Academic Faculty
Laurel Bestock
Associate Professor of Archaeology and the Ancient World and Egyptology and Assyriology
[email protected]
401-863-6291
Rhode Island Hall, Room 105
Laurel Bestock's research focuses on the material culture of the Nile Valley. She is particularly interested in kingship, monumentality, the contexts and audiences for art and architecture, and cultural interactions.
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Tyler Franconi
Assistant Professor of Archaeology and the Ancient World and Classics
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Archaeology and the Ancient World
[email protected]
401-863-2306
Rhode Island Hall, Room 210
Tyler Franconi is a Roman archaeologist whose research focuses on the economic and environmental history of the Roman Empire, especially in Western Europe. He co-directs the Upper Sabina Tiberina Project in central Italy, and is a specialist in Roman small finds and ceramics.
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Yannis Hamilakis
Joukowsky Family Professor of Archaeology and Professor of Modern Greek Studies
[email protected]
401-863-6231
Rhode Island Hall, Room 007
Yannis Hamilakis's main research and teaching interests are the socio-politics of the past, the body and bodily senses, the archaeology of eating and drinking, the ontology and materiality of photography, archaeology and nationalism, archaeological ethnography, and critical pedagogy in archaeology. His main geographical research focus has been Greece and the Aegean, and he co-directs the Koutroulou Magoula Archaeology and Archaeological Ethnography Project.
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Candace Rice
Assistant Professor of Archaeology and Classics
[email protected]
401-863-3710
Rhode Island Hall, Room 209
Candace Rice's research focuses on Mediterranean maritime trade and economic development during the Roman period. She is particularly interested in exploring what the archaeological record reveals about the ways in which connectivity changed the nature of the Roman economy through enhanced supra-regional integration and specialized local economic development.
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Felipe Rojas
Associate Professor of Archaeology and Assyriology
Director of Graduate Studies, Archaeology and the Ancient World
[email protected]
401-863-6292
Rhode Island Hall, Room 101
Felipe Rojas specializes in the Eastern Mediterranean during the classical period. He has conducted fieldwork at different sites in Anatolia and the Levant, including Sardis and Aphrodisias. He currently directs the Brown University Labraunda Project and is the associate director of the Notion Archaeological Survey, both of which explore major sites in ancient western Turkey, and the Brown University Petra Terraces Archaeological Project, in Petra, Jordan.
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Andrew Scherer
Director, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World
Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology
[email protected]
401-863-7059
Giddings House, Room 215
Rhode Island Hall, Room 102
Andrew Scherer is an anthropological archaeologist and biological anthropologist with a geographic focus in Mesoamerica (Maya). He co-directs an interdisciplinary archaeological research project that is exploring Classic Maya polities along the Usumacinta River in Mexico.
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Peter van Dommelen
Joukowsky Family Professor in Archaeology
Professor of Anthropology and Italian Studies
[email protected]
401-863-2008
Rhode Island Hall, Room 009
Peter van Dommelen is a Mediterranean archaeologist, whose research and teaching revolve around the rural Mediterranean past and present. The regional focus of his work lies in the western Mediterranean, where he carries out long-term fieldwork on the island of Sardinia.
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Parker VanValkenburgh
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology
Interim Director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
[email protected]
401-863-6532
Giddings House
Parker VanValkenburgh's research and publications employ archaeological methods to address anthropological research questions, with a particular focus on the long-term impacts of colonialism and imperialism on Indigenous people and environments in the Peruvian Andes
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Postdoctoral Fellows
Kathleen Forste
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Archaeology and the Ancient World
[email protected]
401-863-3188
Rhode Island Hall, Room 212
Kathleen Forste studies ancient agricultural economies and human-plant relationships through the analysis of archaeobotanical remains and historical sources. Her primary interests are in the Byzantine, Early Islamic, and Crusader periods in the Levant, and the Islamic era in Iberia.
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Robyn Price
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Archaeology and the Ancient World
[email protected]
401-863-3188
Rhode Island Hall, Room 208
Robyn Price studies ancient sensory experience and its ties to inequitable power dynamics in the past, with a focus on the experience of scent in New Kingdom Egypt (1550–1050 BCE). Her research interests include sensory archaeology; Egyptian archaeology; GIS, 3D-imaging, RTI and photogrammetry; oils, incense, and unguents; museums; and ethnoarchaeology.
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Zachary Silvia
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Archaeology and the Ancient World
[email protected]
401-863-3188
Rhode Island Hall, Room 207
Zach Silvia is an archaeologist focused on the impact of colonialism on indigenous rural Bactrian and Sogdian populations in Hellenistic Asia (ca. late 4th-1st c. BCE). His research uses a combination of field-based approaches to documenting ancient rural domestic architecture and the application of satellite remote sensing methods.