The "Adventuring" of Katharine Menke Keeling Woolley

Excellent post from the Penn Museum Blog.

  Katharine helping Leonard record measurements of drain pipes at Ur.

By: Kyra Kaercher

Ur Project February 2016

Life on a dig is always exciting, and particularly when it is the life of a woman on a dig in the 1920s. Many women travelers went to the East to escape the restrictive roles that European society had assigned to them. Women like Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), who helped to write the Iraqi antiquities law of 1924, Jane Dieulafoy (1851-1916), who excavated at Susa in Iran, or Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) who traveled throughout North Africa, turned to the East and a life of adventure. Katharine Menke Keeling Woolley (1888-1945) was no different. Raised in Germany and educated at Oxford, she became a nurse during WWI where she met and married her first husband, Colonel Bertram Keeling. He worked as a surveyor in Egypt and they moved to Cairo. Not long after their marriage, he committed suicide on the Giza Plateau, in a supposed fit of temporary insanity (Henrietta McCall Lecture 2012). Multiple theories have been put forth as to the reason for this insanity; one being that Katharine had Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, and would not be able to have children (Henrietta McCall Lecture 2012).

Christiane Desroches Nobelcourt Saved Egyptian Antiquities from Aswan Flooding

Obituary from the telegraph.co.uk:
6:21PM BST 01 Jul 2011

Christiane Desroches Noblecourt

Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, who died on June 23 [2011] aged 97, was a French Egyptologist and played a critical role in one of archaeology's most breathtaking feats – the wholesale relocation of many spectacular ancient temples due to be flooded by the Aswan High Dam.

The project to rescue the Nubian sites got under way in 1959, after the governments of Egypt and Sudan appealed for international help in moving them away from the vast reservoir that was to be created by the dam. Despite the Cold War tensions of the day, 50 nations responded.

Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, a passionate Egyptologist who had overcome the sexual discrimination of the pre-war era to establish herself as a leading expert on the treasures of the pharaohs, had already identified 32 sites that were threatened by the rising waters.

Having alerted Nasser and his government to the crisis, she promised to liaise with Unesco, based in Paris, to coordinate the uniquely ambitious rescue operation. Working with the newly appointed Unesco director, René Maheu, and the Egyptian Minister for Culture, Sarwat Okacha, Christiane Desroches Noblecourt began a race against time to save as much as possible before the temples and their secrets were inundated for ever deep beneath the Aswan reservoir.

Their greatest concern was Abu Simbel, the monument erected by Rameses the Great around 1250BC to glorify himself and his queen, Nefertari. The complex, covered in magnificent carvings, was guarded by four 20-metre high statues of Rameses sculpted directly into a mountainside. Attempting to shift it seemed impossible.

There were other problems, too. The temple had been located specifically so that, twice a year, the rays of the sun would penetrate its depths and illuminate statues of the gods Amun-Ra and the falcon-headed Ra-Horakhty, while leaving the god of the underworld, Ptah, shrouded in darkness.

Some suggested building a barrage around the site, but this was abandoned when it became clear that, despite lying 180 miles south of Aswan, the temple would be submerged beneath 60 metres of water following the dam's construction.

The only option was to saw it into pieces, and rebuild it, like a vast Lego set. So, after assembling huge teams of workers in the sparsely populated region, an eight-year effort began to slice 1,042 blocks, some weighing 20 tonnes, from the mountainside and reassemble them 90 metres higher on an artificially created mound. Today, Abu Simbel remains one of Egypt's most celebrated sites, though the sun's rays now strike Amun-Ra a day later than they used to.

Other sites proved equally challenging. The temple of Kalabsha features several immaculate relief carvings and was the second-largest site to be relocated. The German team in charge of saving it dismantled it stone by stone, and moved them almost 30 miles, near to Aswan.

On the island of Philae, 104 metres above sea level and home to a vast archaeological complex, the new dam was having a different, if equally destructive, effect. The problem was that the island had been submerged, by and large safely, by an earlier dam. But the Aswan High dam was to lower the waters at Philae, partially revealing the island's marvels. It was forecast that fluctuations in the reservoir between 102 and 110 metres above sea level would create a tidal effect that would soon sweep the ancient buildings away.

To save them, a ring of steel was built around the island, with the remaining water pumped out. After cleaning, each structure was dismantled into tens of thousands of bricks, and relocated on higher ground.

