I am a Dutch Mediterranean archaeologist (PhD from Leiden University). Prior to coming to Brown University, I had been working as a postdoctoral researcher at the UChicago Classics Department on the project: ‘The materiality of ancient Mediterranean myth’. During this project I analyzed the role of objects in the making and memory of myth in the Mediterranean, and demonstrated how objects, such as the artistic development of the Trojan horse or the archaeological remains of the Hut of Romulus, were and still are able to make stories into history and play a role in politics and identity formation.
My Ph.D. dissertation focused on the experience and use of Egyptian style and objects in the domestic contexts of Roman Pompeii. Through the use of perception, network, and materiality theories, the main goal was to investigate how style was experienced and how Egyptian objects could be integrated in and affect Roman material culture. On a larger scale the research also examined object and stylistic categorization in archaeological practice.
My other specialization includes Crusader archaeology of the Near East, especially spatial analysis of Crusader castles in 1100-1300 AD Levant.
Furthermore, I’m involved in fieldwork in Italy, excavating two pre-Roman sanctuaries in the region of Molise and on the island of Cyprus, on the excavation of a Chalcolithic settlement in the Paphos area and I’m editor of a Dutch magazine on contemporary art and literature and the history of Rome called Roma Aeterna.
Selection of publications:
Mol, E.M, (PhD-dissertation), Egypt in Material and Mind, Re-evaluating cultural style and perception in Roman archaeology through the study of Egyptian-related objects in Pompeian houses, Leiden University.
Mol, E.M., 2011, Hidden Complexities of the Frankish castle, Social aspects of space in the configurational architecture of Frankish castles in the Holy Land, 1099-1291, Leiden, Leiden University Press.
Mol, E.M., 2017, The power of archaeological reconstructions: The Iseum Campense and the image of Egypt in Rome at the end of the 19th century, in M.J. Versluys, K. Bülow Klausen and G. Capriotta Vitozzi (eds.), Temple - monument – lieu de memoire, The Iseum Campense from the Roman Empire to the Modern Age: historical, archaeological, and historiographical perspectives, Rome, Edizioni Quasar.
Mol, E.M, 2017, Object ontology and cultural taxonomies. Examining the agency of style, material and objects in classification through Egyptian material culture in Rome, in A. van Oyen and M. Pitts (eds.), Materializing Roman Histories, Beyond Instrumentalism and Representation, Oxbow, Oxford University Press.
Mol, E.M., 2015, Romanising Oriental cults? A cognitive approach to alterity and religious experience in the Roman cults of Isis, in A. Nikolowska and S. Müskens (eds.), Romanising Oriental Gods? Religious transformations in the Balkan provinces in the Roman period, new finds and novel perspectives, Skopje: Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 89-111.
Mol, E.M., and M.J., Versluys, 2014, Material culture and imagined communities in the Roman world: group dynamics and the cults of Isis, in J. Rüpke (ed.), A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World, Oxford, Blackwell.
Mol, E.M., 2013, The Perception of Egypt in Networks of Being and Becoming: A Thing Theory Approach to Egyptianising Objects in Roman Domestic Contexts, TRAC Proceedings 2012, Oxbow Publishers, 117-132.