Tabulae
Chair’s Annual Letter
James B. Rives
Kenan Eminent Professor
Chair
This academic year has for me been neatly bifurcated. During the first half I was on leave with a Research and Study Assignment, for which I am very grateful to the College of Arts and Sciences. For the first few months I remained in the area, keeping busy with research and helping out with departmental business, but from the second week of October until the end of December I was abroad, on a three-week tour of England followed by a two-month stay in Paris. Thanks to e-mail I was of course never completely out of touch with the department, but I must confess that from my apartment in Paris it often seemed pretty remote. During the second half of the year, by contrast, I was back in the thick of things: I arrived back in North Carolina on Dec. 31, flew to Chicago on Jan. 1 for the annual meeting of the APA, and returned to campus for the first time in three months the day before classes began. Since then, the department has seemed anything but remote!
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Faculty
Azoria reopens for excavations
Prof. Donald Haggis started a second round field work on the Azoria Project in the summer of 2013. Nine UNC students traveled to Crete, Greece, to work as trench supervisors. Assisted by 40 additional students from the University, this group spent the summer making sense of the destruction left behind at Azoria. Their findings are reshaping what we know about cultural development in Ancient Crete.
Donald Haggis
Nicholas A. Cassas Term Professor of Greek Studies Professor of Classical Archaeology
Director, Azoria Project
The Department of Classics reopened excavations at the site of Azoria in eastern Crete during the summer of 2013, beginning a second five-year stage of fieldwork. The focus of work in 2013 was the South Acropolis, the southernmost peak of the site, which was occupied by houses of Archaic date, as well as two large-scale public buildings: the Monumental Civic Building (a prytaneion or bouleuterion) and the Communal Dining Building (possibly an andreion).
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C. Beeby makes sense of destruction >>
Judson recounts summer among the ruins >>
Undergraduate digs into research >>
Meet our newest faculty members …
Jennifer Gates-Foster >>
Luca Grillo >>
More Faculty News …
Faculty News and Notes >>
Recent Faculty Publications >>
Students
Rider meets Rome
Zack Rider recounts his adventures in Italy while a student at the Classical Summer School of the American Academy in Rome. With help from the Marti Fund, the graduate philologist gained a better understanding of archaeological methods and managed to find his way around the city without getting lost while he was at it.
Zack Rider
Graduate Philology Student
At the end of my first night in Rome, as I sat in the Baths of Caracalla watching Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, I realized that I was going to have a pretty good summer. This good mood was only slightly dampened after the performance, as my jet-lagged group, so sure of our route home, noticed that we were coming up on the Pyramid of Cestius—for the second time in a half hour. It was the first time I was lost in Rome, but definitely not the last, and each time, it seemed, I found myself back at that damned pyramid, mocking and mirroring my own foreignness in the city.
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Schueller shares excavation experiences
Thanks to the Harland Archaeology Fund, Matthew Schueller traveled to Bulgaria in the summer of 2013. While there he continued the field work he began in 2009, focusing on the interplay between the local Thracian and invasive Greek cultures. Here, Schueller details the lessons he learned while working for the Balkan Heritage sites.
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Students reconstruct Azoria …
Prof. Donald Haggis started a second round field work on the Azoria Project in the summer of 2013. Below, three of the nine UNC students who traveled to Crete, Greece, to work as trench supervisors share how their experiences in the field. Thanks to the Harland Archaeology fund, these students are able to gain hands-on experience in their field, gain a better understanding of Ancient Crete, and further their research.
C. Beeby makes sense of destruction >>
Judson recounts summer among the ruins >>
Undergraduate digs into research >>
Alumni
Catching up with …
Join us as we visit two former students, Caroline Culbert and Beth Green. Culbert and Green both focused on Classical Archaeology while students, but have followed different career paths since leaving Murphey Hall. Green, after she earned her PhD, landed a tenure-track position at the University of Western Ontario. Culbert, meanwhile, coupled her bachelor’s degree with a master’s in library science, and is now the assistant for Academic Programs at UNC’s Ackland Art Museum. Below they share how studying the Classics was vital to their success.