support of on-going archaeological excavations at the site of Azoria in eastern Crete in the Greek Aegean.
The Azoria Project, begun in 2002, is a twenty-year field research project of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, centering on the excavation and study of an early Greek city in the Aegean (ca. 1200-500 B.C.). The goals of fieldwork are to explore the political economy of an ancient Greek city and the formative stages of urbanization and city-state formation.
Haggis re-opened excavations in the summer of 2013, and will return to the site to work with an international team of researchers from a variety of disciplines. The project provides field training annually for some ten graduate students and 40 undergraduates from UNC, Duke, and universities across North America and Europe. Its ongoing commitment to international education, vertical integration of research and teaching, sustainable heritage management, and public outreach, engagement, and experiential education were considerations of the Niarchos Foundation.
The Niarchos Foundation funds initiatives across many disciplines. The foundation looks for well-managed organizations that promise to have a long-lasting social impact and to benefit the public’s common good.
The Azoria Project has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Geographic Society, the American Philosophical Society, the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, and the Shelby White-Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications. The current stage of fieldwork at Azoria (2013-2017) is supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the National Geographic Society; the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; the Institute for Aegean Prehistory; and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.