Perhaps the trickiest rescue of all, however, was that overseen by the French themselves at Amada, where three pharaohs, including Amenhotep II, had created one of Egypt's most richly-decorated sites – a temple covered with brightly-coloured, painted reliefs. It was evident to Christiane Desroches Noblecourt that block-by-block dismantling that had been successful at other sites would destroy the reliefs at Amada.

Instead the temple was encased in a superstructure and hewn from the desert floor in its entirety. This vast relic was then placed on three railway lines, and rolled gently away to safety, two miles distant, over a period of six months. Such was the slowness of its progress that, as the temple inched forward, the rails left behind were lifted up and placed in front of it again.

Eventually, the principal treasures of the region were saved. For Christiane Desroches Noblecourt it was a personal triumph. For Egypt it was an archaeological necessity. For Unesco, however, the mammoth project had sown the idea that certain monuments were not the property of individual countries, but of humanity itself, as "world heritage" sites. Four years after the Nubian temples were saved, the UN introduced a convention protecting such sites. Today 187 countries have ratified it, with 35 campaigns currently under way to save monuments considered "endangered".

Christiane Desroches was born on November 17 1913 in Paris, to intellectual parents who encouraged her to learn and widen her horizons. Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922 and, as a child, Christiane was fascinated by the treasures of the pharaohs. Her grandfather often took her to the obelisk at Place de la Concorde to inspect the hieroglyphs inscribed upon it.

After she left the lycée, her father wanted Christiane to study 18th-century drawings but, she said, "that bored me stiff". So instead he took her to see the director of the Louvre, who recommended a course in hieroglyphics run by a Father Drioton. Signing up to the course, as well as for lessons in archaeology and philology, Christiane Desroches completed a thesis at the Ecole du Louvre, and was then appointed to the department of Egyptian antiquities at the museum.

From there she left for the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo (IFAO) where, as a woman in her mid-20s, she was unwelcome. "I had encountered a certain amount of misogyny at the Louvre," she said later. "But nothing like at the IFAO. The men there didn't want to share the library or even the dining room with me; they said I would collapse and die in the field. The director of the school then dispatched me to a particularly tough site, at Edfou, south of Luxor." In 1938 she became the first Frenchwoman to lead a dig.

But war soon intervened, and Christiane Desroches returned to Paris. There she was approached by Jean Cassou, former director of the Museum of Modern Art, who asked her cryptically "if I listened to the radio". This she took to be a reference to the BBC, and soon she joined Cassou in the Resistance – performing mundane, but potentially fatal, courier missions, as well as hiding those on the run.

In December 1940 she was arrested, at which point she claimed to have shouted at her interrogators for putting their boots on the table while questioning her. She was released, and in 1942 married a childhood friend, with whom four years later she had a son.

After the war Christiane Desroches Noblecourt's settled family life disinclined her to return to the field, but following Nasser's coup in 1952 a great deal of Egypt's archaeological service was thrown into chaos. In 1954 she was asked to return by the French culture ministry and set up the Centre for Documentation of Scientific Research in Cairo, training a new generation of Egyptian archaeologists.

"We made them learn about and understand the monuments," she said. "We concentrated on the Nubian temples as I learned that they were about to be submerged under the waters of the Aswan dam that was still then at the planning stage."

But just as Christiane Desroches Noblecourt realised the gravity of the situation, Nasser privatised the Suez Canal, prompting the invasion by Israeli, French and British forces. She was forced to evacuate as relations between Egypt and France collapsed. Such was her stature, however, that soon she was sent a telegram inviting her to return – one of the few Westerners tolerated after the crisis.

By 1959 the dam project was well under way, and Sarwat Okacha approached Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, complaining that Egypt would be forced to sell the ancient temples to foreign buyers. Having proposed that they organise a rescue plan through Unesco, she promised help in the name of France.

On her return to Paris, however, she discovered that this promise was most unwelcome. At the Elysée palace, she was confronted by President Charles de Gaulle, famous for his quick temper. "How dare you engage France in this without the authorisation of my government?" he shouted at her.

After reflecting for a moment, she replied: "And you, did you demand the authorisation of Pétain's government on June 18 1940? No! You judged the circumstances required you to take a stand. Well, that's what I've done." Weeks later she had the funding she needed.

She was reunited with de Gaulle eight years later, when the Egyptian government, partly as a gesture of thanks for Christiane Desroches Noblecourt's efforts, allowed the treasures of Tutankhamen to be exhibited in Paris. It was the first time a substantial number of pieces of the treasure had been displayed in Europe. "The English weren't pleased," she recalled. "They had discovered the treasure in 1922, and then a French woman had the temerity to exhibit it in her country. But they had forgotten that England had refused to help save the Nubian temples."

