Sheira Cohen

Assistant Professor

Ph.D., 2023, Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Sheira Cohen is an Assistant Professor of Classical Archaeology and Digital Humanities. She received her Ph.D in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, along with a M.A. (Classical Studies) from the University of Sydney, Australia, and a B.A. in Anthropology and Ancient History from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She previously taught at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome (the Centro). She joined the Department of Classics in 2025.

Dr. Cohen is a Mediterranean archaeologist who specializes in pre-Roman Italy. Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of community formation and mobility, especially seasonal pastoralism, in western central Italy during the first millennium BCE. Her work combines biochemical analyses (stable isotope analysis) with traditional archaeological and historical evidence. She is currently working on her monograph which reassesses concepts of identity and ethnicity in antiquity, both at the anthropological level and its application to material culture. Her recent publications include a co-edited volume Production, Trade, and Connectivity in Pre-Roman Italy (2022, Routledge) and she has a forthcoming edited volume Debating Early Rome which is the culmination of a long-running international discussion series on the study of Early Rome.

Dr. Cohen does her primary fieldwork at the site of Gabii, Italy where her area of specialty is the Archaic and Iron Age levels. She works in the field as a “dirt archaeologist” excavating and studying the remains of wattle-and-daub hut clusters and human burials. In addition to synthetic discussions about the history of the site, she has published a catalogue and analysis of the Iron Age infant burials. She is currently working on the final publication of an Iron Age-Archaic settlement cluster from the site and is opening a new excavation area in 2025.

Undergraduate students can join her in the field through the Gabii Project field-school and gain experience in excavation (spanning 1000 years of history through to Late Antiquity) along with all aspects of modern archaeology (ceramics, faunal remains, archaeobotany, digital recording). Graduate students interested in Roman archaeology of any period are encouraged to get in touch!

Dr. Cohen has extensive experience with digital data in archaeology, with a particular focus on the integration of 3D and interactive data into archaeological publication and public scholarship You can get a sense of how this might look by exploring the Gabii field report series here and here. She also has research interests in stable isotope analysis (strontium, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen) and is working on new biochemical techniques for tracking human and animal mobility on the landscape.

There are opportunities on her current projects for anyone interested in environmental archaeology, mobility studies, and fine-grained “dirt archaeology” or in digital humanities work such as interactive mapping, network analyses, and 3D modelling. The world of digital archaeology is a very exciting and fast-moving field and there is broad scope for experimenting – knowledge of archaeology or of pre-Roman Italy is not a pre-requisite!

At UNC, Dr. Cohen teaches a range of courses on Roman and Italian archaeology, ancient urbanism, archaeological theory, and mortuary archaeology.

For more information on her publications: Academia.edu

Email: scohATuncDOTedu