Lidewijde de Jong received her M.A. in Mediterranean archaeology at the University of Amsterdam and completed a Ph.D. in the Classics Department at Stanford University in 2007.
Her research interests focus on ancient empires and their transformative impact from the perspective of local communities. Her work concentrates on the Roman empire in the Near East, in particular modern Lebanon and Syria. Currently, she is working on a manuscript concerning funerary practices in the Roman province of Syria. Working on the primary data from the excavations of tombs, she investigates the impact of the incorporation of the region into the Roman empire between the 1st century BCE and the 4th century CE on local traditions. Her other research interests include theories of acculturation (Romanization and Hellenization), the history of Classical archaeology, the Hellenistic Near East, mortuary practices, and Islamic Archaeology.
Lidewijde de Jong has extensive fieldwork experience and excavated in Greece, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Tunisia. Between 2005 and 2007 she co-directed the excavations at Tell Sheikh Hasan in the Balikh Valley in Syria with the Syrian Antiquities Service. This town on the eastern border of the Roman empire was inhabited from the Hellenistic to the Early Islamic period (330s BCE-1260 CE). The excavation at Tell Sheikh Hasan provides insights on the impact of Roman imperialism from the perspective of a border town. The analysis of this site has furthermore prompted her to look beyond the disciplinary boundaries of Classics to Islamic history and archaeology, by comparing Roman with Abbasid imperialism.
She currently teaches courses on Roman archaeology, archaeological methods, ancient empires and ancient urbanization.
E-mail: ldejong@email.unc.edu
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