Christiane Desroches Noblecourt was allotted 20 minutes to guide de Gaulle around the exhibition. But he peppered her with questions and after that time they were still only in the second room, at which point he instructed his principal secretary to allot another hour to the visit. Of particular interest, apparently, was the ancient symbolism of the scarab, or dung beetle.

In later life Christiane Desroches Noblecourt lived in a richly-decorated apartment in Paris. But she never added an Egyptian object to the furnishings: "Everybody would think I'd stolen it from some tomb." When not making field trips, she worked on one of the host of books that she wrote on ancient Egypt, publishing well into her 90s. The Fabulous Heritage of Egypt was a bestseller as recently as 2005.

A tiny, driven woman, Christiane Desroches Noblecourt received many awards, and was appointed Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur in 2005. Her husband predeceased her.

Women in Archaeology: Eliat Mazar

Sep 25, 2008 10:18 Updated Sep 25, 2008 10:19 Archeology: Dr. Eilat Mazar: The Bible as blueprint By ETGAR LEFKOVITS She has been at the forefront of a series of back-to-back Jerusalem archeological finds, including what she believes is the biblical palace of King David, a discovery which led her to international prominence. She has also been at the epicenter of a public campaign against Islamic destruction of antiquities on the Temple Mount, and has repeatedly and unflinchingly criticized - and clashed with - the Israel Antiquities Authority for overlooking and turning a blind eye to the past desecration of Judaism's holiest site, which has earned her the reputation of something of a black sheep in the local archeological world. Meet Dr. Eilat Mazar. The no-nonsense 51-year-old mother of four, a strongly secular Zionist who comes from a venerated family of archeologists - the most prominent of whom was her grandfather, the pioneering Dr. Benjamin Mazar, who carried out the excavations around the Western Wall area after the 1967 war - has emerged as one of the country's leading archeologists. Over the last several years, her ongoing dig in the City of David just outside the walls of the Old City has proven to be a treasure trove. In addition to the potential biblical palace - which has been dubbed as the find of the century by some and dismissed by others in the bitterly competitive local archeological community - Mazar has discovered two seal impressions belonging to ministers of King Zedekiah which date back 2,600 years, as well as the remnants of a wall from the time of Nehemiah. Mazar, who is both revered and reviled by some of her colleagues for being a "biblical archeologist," says that the Bible is unquestionably the most important historical source for her work, since it contains a "genuine historical account of the past." "I work with the Bible in one hand and the tools of excavation in the other," she says. "The Bible is the most important historical source." Despite her early experience with archeology as a teenager under her family's tutelage, Mazar didn't decide to become an archeologist until after her army service, when she enrolled in courses at the Hebrew University, where she would eventually earn her Ph.D. She calls her university years - during which she had her first child - an "immense delight," a time when she and her fellow students would run to any place in the country where an excavation, no matter how modest, was under way. Balancing a career with family has not been easy. Mazar married right out of the army, had a child and then divorced. Later she found new love, archeologist Yair Shoham, and the couple had three children. Tragically, Shoham died suddenly of a heart attack in 1997 at 44. Mazar says her family is a critical component of her work. "My family gives me the strength to do what I do," she says. "I see my work as a complete life." Three decades after the thrill of her university years, the excitement is still palpable within - and radiates from - Mazar as she continually uncovers the past. "It's nice to touch your history," she concludes.

Women in Archaeology: Maggie Spivey

From the Harvard University Gazette Online:

Maggie Spivey: Archaeologist, comedian, princess
By Emily T. Simon
June 5, 2008
FAS Communications

Walk past Maggie Spivey in the Yard or on the streets of Cambridge, and you might find her with head down, eyes glued to the ground. She’s not being anti-social, or lamenting a flubbed grade — this dynamic archaeology concentrator just knows that often the most fascinating stories can be found underfoot.

Spivey, who hails from the small town of Hephzibah, Ga., didn’t arrive at Harvard with plans to study archaeology. But when she sat down with the “Courses of Instruction” book, highlighter at the ready, it soon became clear where her interests lay.

After she’d taken a whirl through the book, Spivey recalls, “Archaeology and social anthropology had the most items highlighted. So I figured that was a pretty good indication of where I should start.”

It proved to be a good strategy. Four years later, Spivey is graduating with a degree in archaeology and a wealth of fieldwork experience, including a dig in the Yard this fall to find remains of Harvard’s Indian College.

