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Department of Classics
The University of Mississippi

Archive for the ‘Archaeology’ Category

DiBiasie-Sammons receives College of Liberal Arts New Scholar Award in Humanities

Posted on: May 10th, 2021 by amyevans

Professional photo of Dr. DiBiasie-Sammons

The Department of Classics is proud to announce that Assistant Professor Jacqueline DiBiasie-Sammons has been chosen by the College of Liberal Arts as the 2021 recipient of the Dr. Mike L. Edmonds New Scholar Award in Humanities. This award recognizes faculty who are within six years of their first tenure-track appointment and have demonstrated exemplary performance in research, scholarship, and/or creative achievement; recipients have significantly enhanced the scholarly reputation of the College and University through exceptional contributions to their disciplines and demonstrated a positive impact on the success of their department.

Three students: Arianna shines a flashlight on an ancient plastered wall as Mweyeria observes; Madeleine approaches with notebooks to record.

Summer 2018 students at work in a Roman house in Herculaneum.

Dr. DiBiasie-Sammons has just completed her fourth year as an assistant professor, and has quickly become a research leader in the Department of Classics, working in the exciting area of ancient graffiti. She is the field director and technology supervisor of the Ancient Graffiti Project (AGP), which has undertaken to document and digitize all of the ancient graffiti from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and to produce new critical editions of the graffiti in a publicly accessible online database (ancientgraffiti.org). Graffiti, produced as they were by people of all social classes, genders, occupation, and ages, have enormous potential to open new windows into Roman culture. Dr. DiBiasie-Sammons and her colleagues are building a robust and user-friendly online database, that allows open access to these “windows” to scholars all over the world. To date seven UM undergraduates have participated in the AGP’s fieldwork.

The graffiti-centered fieldwork is also the starting point for much of Dr. DiBiasie-Sammons’ more traditional article-based scholarship: among her eight published journal articles and book chapters are cultural analyses based on the distribution and typology of inscriptions, methodological articles, and revisions and reinterpretations of known inscriptions based both on new technological approaches and on archival work. Her most recent work focuses on the particular category of charcoal graffiti, scribblings in a material so delicate that they are quickly destroyed when exposed to the elements. For this project, Dr. DiBiasie-Sammons has received research support for archival work from the Getty Research Institute to access the field notebooks of the original excavators in the Getty’s collections.

In October 2019, Dr. DiBiasie-Sammons and Dr. Holly Sypniewski of Millsaps College co-chaired the Symposium Campanum at the Villa Vergiliana in Cuma, Italy, hosting a slate of more than twenty scholars from ten countries, presenting research on inscriptions of the Bay of Naples region. The symposium was a grand success, and Dr. DiBiasie-Sammons leadership of the group clearly signals the strong position she is mapping out in the world of ancient epigraphy.

Though still only six years out from her 2015 University of Texas-Austin PhD, Dr. DiBiasie-Sammons is making her scholarly mark on a variety of fronts, and on a truly international stage. Her accomplishments are already impressive, and she has a strong, innovative, and multi-faceted research program that promises to flourish for many years to come. Congratulations to Dr. DiBiasie-Sammons!

Dr. Jacqueline DiBiasie Sammons and UM undergrads in Herculaneum

Posted on: August 6th, 2018 by amyevans

Assistant professor of Classics Dr. Jacqueline DiBiasie Sammons and three UM undergrads, Arianna Kitchens, Madeleine McCracken, and Mweyeria Offord spent part of Summer 2018 hard at work locating and digitally documenting graffiti in the ancient city of Herculaneum. Dr. DiBiasie Sammons is the field director for the Ancient Graffiti Project and will be taking more students to continue the project’s work in Pompeii in Summer 2019. The Mike and Mary McDonnell Endowment for the Study of Classics helped fund all three students’ work on the project.

Read more about Dr. BiBiasie Sammons and the Ancient Graffiti Project here.

L to r: Dr. DiBiasie Sammons, Madeleine McCracken, Arianna Kitchens, Mweyeria Offord.

The students at work in a Roman house in Herculaneum.

Dr. Hilary Becker named UM’s Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher of the Year

Posted on: October 13th, 2015 by amyevans

CLA_Humanites_2015posterJoin us for a public lecture celebrating Dr. Becker well-deserved honor on October 28 at 7:00 in Bryant 209.

Dr. Becker will talk about one aspect of her wide-ranging research in Etruscan and Roman archaeology and economic history in this “case study” focused on the trade in pigments in ancient Roman.

A reception will follow in the Farrington Gallery on the first floor of Bryant Hall.

umissinrome x 2

Posted on: June 18th, 2014 by amyevans

This summer saw two (!) groups of University of Mississippi Classics students embark on faculty led study abroad experiences in Rome with Department of Classics faculty.

At Ostia 5/16/14.

At Ostia 5/16/14.

Right after graduation this May, Dr. Molly Pasco-Pranger set off for the Urbs Aeterna with six young women for a Maymester intensive study of Rome and its surrounding area. Covering as much ground as we could in ten “class” days made for some achy feet, but the group reports they appreciated the bodily experience that walking the city gave them and learned more than they could have imagined.  Read more about their adventures at umissinrome.wordpress.com.

On the beach at Paestum.

On the beach at Paestum, 6/13/14.

Just as Dr. Pasco-Pranger’s group left Rome, another seven UMiss students, along with a student from Brown University, met Dr. Hilary Becker to begin a month long archaeological field school experience centered on the excavations at S. Omobono.  That group is still in the field, learning a variety archaeological tools and methods and working actively on the site.  They’ve also taken field trips around the city and to Caere, Orvieto and Campania.  Follow the progress of the field school at https://sites.google.com/site/umissinromefieldschool/.

We’re excited about these faculty-led opportunities for our students and hope to repeat and expand on them soon!