Prof. Abby McEwen awarded Inaugural Do Good Campus Fund Grant
The $25,000 grant will focus on providing students opportunities to "understand the process of commissioning and installing public art."
Research and Innovation
Research in art history and archaeology is an interdisciplinary enterprise.
Engaging diverse theoretical frameworks and research methods, our faculty produce innovative scholarship in the form of books and articles, digital projects, museum exhibitions, public lectures and more. Our faculty lead national networks and conferences (including the Archaeological Institute of America and the College Art Association), providing innovative research frameworks and making significant contributions to UMD's research enterprise.
Consolidated ARTH Statement of Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
(Prepared by the DEI Task Force and Approved by GAHA May 2022)
We, the members of the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, affirm that Black lives matter and condemn the ongoing violence of systemic racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other acts of injustice and harm impacting BIPOC and other marginalized people. We recognize and are willing to confront the roles of Art History and Archaeology in elevating and perpetuating Eurocentrism and its attendant systems of oppression including colonization, exploitation of labor, exploitation of the nonhuman world, sexism, classism, and white supremacy inside and outside academia. We recognize that this list is not all-inclusive and is ever evolving, and to it more will be added. Continuing the work begun by graduate students, faculty, and staff in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by police, we commit to building and maintaining a more inclusive, equitable, anti-racist and pluralistic department. As part of this commitment, we recognize the need to confront and redress bias and harm and to challenge monocultural norms and expectations.
In this process, we are inspired by and join the campus-wide efforts to reckon with the University of Maryland’s long record of discrimination, racial injustice, and actions that undermine the very principles of intellectual and moral integrity for which we stand.
We are committed to lifting up and expanding the diversity of our department community and to improving inclusivity and equity in our departmental practices, policies, and culture. In the study and practice of art history and archaeology, diversity and differences are assets. Our department affirms that diversity is expressed in myriad forms, including race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, class, immigration status, body type, language, culture, national origin, religion, age, ability, and political perspective. We are made stronger by inviting in and providing for the diverse voices, approaches and contributions that form the foundation of our twinned disciplines, and which enable our community, as a whole, to thrive. While our disciplines have collaborated in structures of oppression, we wish to affirm the role that we in the humanities and in art history and archaeology can play in helping to envision and make possible a world that is both sustainable and just.
We envision our department as a space of care, safety, and respect for all of our members. All of our voices are valuable and our actions matter. We commit to upholding this vision in our work together.
Research and Service
A Wheel-Made Bovid from the Palace of Nestor
Analysis and reconstruction of a newly discovered wheel-made bovine figure from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos
Author/Lead: Emily Catherine Egan
Dates:
This article examines fragments of a wheel made terracotta bovid of "Mycenaean" type from the so-called Palace of Nestor at Pylos. The first such figure to be identified in Messenia, the bovid is considered in light of its physical features, excavation contexts, and similarities to published comparanda. An original storage context inside the palace at Pylos is proposed, as is a production date in Late Helladic (LH) IIIA2 or LH IIIB. In the latter period, the use of the figure is tentatively explored in light of local iconographic, faunal, and textual evidence, which points collectively to the bovid's ritual, and perhaps explicitly royal, use.
Late Antique and Medieval Landscapes of the Nemea Valley, Southern Greece
This article looks at the Late Roman to Medieval periods at the Greek site of Nemea and in the surrounding valley, proposing that an apparent lack of continuity between these periods is less dramatic than past scholars have suggested; the perceived disco
Author/Lead: Christian ClokeNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Effie Athanassopoulos
Dates:
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This article looks at the Late Roman to Medieval periods at the Greek site of Nemea and in the surrounding valley, proposing that an apparent lack of continuity between these periods is less dramatic than past scholars have suggested; the perceived disconnect is in many cases due to inability to identify artifacts from the centuries spanning the two eras.
From Permanent to Portable: The Ceramic Perpetuation of Painted Landscapes at Knossos in the Final Palatial Period
Consideration of the potential replacement of wall paintings with vase paintings in the Final Palatial Period at Knossos
Author/Lead: Emily Catherine Egan
Dates:
In the early twentieth century, Sir Arthur Evans’s excavations at Knossos brought to light one of the most visually arresting and interpretively complex artistic repertoires of the Bronze Age Aegean. One facet of this complexity, noted by Evans himself, was the frequent repetition of iconographic motifs between the site’s wall-paintings and decorated ceramics. This paper examines this repetition as it pertains to one particular class of material: Palace Style jars with floral decoration. Using evidence of the jars’ physical attributes, as well as their chronology, contexts, and ritual associations, I explore the possibility that these vessels were not designed to reinforce the iconography of contemporary Final Palatial wall-paintings, as Evans once argued, but rather to replace defunct Neopalatial landscape scenes, for which they provided portable alternatives.
A Lost Mycenaean Fresco Fragment Re-Examined
Analysis and reconstruction of a Bronze Age wall painting of a male figure reportedly found at Mycenae but currently lost
Author/Lead: Emily Catherine EganNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Yannis Galanakis
Dates:
This article examines an important wall painting fragment purportedly found in the megaron of the Late Bronze Age palace at Mycenae in 1893. Originally published in Russian in 1897, the fragment depicts a right-facing mid-size male figure with stylistic affinities to processional figures subsequently excavated on Crete and the Greek mainland. Despite its apparent iconographic and historical significance, the painting has received limited attention in Aegean literature. Below, the thrilling yet murky history of the fragment’s discovery is assembled from public and private testimonies by the eminent individuals involved. Possible reconstructions of the fragment are presented, and its iconography is explored in light of current chronologies and known comparanda. It is argued that, while many details of the fragment’s biography remain ambiguous, the potential value of the find as a rare representation of a processing man in a mainland palatial context is substantial.