Spivey’s fascination with the past — in particular the history American Indian culture — stems in part from her own unique family background. She is a member of the Pee Dee Indian Nation, a tribe that originated in the southeastern United States. The documented history of the Pee Dee Nation dates back to the Revolutionary War era, when six Pee Dee men served in the company of Continental Army Lt. Col. Francis Marion, also known as the “Swamp Fox.”

The Pee Dee Nation had a reservation in South Carolina until the 1840s, when they were run off the land by a rival tribe.

“The federal government offered no help,” Spivey explains, “so a lot of the tribe members moved into cities and began mixing with the people of European descent who lived there.”

Today, descendants of the original Pee Dee tribe can be found primarily in South Carolina as well as mid- and southern Georgia. Spivey says she has been proud to bring their heritage a bit farther north, to Harvard.

For the past six years, Spivey has served as the princess for the Pee Dee Nation. Her role is primarily ambassadorial: She represents the tribe at cultural events in the area, and helps to raise awareness of Pee Dee culture. At Harvard she has extended her responsibilities to support Native American culture more broadly. Spivey is actively involved with Native Americans at Harvard College, and has participated in the annual Harvard Powwow. She also serves on the Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program to encourage Native American high school students to apply to Harvard. In addition, Spivey has worked at the Peabody Museum as a research assistant, providing support for cataloging, tours, and visiting scholars.

In between her study and work responsibilities, Spivey still finds time to cut loose with the Immediate Gratification Players (IGP), an undergraduate improv comedy troupe.

“I really like making people laugh,” says Spivey. “It just makes me happy. If I can brighten someone’s day, I will always try to.”

Along with her fellow IGPers, Spivey acts in several shows a month, produces videos, and organizes special events such as comedy dinner parties. The troupe specializes in “long form” comedy, in which players build on audience suggestions to create a series of hilarious — but believable — scenes.

“We aim to create amusing relationships onstage,” says Spivey, “which I think is a good way to cultivate humor. We don’t fall back on ‘crutches’ like pop culture or off-color jokes, but instead try to show how everyday interactions between people can be funny.”

When she talks about performing with IGP, supporting the Pee Dee Nation, or the nuances of archaeological research, it’s clear that Spivey has found her place at Harvard. She adores her castmates, is proud of her work for Native Americans, and demonstrates a passion for her studies. But as a first-year student, Spivey wasn’t quite so confident that Harvard was right for her.

“I come from a rural town in Georgia that has only two stoplights,” she said. “I attended the same high school as my mom and my grandmother. So I was totally taken aback when I first arrived in Cambridge — the culture seemed remarkably foreign and I felt a thousand miles away from home.”

Spivey, who is the first in her family to attend college, gradually found ways to make Harvard feel more like home.

“It took a while, but I finally got used to everything — and my accent has certainly changed,” she quips.

This summer, Spivey will strike out even further afield. She’s headed to Benin, western Africa, for a five-week archaeological dig.

“The project is focused on historic Africa, or the Africa of the past few hundred years,” Spivey says. “It primarily involves survey work.”

Spivey and her colleagues will comb the landscape, picking up items of historical significance, such as pieces of ceramic. Then, they will evaluate what has been collected and record the location of each artifact.

“People often miss these items because they can appear to be trash, but there are such rich materials if you only stop to look closely!” Spivey says.

Spivey will manage the computer aspect of the project, processing the information and recording it in a geographic information system (GIS).

Following the Benin trip, Spivey will return to the United States and look for a one-year position in archaeology. She will use that time to evaluate whether she should continue to work in archaeology and pursue a Ph.D. in the field, or switch gears and attend law school. [DON'T DO IT]

“I have always thought it would be interesting to be a public prosecutor,” Spivey says. “To me, the process is very similar to archaeology — you are picking up pieces of evidence and putting them together to draw a meaningful conclusion.”

If she chooses the archaeology route, Spivey says, she eventually hopes to star in a television show.

“I don’t want to be a female Indiana Jones,” she says, “but I would love to participate in an authentic production that conveys the excitement of archeological research.”

