Welcome back to the ARF community! I would like to introduce myself as the new director of ARF. But before I do that, on behalf of our whole community, I would like to thank Christine Hastorf for her unparalleled leadership and generous contributions as ARF director. I know that we all wish her a fantastic and well-deserved retirement yet will be thrilled to continue to see her around the building. I look forward to my new role here at ARF and to supporting the community as we develop in many directions into the future.
We have all heard the cliché, “I always wanted to be an archaeologist,” well, that was absolutely true for me. At nine years old I was able to dig for the first time as a volunteer with National Park Service archaeologists at Great Falls National Park nearby where I grew up in Northern Virginia. While an undergraduate at the UT Austin, rescue excavation became my afterschool job. A summer with Archaeology in Annapolis (UMD) ignited my interest in pottery, of all periods, while a trip to the Mediterranean pulled me in that direction geographically and culturally. I completed my PhD in Classical Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, where I had the opportunity to work in Greece at a number of sites. While living in Greece as a fulltime research archaeologist, centered at the Bronze Age site of Mycenae for the Archaeological Society of Athens, I developed my excavation at Petsas House, a residence and ceramic workshop dating to the 14th century BCE.
I came to Berkeley in 2005, to direct the newly formed Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology, a research center in the Department of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, organized around the archaeological project begun in the 1970s at the Sanctuary of Zeus in Ancient Nemea (https://nemeacenter.berkeley.edu/). I also became an ARF affiliate and have profited personally and professionally from the research funding, intellectual community, and fantastic mentorship I found here. It is my honor to be able to pay some of that back as director.
As a specialist in ceramics and the political economy of the prehistoric Aegean, I research and publish on household and workshop demographics and the relationship of pottery production at the site to the regional and international market economy. My research on ancient Greek ritual and religion has resulted in publications on prehistoric figurines, the Cult Center at Mycenae, and the prehistory and early history of the Nemean hero shrine. I am particularly proud that I have involved many students in my research: through the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP) in the Nemea Center, as part of a summer field school – now at three sites in Greece, and with material culture, practice, and research topics for graduate students in Anthropology, MELC, Classical Archaeology, and AHMA.
I look forward to advocating for and supporting our community.