Research Activities & Opportunities

Çatalhöyük, Turkey

Professor Ruth Tringham (Anthropology)

The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük was first discovered in the late 1950s and excavated by James Mellaart between 1961 and 1965. The site rapidly gained international fame due to the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and other art that was uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Professor Ian Hodder of Stanford University, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people that inhabited the site.

Contact professor Ruth Tringham for more information.

 The Dhiban Excavation and Development Project, (DEDP hereafter), investigates how a Near Eastern agro-pastoral community managed the economic and political pressures of imperial rule and expanding global trade in a resource scarce, semi-arid environment.  Previous archaeological and historical investigations reveal that Dhiban has witnessed Mesopotamian, European, and Egyptian imperial interventions over the last three millennia.  Yet it remains unclear how, and to what extent, the town’s political and economic organization changed in response to each of these distinct interventions.  The DEDP has developed an interdisciplinary research design combining excavation, survey, ethnography, geology, and artifact analyses to measure these local responses to empire and global trade.  Benjamin Porter is a co-director of the DEDP.  Annual two-month seasons are scheduled during the summer recess.  Emphasis is placed on training graduate students in archaeological field research methods.

Contact professor Benjamin Porter for more information.

Mycenae, Greece: Petsas House

Professor Kim Shelton (Classics)

The Late Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae, most commonly recognized as the home of the legendary king Agamemnon, leader of the Greek contingent in the Trojan War, occupies a limestone hill nestled between two low mountains at the northern end of the plain of Argos. The palatial center and its settlement beyond the acropolis reached its height in the 14th-13th centuries BCE. The Petsas House is a building complex in the settlement of Mycenae that was destroyed by earthquake and fire in the late 14th century BCE (LH IIIA 2). It consists of two parallel rows of rooms situated along a terraced slope that originally supported a frescoed upper storey for domestic use . Most of the ground floor was used for the industrial production and storage of pottery. Excavation by the Archaeological Society of Athens was instigated in 1950/51 by Ioannis Papadimitriou and Photios Petsas, and renewed in 2000 by Kim Shelton as Field Director.

Visit the Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology for more information.

Nemea, Greece

Professor Kim Shelton (Classics)

Ancient Nemea, site of the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Zeus, lies in an upland valley in the modern Greek province of the Korinthia, and in the eastern foothills of the Arkadian mountains. In 1973 the University of California at Berkeley, under the aegis of the American School of Classical Studies and the direction of Stephen G. Miller, began excavations at Nemea with extensive large-scale work from 1974-1983 and 1997-2001. New excavations by the Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology, under its director Kim Shelton, begin in 2010 and will investigate the site's chronology in addition to the primary focus on the early history and prehistory of the sanctuary and the area surrounding it. Reconstruction, conservation and publication research are on-going elements of the project every year.

Visit the Nemea Center for Classical Archaeologyfor more information.

Sardis, Turkey

Professor Nicholas Cahill (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

The Archaeological Exploration of Sardis is an interdisciplinary program of excavation and research focused on the site of ancient Sardis, some 60 miles east of Izmir in Turkey. Sardis lies in the territory of ancient Lydia, at the foot of the Tmolus Mountains and overlooking the Hermus River plain, where evidence has been found of human activity as early as the Palaeolithic period (ca. 50,000 B.C.). Recent excavations have focused on the Archaic era, particularly the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., when Sardis was the capital of the Lydian empire and at the height of its power, and on the Late Roman era, when the city flourished anew. 

The Archaeological Exploration of Sardis is jointly sponsored by the Harvard University Art Museums and Cornell University. Excavation and research take place in the summer, once the Turkish Ministry of Culture has reviewed the proposed plan of activity and granted approval. The field staff consists predominantly of Americans and Turks. It includes archaeologists, art historians, architects, conservators, numismatists, epigraphers, object illustrators, photographers, anthropologists, and other scientists. From 1977-2007, the field director was Crawford H. Greenewalt, Jr., professor of classical archaeology at UC Berkeley. In 2008 a distinguished AHMA alumnus and longtime veteran of the Sardis excavations, Professor Nicholas Cahill of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, succeeded him in this role.

Contact professor Nicholas Cahil for more information.