Women in Archaeology: Theresa Goell

From the Jewish Women's Archive (online): Biographical Information: Theresa Goell, an archaeologist best known for her work as the the director of the Nemrud Dagh excavations in southeastern Turkey. was born in New York City on July 17, 1901. She grew up in Brooklyn and spend summers at the family's house in the Catskills Mountains. After graduating from Erasmus High School in Brooklyn, Goell entered Syracuse University; she later transferred to Radcliffe College, from there she graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1923. While at Radcliffe, she experienced permanent hearing loss, diagnosed as otosclerosis. She initially overcame this handicap by learning lip reading; as technology developed, she took to wearing hearing aids. During her junior year at Radcliffe she married Cyrus Levinthal; after her graduation, they both studied at Cambridge University. They had one son, Jay, and were divorced in the late 1930s or early 1940s. Having earned the equivalent standard B.A. in architecture from Cambridge in 1933-35, Goell began doing archaeological field work in Jerusalem and Gerasa, Trans-Jordan, under the auspices of the American School of Oriental Research. In Jerusalem she made drawings of ceramics and restored terra-cottas, and worked as an architectural assistant. Theresa returned to New York in the late 1930s. She did interior architectural design and display work at department stores in the Bronx and in Newark, New Jersey. During World War II she did drafting for Naval Contractors in New York City and Brooklyn. While working, she took courses in prehistoric and European art at Columbia University, 1944-45. It was Professor Hartley Lehman at New York University who suggested that she look into the heretofore little studied contents at Mt. Nimrud on the Anatolian plateau of southeastern Turkey. Her own NYU Research from this period led to her life long pursuit to excavate this site, now known as Nemrud Dagh. Goell undertook her first professional archaeological field work during 1946 to 1953; it included a position at Tarsus as the architectural and archaeological assistant the the professor of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and work with other archaeological expeditions in Palestine, Jordan and Turkey. An active Zionist, Goell worked on numerous buildings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Goell's first arduous journey to Mt. Nimrud was in 1947; she returned for a second visit in 1951. Little was known about this site before she began excavations there in 1953. The Bollingen Foundation and the National Geographic Society supported the excavation; in March 1961 The National Geographic published an article about Nemrud Dagh and later the National Geographic Society produced a film about it. Goell became the Director of Excavations at Samosata, the city of Antiochus I of Commagene. In 1973, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic, the Cultural Ministry of Turkey awarded Goell in recognition of her contributions to Anatolian culture and art. She died in New York City in 1985, after a long illness.

* * * * *

This information about Goell is from a summary on a documentary film produced by Goell's niece in 2005, "Queen of the Mountain": Theresa Goell embarked on her career as an archaeologist with four strikes against her: She was a woman, divorced, extremely hard of hearing and a Jew working with Muslims. But all that didn't deter her. Born in 1901, she could have had a comfortable life as the wife of a lawyer and the sister-in-law of a prominent rabbi in Brooklyn, but she left her husband and son for a lifelong adventure that led her to a desolate mountain in Southeast Turkey. Martha Goell Lubell, who has lived in Wynnewood for the last 28 years, chronicled the life of her aunt Theresa, a pioneer female archaeologist, in a new documentary, Queen of the Mountain, filmed mostly on location in Turkey. Since Goell was hard-of-hearing, the film will be screened with open captioning to make the film accessible to hard-of-hearing and deaf viewers. Acclaimed actress Tovah Feldshuh, who recently starred in Golda’s Balcony on Broadway, is the voice of Theresa Goell. In addition to Lubell, who produced and directed the film, others from the Philadelphia area who had a role in the film were Sharon Mullally, the editor and writer; Carol Rosenbaum, who did additional writing; John Anthony, the sound designer; Kevin Diehl, the graphic designer, and Sumi Tonooka, who wrote the music. Lubell says, “I started hearing stories about my aunt’s exploits when I was a little girl growing up in New York.” The idea of putting the saga on film occurred to her while she was making her last film, Daring to Resist, which she produced with Bala Cynwyd filmmaker Barbara Attie. After Theresa Goell’s brother died in the late 1990s, Lubell’s cousins found boxes full of photos, letters, audio tapes and film relating to Theresa’s unusual career as well as her personal struggles: Theresa was nearly deaf, divorced, pursuing a career in what was then a man’s field and a Jewish woman working in a Muslim country. “There was a film in those boxes,” says Lubell. “And I decided to make a film about my aunt, knowing it would take me to those places that I had heard about from her decades before.” Theresa excavated the spectacular burial site of King Antiochus on Nemrud Dagh, a 7,000-foot-high mountain three days’ walk from the nearest post office. Antiochus ruled the kingdom of Commagene, and controlled the trade routes across the Euphrates River in the century before the birth of Christ. Theresa first learned of the site when she wrote a paper in graduate school in 1938. “Finding the tomb of Antiochus at Nemrud Dagh was always something Theresa wanted to do,” reports Donald Sanders, editor of a book on her work at Nemrud Dagh. “We know Antiochus was a very wealthy person. He would have had very elaborate materials buried with him. The contents of the tomb could have rivaled that of King Tut.” Theresa was determined to get to Nemrud Dagh and it took her six years to get permission to excavate, raise money for her excavations, find scholars to collaborate with her and equip a mountaintop camp for 50 people. In 1953, at age 50, she finally got there and kept working there over the next twenty years. Theresa was to work very closely with the Kurdish villagers who became the backbone of her excavations and were almost like her family. “They treat me like a mother,” Goell remarks in her oral history, “ And they’re very kind to me.” “She was thinking on all different levels,” according to Martha Sharp Joukowsky, a professor of archaeology at Brown University who is featured in the film. “Not only of what had to be done in the archaeological sense but also in the human sense, of the people who worked for her and were so devoted to her.” She brought clothing and medicine from New York and treated the medical problems of her workers and their families, and taught their wives hygiene and birth control. Her nephew, Jon Goell, relates: “She was considered queen of the mountain.” Goell never found the tomb but Nemrud Dagh has become a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most famous archaeological destinations in Turkey.

