Research Projects

Three carved orthostat reliefs. Tell Halaf (Syria). Basalt. 10th-9th c. BCE. Aleppo Museum, Syria. Photograph by Marian Feldman — The Role of Style in the Study of Cross-Cultural Interactions

Dedication to Heracles Callinicus. Mt. Bisotun, Kermanšah province (Iran). 148 BC. — Craftsmen and Worldviews in Dialogue
Perspectives from Seleucid-Parthian Iran

Details of two Attic Geometric vases depicting armed men. 8th c. BCE. (Left) New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 34.11.2. Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Right) British Museum GR 1927,0411.1. Photograph © The Trustees of the British Museum. Bottom: Harbor of Kyme (Euboea, Greece). Photograph Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jetty_harbour_Kymi_Euboea_Greece.jpg — Rough Mountains and Unbroken Shores
Continuity, Standardization and Amalgamation in the Ceramic Record of the Iron Age Mediterranean

Reflectorless total station measurements of the stone construction work inside the Tiryns tholos tomb, Argolid (Greece). Photo: A. Brysbaert. — Crafting as Making, Thinking and Being (Together)

One of a pair of silver bracelets with lion heads finials from a female tomb at Abdera (Greece). First half of 5th century BCE. Museum of Abdera (inv. MA 5426a,b). © Hellenic Ministry of Culture (Law 3028/2002). Courtesy Ephorate of Antiquities of Xanthi. Photo Helena Dominguez del Triunfo — Achaemenid Elements in the Material Culture and Art of the Northern Aegean

Gilded and painted hippopotamus ivory furniture support in the form of a female sphinx. Probably Acemhoyuk (Turkey). Middle Bronze Age, 18th century BCE. Height 12.5 cm; width 9.9 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of George D. Pratt, 1932 32.161.47. — Egyptianizing Female Sphinxes in the Mediterranean and Beyond during the Middle Bronze Age

Pithos fragment bearing a cylinder-seal frieze in relief depicting a chariot-hunting scene. Maa-Palaeokastro (Cyprus). Late Cypriot IIC/Late Cypriot IIIA period (end of 13th/early 12th centuries BCE).
Photograph by Artemis Georgiou, reproduced by permission of the Director of the Department of Antiquities,Cyprus. — Beyond First Impressions
The Cylinder-Seal Impressed Pithoi of Late Bronze Age Cyprus: Analysis of the Iconography, Function and Regional Distribution

Visualization of a potential Late Bronze Age network with nodes representing sites with identifiable imports to/from Crete and mainland Greece during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1450-1200 BCE). The edges indicate the potential for interaction between all nodes in the network based on a 550 km distance threshold. Image by Paula Gheorghiade and Henry Price. — Entangled Objects and Regional Interaction
A Network Approach to Mycenaeanization on Crete

Hollow-cast gold figure of a deer. Oxus Treasure. Achaemenid period, c. 550 - c. 330 BCE). British Museum 123912. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. — Achaemenid and Scythian Symbiosis in Central Asia
The Material Evidence

Iron artifacts. Tsaghkahovit (Armenia). 7th-4th c. BCE. Courtesy of Project ArAGATS. — Empires of Iron
Forging Communities in War and Peace

Fragmentary faience oinochoe. Ptolemaic Egypt. 243-222 BCE. 22.2 x 14 cm. Getty Villa, 96.AI.58. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program. — Gendered Entanglements and Power Dynamics in the Hellenistic World

Corinthian capital from the palace. Ai Khanum (Afghanistan). © DAFA. — Seleucid Power and its Visual Identity

Bowl with blue paste contents excavated at Persepolis (Iran) in 1931. Oriental Institute Museum, Chicago, Inv. No. A 19384. Photo Alex Nagel, Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. — Pots and People
Ceramic Containers and Craftsmen between the Mediterranean and Central Asia

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/251362 Greek, Corinthian, Terracotta conical lekythos (vase for oil), ca. 700 BCE, Terracotta, H. 3 5/8 in. (9.2 cm) diameter 6 7/16 in. (16.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Rogers Fund, 1923 (23.160.18)diameter 6 7/16 in. (16.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Rogers Fund, 1923 (23.160.18) — Mediterranean Monster Cultures in the Early 1st Millennium BCE
The Marvelous Griffin Cauldrons

Wall painting depicting Hun ruler dressed in the guise of an Iranian counterpart. Balalyk Tepe (Uzbekistan). 5th-6th c. CE. Google images, after L.I. Al’baum, Balalyk-Tepe (Tashkent 1960). — The Civilizing Barbarians
Nomadic Imperial Networks and Trans-Eurasian Circulation in Late Antiquity

Mitannian cylinder seal (bottom), its modern impression (top left) and drawing (top right). Tomb 3, Mitopolis, Achaea (Greece). Late Helladic IIIA1 (ca. 1400 BCE). Sintered Quartz. Height 2.2 cm; diameter 1.02 cm. Archaeological Museum of Patras. CMS VS3 276. — The Mitannian Cylinder Seals from Cyprus and the Aegean Revisited

The Gateway of All Lands showing clear influences from the artistic and architectural traditions of Assyria, Greece, Egypt, and Media. Persepolis (Iran). c. 480 BCE. Photograph by El-Len, taken on May 3, 2008. https://www.flickr.com/photos/27784269@N06/sets/72157605724793144/ — Was Achaemenid Art an 'International Style'?

Sawing traces on an ivory plate. Well III, Palaepaphos/Evreti (Cyprus). — Embodied Knowledge, Practice and Materiality
A Theoretical Approach to Eastern Mediterranean Craft Networks

Wine press at Tell el-Burak (Lebanon). Late Iron Age (6th/5th c. BCE). — Tell el-Burak
New Light on the Economy of Phoenician Sidon

Trilingual inscription of the Letoon of Xanthos, Lycia, detail of Greek text. Now in the Fethiye Museum (Fethiye, Turkey). Photo courtesy of Leon Battista Borsano. — Code-Switching and Style Interference in First Millennium BCE Anatolian Monumental Epigraphy

A panel from the painted Nikomedia frieze showing co-emperors Diocletian and Maximian embracing. Nikomedia (Turkey). 3rd c. CE. — Made Locally, Read Globally?
The Origins of Tetrarchic Art in the Light of Newly Discovered Nikomedia Reliefs

Achaemenid waterwork of Band-e Dokhtar to the northwest of Persepolis. Photograph by S. A. Shobairi. — Irrigation and Hydraulic Structures in the Near East during the 1st Millennium BCE
Intercultural Approaches

Ceramic cup. Beth Shemesh (Israel). © Shlomo Bunimovitz & Zvi Lederman, Tel Beth-Shemesh excavation project. — Functions and Meanings of Early Aegean Pottery in the Eastern Mediterranean

Bronze sculptural group of the ‘Horse and Jockey,’ one of two ancient bronze sculptures found in a fragmentary condition at the sea off Cape Artemission (Greece). National Archaeological Museum, Athens. © Katerina Velentza. — The Maritime Transport of Sculptures in the Ancient Mediterranean

The Roman Bath by Emmanuel Oberhausen. End of 19th c. CE. — The Spatial Articulation of the Bath as a Means of Cultural Adaptation

This collaborative project between the Johns Hopkins University and the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens was supported by the Getty Foundation through its Connecting Art Histories initiative in 2017-2020. Drs. Marian Feldman (JHU) and Antigoni Zournatzi (NHRF) served as co-PIs for the project.

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