Donald C. Haggis

Professor of Classical Archaeology
Nicholas A. Cassas Professor of Greek Studies

Ph.D. 1992, University of Minnesota

Donald Haggis teaches archaeology courses in the Department of Classics and the Curriculum in Archaeology.  His research interests include settlement structure in the Bronze Age and Iron Age Aegean; the archaeology of Prepalatial, Protopalatial and Early Iron Age Crete; and the development of early cities and small-scale states after the abandonment of Bronze Age palatial centers (ca. 1200-500 B.C.).  He has participated in surveys at Kavousi, Vrokastro, and Gournia, and excavated in the Athenian Agora, Kouphonisi (Crete), Vronda, and Kastro Kavousi, Kalo Khorio-Istron, and at Azoria where he is the director of the Azoria Project, the excavation of a Final Neolithic, Early Minoan I, Late Minoan IIIC, and Early Iron Age-Archaic site on the eastern edge of the Bay of Mirabello in eastern Crete.  His current research examines how we use archaeological evidence to understand diachronic cultural landscapes and site histories, and construct archaeological narrative. One goal of this work is to shape a methodology of settlement behavior (durational structures of activities and behavioral processes) as a cultural practice with material and stratigraphic correlates. At this stage, the aim is to reevaluate settlement structure in the Aegean, focusing on durational and discontinuous material patterns; and how archaeological excavation affords us the means to visualize stratigraphy as meaningful indications of cultural production and active human engagement with the landscape. He continues to work with Early Bronze Age material, though much of his current research focuses on depositional contexts and assemblages in the Middle Minoan IB transition, a phase change that encompasses the establishment of Minoan palaces on Crete. His on-going case study of the MM IB Lakkos deposit at Petras in eastern Crete engages problems in the transformation of the site in the final stages of the construction of the palace.

Recent papers:
D.C. Haggis and R.D. Fitzsimons, “Civic Architecture and the Social Dimensions of the Built Environment in Archaic Crete. The Case of Azoria in the 6th Century B.C.,” Pelargos 1 (2020) 25-51.
D.C. Haggis, “Kavousi and the Mirabello Region,” in I.S. Lemos and A. Kotsonas, eds., A Companion to the Archaeology of Early Greece and the Mediterranean, Volume 2, (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World) (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell 2020) 1067-1087.
D.C. Haggis,  “In Defense of a Contextual Classical Archaeology,” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 31 (2018) 101-119.
D.C. Haggis,  “The relevance of survey data as evidence for settlement structure in Prepalatial Crete,” in M. Relaki and Y. Papadatos, eds., From the Foundations to the Legacy of Minoan Archaeology. Studies in Honour of Professor Keith Branigan, Sheffield Studies in Aegean Archaeology (Oxford: Oxbow, 2018) 256-274.
D.C. Haggis, “Some Comments on the Late Prepalatial-Protopalatial Cemetery and the Late Minoan IIIC Settlement of Petras Kephala,” in M. Tsipopoulou, ed., Petras: The Pre- and Proto-palatial Cemetery in Context, Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens, Volume 21 (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2017) 425-435.

E-mail: dchaggisATemailDOTuncDOTedu
Donald Haggis (Academia)
Curriculum Vitae