An Unprecedented Naval Scene from Hall 64 at the “Palace of Nestor” at Pylos
Preliminary presentation and reconstruction of a new wall painting of ships from Hall 64 of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos
Author/Lead: Emily Catherine EganNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Hariclia Brecoulaki, Jack L Davis, Sharon R Stocker
Dates:
This paper explores one of the most exciting and unexpected discoveries in Aegean art in recent years: a Naval Scene from Hall 64 of the Southwestern Building of the Palace of Nestor. The publication of this collection of papers allows us to bring these finds to the attention of a broad audience and to present for the first time high quality images that illustrate the composition. Assembling the many fragments of this work has in itself been a laborious task that has occupied us for nearly a decade, but, even so, the restoration of the Naval Scene constitutes only one part of a much larger project: the reconstruction of the entire iconographic program of Hall 64. Pylos is unique in the Mycenaean world in that it permits such an approach. It is one of a very few places in the prehistoric Aegean where the archaeological record is so complete and the excavation history so well documented.
Marine Iconography at the Palace of Nestor and the Emblematic Use of the Argonaut
Preliminary presentation of the use of the argonaut motif in the wall paintings of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos
Author/Lead: Emily Catherine EganNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Hariclia Brecoulaki
Dates:
In the art of the prehistoric Aegean, the argonaut, often referred to in modern scholarship by its ancient Greek name, ναυτίλος, is a familiar figural motif. Widely represented in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, the argonaut design has been studied extensively on portable objects. Its more limited appearance in fixed wall paintings, however, has been accorded less scholarly attention. In this paper, we begin to redress this lacuna by examining the argonaut motif as it appears in the Late Helladic wall paintings of the Mycenaean Palace of Nestor at Pylos in southwestern Messenia. Using details of the animals’ iconography and contextual associations, we conclude that the Pylian argonauts, long considered to be simple decorative border elements, had a strong emblematic character, communicating the naval prowess, political strength, and perhaps piety of the occupant(s) of the Pylian throne.
Working within the Lines: Artists’ Grids and Painted Floors at the Palace of Nestor
Reinterpretation of mini-grids impressed into selected floor squares in the megaron of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos as artists' grids
Author/Lead: Emily Catherine Egan
Dates:
This paper presents a new interpretation of the inscribed "mini grids" discovered inside squares of the painted floors of the megaron of the Palace of Nestor, Pylos. In 1966, a number of these mini grids were tentatively identified by their excavators as marking places for persons to stand during important state ceremonies. New evidence, however, now suggests that these lines were artists' grids. These orthogonal guidelines, well-known from depictions of textiles in Minoan wall painting, are the first of their kind to be identified on a Bronze Age Greek floor and raise questions about how and why they were employed. This article addresses these questions, and demonstrates how observations about the mini grids help to reinterpret the unusual diagonal in the Throne Room's floor design, long presumed to be a "mistake," as an intentional visual stimulus.
The Brown University Petra Archaeological Project: Landscape Archaeology in the Northern Hinterland of Petra, Jordan.
A summary of the Brown University Petra Archaeological Project's diachronic archaeological survey of the northern hinterland of Petra, Jordan.
Author/Lead: Christian ClokeNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Alex R. Knodell, Susan E. Alcock, Christopher A. Tuttle, Tali Erickson-Gini, Cecelia Feldman, Gary O. Rollefson, Micaela Sinibaldi, Thomas M. Urban, and Clive Vella
Dates:
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In three field seasons, between 2010 and 2012, the Brown University Petra Archaeological Project (BUPAP) conducted a diachronic archaeological survey of the northern hinterland of Petra, Jordan. While regional reconnaissance has a long history in Jordan, it has rarely been conducted with the “intensive” methodologies today characteristic of projects elsewhere, most proximately in the Mediterranean. Such an approach is ideally suited for the territory north of Petra, the setting for a wide-ranging variety of human activity from the Lower Paleolithic to the present. The survey component of BUPAP, the Petra Area and Wadi Silaysil Survey (or PAWS), covered some 1,000 ha (10 km2), most of which was traversed by closely spaced (10 m) fieldwalking in 1,321 individual survey units. In the course of this work, PAWS recorded patterns in the distribution of tens of thousands of artifacts. In addition, more than 1,000 individual archaeological features were identified and documented; geophysical survey was conducted in several areas; and test excavations were carried out in 10 locations of particular interest. This article provides an overview of the PAWS survey and related activity—discussing motivations, methods, and results—and touches on key issues concerning the long-term human history of the study area. This article is also available as open access on AJA Online. Additional figures and an appendix appear under this article’s abstract on AJA Online.
Coin Collecting at Cambridge: The Fitzwilliam Museum Department of Coins and Medals
This article looks at the history of the University of Cambridge's ancient coin collection.
Author/Lead: Christian Cloke
Dates:
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This article looks at the history of the University of Cambridge's ancient coin collection.
Review of The Late Roman Gold and Silver Coins from the Hoxne Treasure, by P. S. W. Guest
This is a review of a publication of a late Roman coin hoard.
Author/Lead: Christian Cloke
Dates:
This is a review of a publication of a late Roman coin hoard.