Donald C. Haggis
Professor of Classical Archaeology
Nicholas A. Cassas Professor of Greek Studies
Ph.D. 1992, University of Minnesota
Donald Haggis studied Greek and Latin at Wayne State University and Classical Studies at the University of Minnesota, and was a Fulbright Scholar and Doreen C. Spitzer Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, before becoming Assistant Professor of Classics at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In 1993, he moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he 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, Lykomouri and Ayios Antonios, 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.
Haggis’ current research examines how we use archaeological evidence to understand diachronic cultural landscapes and to construct archaeological narrative. One aspect of this work is to shape a methodology for understanding settlement behavior as a cultural practice with material and stratigraphic correlates. At this stage, the goal is to reevaluate settlement structure in the Aegean, focusing on material patterns as evidence of durational structures of activities and processes; and to explore how archaeological excavation affords us the means to visualize stratigraphy and assemblages as meaningful indications of cultural production and human engagement with the landscape. His fieldwork has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the American Philosophical Society, the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. In 2015-2016, he was appointed Elizabeth A. Whitehead Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and currently serves on the managing committees of the ASCSA and the Institute for Aegean Prehistory Study Center for East Crete.
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.
Haggis has advised and directed theses and dissertations on Bronze Age, Early Iron Age, Archaic, and classical Aegean topics, though he is currently accepting students whose work focuses on Minoan Crete, particularly Prepalatial and Protopalatial periods.
Recent papers:
D.C. Haggis, “On borrowed time: Dynamic transtemporal convergence and the afterlife of Minoan kernoi,” in C. Langohr and Q. Letesson, eds., Πολυμήχανος. Man of Many Ways. Papers in Honour of Professor Jan Driessen, Aegis 25 (Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, 2023), 249-261.
C.M. Scarry, D.C. Haggis, M.S. Mook, R.D. Fitzsimons, W.F. Dibble, C.Tsoraki, “Commensal Politics and Identity Performance at Azoria, an Archaic City on Crete,” in C. M. Scarry, D.L. Hutchinson and B.S. Arbuckle, eds., Ancient Foodways: Integrative Approaches to Understanding Subsistence and Society (Gainesville: The University Press of Florida, 2023) 66-87.
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