Women in Archaeology: Aileen Ajootian

Story from The Daily Citizen (aggregated by Archaeologynews.com) UM gives special recognition Wednesday, May 14, 2008 5:51 PM CDT Ajootian, Showalter honored for service to studentsOXFORD, Miss. — Each day at the University of Mississippi, students are impacted by words and actions of many faculty and staff who know their work extends beyond classrooms, labs and offices. For the 14th year, two UM members who personify such extraordinary service have been selected for special recognition. Aileen Ajootian, chair and associate professor of classics and art, and Marc Showalter, director of the University Counseling Center and assistant professor of education, are recipients of the 2008 Frist Student Service Awards. “Ole Miss is a service-oriented, loving community,” Chancellor Robert Khayat said. “To be recognized by students, faculty and staff as a leader in service affirms the extraordinary level of commitment of the Frist recipients.” The awards, one for faculty and one for staff, were established with a gift from the late Dr. Thomas F. Frist Sr. of Nashville, a 1930 UM graduate. Ajootian and Showalter were selected by a chancellor’s committee of faculty, staff and students assessing nominations. They each receive $1,000 and a plaque and were recognized May 10 at the university’s commencement ceremony. Nomination letters for the award cite specific examples of how members have gone the extra mile for students. A former student nominating Ajootian wrote about how she encouraged him: “I can remember feeling hopeless, but Dr. Ajootian gave me hope. “She created numerous tutoring sessions for her students besides the time that she would spend helping students during her office hours,” he continued. ... Ajootian [also] expressed surprise. “Receiving this award was a complete shock,” she said. “But it is such a great honor. It makes me want to continue doing what I have been doing. I love working in an environment what I can continue to learn and share my excitement for learning with my students.” A native of Long Island, N.Y., Ajootian joined the UM faculty in 1996. She holds master’s degrees from Bryn Mawr College and the University of Oregon. She earned her doctorate in classical archaeology from Bryn Mawr. She is a member of the Archaeological Institute of America and of the College Arts Association. Her fieldwork in archaeology includes research in Athens and ancient Corinth in Greece. ...

Benefiel Awarded Fellowship from Archaeological Institute of America

Rebecca Benefiel, assistant professor of classics at Washington and Lee University, received the Olivia James Traveling Fellowship from the Archaeological Institute of America for 2008-2009. It's designed to support field research in the Mediterranean, and there is only one fellowship of this kind given out per year. The award is $25,000. Benefiel will spend this fall and next spring on-site in Pompeii and in Rome working on her book, "Pompeii and Her Neighbors: Civic Identity, Social Interaction, and Ancient Graffiti."More than 11,000 inscriptions (ancient "graffiti") on the walls of ancient Pompeii have been discovered and recorded since excavation of the site began in the 18th century. These writings provide interesting information about the social interaction taking place among residents of different communities. Benefiel said that they show there is a "good amount of civic pride and civic rivalries, especially between Pompeii and her closest neighbor, Nuceria." "I am thrilled about this opportunity," she said. "It's the best fellowship I could have gotten for my project because it is designed to support research in the field. For my research, being on-site in Pompeii is invaluable. Published photos exist for fewer than 1% of these graffiti. "I have gone to Pompeii for brief research trips and every time I go, I encounter something unexpected that affects my approach to, my thinking about, and my understanding of these ancient writings. There is no substitute." Benefiel received her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.