Donald C. Haggis
Donald C. Haggis, Professor of Classical Archaeology
Nicholas A. Cassas Term Professor of Greek Studies
Donald Haggis studied Latin, Greek, and Classical Archaeology at the University of Minnesota. He conducted his Ph.D. coursework in both the Department of Classical Studies and the Center for Ancient Studies, where he developed an interest in Aegean state formation and the use of intensive archaeological survey to explore cultural dynamics on a regional scale. His current research interests include settlement structure in the Aegean; the archaeology of Prepalatial, Protopalatial and Early Iron Age Crete; and the development of early cities and small-scale states on Crete after the abandonment of Bronze Age palatial centers (ca. 1200-600 B.C.).
He has excavated in the Athenian Agora, Kouphonisi (Crete), Vronda and Kastro Kavousi, Kalo Khorio-Istron, and Azoria. Since 1988 he has participated in surveys at Kavousi, Vrokastro, and Gournia, and in 1997, he joined the Petras Excavations in eastern Crete, studying an assemblage of Middle Minoan IB pottery from a closed deposit, called the “Lakkos.” Filling a significant gap in our understanding of the east-Cretan Protopalatial ceramic sequence, the distinctive ware groups in the Lakkos allow the reconstruction of drinking sets and the function of stylistic diversity in the context of ritual consumption at an emerging palace center (American Journal of Archaeology 111, 2007).
Haggis is research associate in the Research Laboratories of Archaeology; co-editor of the international journal Aegean Archaeology; the chair of the interdepartmental Faculty Working Group on Early Mediterranean Societies (Odum Institute for Research in Social Science); and director of the Azoria Project —the excavation of a Final Neolithic, late Prepalatial, Early Iron Age-Archaic site in eastern Crete.
The excavations at Azoria, to be reopened in 2013-2017, explore processes of urbanization and state-formation in the Early Iron Age and early Archaic period (ca. 1200-600 BC). The most recent reports on this fieldwork can be found on Academia.edu and the Azoria Project Archive, located in the Carolina Digital Repository. The project was recently awarded the Best Practices in Site Preservation Award for 2012 from the Archaeological Institute of America's Site Preservation Program.
Haggis divides his time between the classics department and the Curriculum in Archaeology, where he is adjunct professor, and is currently co-editing with Carla Antonaccio, Classical Archaeology in Context: Theory and Practice in Excavation in the Greek World to be published by Walter de Gruyter.
E-mail: dchaggis@email.unc.edu