Ellen’s background is in Greek and Roman art and archaeology, with a particular focus on Roman art and architecture. Her research interests include artistic imitation, the ways humans interact with statues—including their ideological destruction—and modern receptions of ancient Greece and Rome in the visual arts.

She is especially drawn to works of art that reflect on the act of making art itself, so one of her favorite artifacts is this 2nd-century CE tombstone in the Musée d’Aquitaine, discovered in 1826 in the Roman ramparts at Rue Guillaume-Brochon, Bordeaux. Carved of limestone, it commemorates a sculptor named Marcus Amabilis—his name meaning “amiable,” “lovable,” or “charming” in Latin. He is shown seated on a bench, dressed in a Gallic tunic (sagum), holding a chisel in his left hand and a mallet in his right, in the act of sculpting one of the angle capitals—his own funerary monument. Pick and chisel marks remain visible on the relief, and some have suggested this was intentional: a way of signaling that his work remained unfinished at the time of his death. Stone carving is a slow, often contemplative process, so it’s tempting to imagine Amabilis working steadily on this piece while meditating on his own mortality.

The Latin inscription, partially reconstructed, reads: “To the spirits of the dead, to Marcus Amabilis, sculptor. His brother, Amandus, took care (of this).” Amabilis and Amandus—“Lovable” and “Must-be-loved.” It sounds like these men came from an affectionate family.

Jacob is an archaeologist specializing in the ancient Levantine world and is particularly interested in how the peoples of the region responded to the various empires that sought to control their homeland. His main tool in looking at cultural interaction in the ancient world is the archaeology of food and drink and, if you were to ask him, everything comes down to food. This means he gets to argue that reading about food, growing food, foraging, cooking, and eating all constitute research. He also treats this as an excuse to do things like have his students eat bugs which, admittedly, has received mixed reviews.

Jacobs shares this depiction on a stele discovered at Tell el-Amarna, Egypt of an Asiatic mercenary drinking alcohol (wine?) through a straw with his family. While both the artistic style and stele itself are Egyptian in character, the mercenary is depicted like a foreign Asiatic and drinking in the Asiatic fashion. Interestingly, his wife and child are shown in characteristic Egyptian dress. In one small object, we can therefore see all of the different cultural aspects at play in an ancient individual, including the deeply ingrained character of how food relates to our ideas about ourselves and who we are–as well as how we want people to see us. 

Dani is an archaeologist of ancient Egypt, specializing in cross-cultural interactions. She co-directs excavations at the Chapel of Osiris-Ptah Neb-Ankh in South Karnak, and her research includes examinations of immigration, borders, xenophobia, race, and foreignness in ancient Egypt, as well as exchange with West Asia and Nubia. The stela here is a great example; it shows Nenu, a Nubian bowman, who moved to Egypt, married an Egyptian woman and started a family. Their three children are shown blending customs and clothing from both traditions, and of course their family dogs made the portrait too!

Elizabeth is not an archaeologist by training, but she specializes in the material culture of ancient Iraq and Syria and has spent over a decade working in museums. Elizabeth is a cat person, so it may be no surprise that she loves this image of a 4,000 year old bronze lion from the city of Mari, located on the Euphrates River in modern-day Syria. This is one of a pair of bronze lions found during excavations of a temple in 1936. While lions are usually fierce and intimidating, the lion in this photograph looks more like an adorable obedient puppy. It is hard to know whether the expression shown in this photograph reflects the original intentions of the artists, is a result of the condition in which the objects were excavated, or is due to the angles of the photographs or perhaps even our own cultural perceptions.

Ann is an archaeologist of ancient Italy, with experience at Etruscan and Roman sites, and specializing in water management.  As an undergraduate in 2007, she became a member of the Archaeological Institute of America, which connected her with her first excavation, Poggio Civitate, where she still works.  One of her favorite features from the ancient Mediterranean world is a branch of ancient Rome’s sewer system, the Cloaca Maxima–or the “Main Drain”–and its associated shrine to Venus Cloacina.  The epithet “Cloacina” seems to suggest something related to “cleansing” or “purification”.  Not only has much of the shrine's structure been lost (you can see just its base in the Forum Romanum today), but its function and meaning to the Romans has also somewhat been obscured.  It seems probable, however, that in a sewer system dependent on gravity, and that emptied into the Tiber River, it was logical to give prayers and offerings to a “cleansing Venus” to prevent the spread of disease in the event that the Tiber overflowed and the sewers started flowing backwards.