Faculty of Classics - University of Cambridge
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D Caucus (Art and Archaeology)
The past decades have seen the emergence of a 'Cambridge School' of Classical Archaeology which is widely seen, at least within the English-speaking world, as the leading innovatory group in the subject. It is characterised above all by the treatment of the archaeology of Greece and Rome as a leading branch of general archaeology, in which the approaches pioneered in prehistoric and non-classical fields can be applied in similar ways but with much greater precision and effect. At the same time, the study of Greek and Roman art is pursued in an equally innovatory way. Our graduates are preferentially sought for appointments in universities throughout Britain and America, while their publications have generated a worldwide response. They include among many others Susan Alcock (Ann Arbor), Jas Elsner (Oxford), Thomas W. Gallant (Florida), Jonathan Hall (Chicago), Catherine Morgan (London), Ian Morris (Stanford), Lisa Nevett (Ann Arbor), Robin Osborne (Cambridge), Gillian Shepherd (Birmingham), Nigel Spivey (Cambridge), Peter Stewart (London), Jeremy Tanner (London) and James Whitley (Cardiff). Regular weekly seminars, some of them held in concert with our historical colleagues, have generated an atmosphere of collaborative endeavour. The breadth of approach which has characterised the doctoral research of recent years - ranging from Early Bronze Age society in the Aegean to Roman Imperial shipwrecks - is being carried over into the teaching of the M.Phil., again with collaboration between the Faculty's archaeologists and historians.
Nigel Spivey is Senior Lecturer in Classical Art and Archaeology. A graduate of the Faculty, he went on to study at the British School at Rome and the University of Pisa, researching a doctoral dissertation on Etruscan black-figure pottery (supervised by R.M. Cook). He taught at the University of Wales before returning to Cambridge, where he is also a Fellow and Tutor at Emmanuel College. Among his publications are The Micali Painter and his Followers (Oxford UP 1987), Looking at Greek Vases (co-edited with Tom Rasmussen: Cambridge 1990); Greek Art (Phaidon 1996), Etruscan Art (Thames & Hudson 1997), Enduring Creation (Thames & Hudson 2001), and How Art Made The World (BBC/PBS 2005). His research interests cover Greek, Etruscan and Roman topics, as well as the broader prehistory of art, and the ‘afterlife’ of Classical images. Currently he is seeing through the press a compendious ‘interpretative handbook’ of Greek sculpture, and preparing a second edition of his 2004 monograph, The Ancient Olympics (Oxford UP).
Caroline Vout, University Senior Lecturer in Classics, is a cultural historian and art historian with a particular interest in the Roman imperial period. Recent publications include, Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome (CUP, 2007), 'The Art of Damnatio Memoriae' in S. Benoist (ed.) Un Discours en Images (Metz, 2008), 'Laocoon's Children and the Limits of Representation', Art History 33.3 (2010), and (forthcoming) 'Face to Face with Fiction: Portraiture and the Biographical Tradition' in M. Hatt and M. Ledbury, The Fictions of Art History (after a conference at the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute). She is a member of the editorial board of Perspective, the journal of the National Institute for the History of Art, Paris, and in 2006 curated the exhibition 'Antinous: the Face of the Antique' at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and was author of its prize-winning catalogue. She is currently on two-years of research leave, following receipt of a Philip Leverhulme Prize for her work in Art History. She has a number of PhD students, working on aspects of Roman art and its reception.
Andrew Wallace Hadrill (seen right teaching at Herculaneum) was Director of the British School at Rome from 1995-2009. During that time, he collaborated with Michael Fulford of the University of Reading in a project on the urban development of Pompeii focused on Insula 9 of Region I. Since 2001 he has directed a conservation project at Herculaneum for the Packard Humanities Institute, in collaboration with the Soprintendenza of Pompei and the British School.
Lucilla Burn (seen right in the Greek and Roman Galleries at the Fitzwilliam Museum). After studying Classics and Classical Archaeology first at Cambridge and then at Oxford, Lucilla worked in the British Museum for many years and came to the Fitzwilliam Museum as Keeper of Antiquities in 2001. Since then much of her time has been taken up with fund-raising for, and managing, the re-organisation of the Fitzwilliam's permanent galleries of Ancient Egypt and Greece and Rome. In her spare time she does a small amount of teaching in the D caucus and can occasionally offer placements for volunteers. Her current position means that she has to be ready to answer questions on everything from the Nimrud ivories to Roman sarcophagi, but her real areas of interest are Greek vases and terracottas, the history of collections and the classical tradition. Her most recent publication was an article on 'The Contexts of the Production and Distribution of Athenian Painted Pottery around 400 BC' in Oliver Taplin and Rosie Wyles' The Pronomos Vase and its context (Oxford 2010).
Robin Osborne (seen right teaching in the Cast Gallery) is the author of Archaic and Classical Greek Art in the Oxford History of Art series, and co-editor with Susan Alcock of Classical Archaeology in the Blackwell Global Archaeology series. His work ranges from archaeological surface survey to Greek painted pottery and from the Dark Ages to the Hellenistic period, and he has supervised a wide range of successful PhD theses in Greek archaeology and art. He has served stints on the editorial boards of Art History and World Archaeology (where he edited issues on The Object of Dedication, The Archaeology of Equality, and Tradition), and is currently an advisory editor for both American Journal of Archaeology and Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology. He is currently Curator of the Museum of Classical Archaeology.
John Patterson
A Popescu
Ted Buttrey
Terry Volk
Alessandro Launaro, (seen right on field survey at Liri Valley, Italy, September 2010) British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow based at Darwin College, researches on social and economic aspects in the archaeology and history of Roman Italy, with special emphasis on the development of the rural landscape between Late Republic and Early Empire. He has taken part in several fieldwork activities in Italy (excavations/surveys in Liguria, Tuscany and Marche) and – together with Martin Millett – he is director of the Roman Colonial Landscapes project (Lazio), an integrated study of the Roman town of Interamna Lirenas and its territory by way of geophysical prospection, field survey and thorough analysis of local productions (especially coarseware pottery and building materials). His book Peasants and slaves. The rural population of Roman Italy (200 BC to AD 100) is about to be published in the Cambridge Classical Studies series.
Of our historian colleagues, Mary Beard and Robin Osborne play an active part in the teaching of this subject with their expertise in ancient art, as does John Patterson with his experience in Italian landscape archaeology and his knowledge of the monuments of Rome. We also maintain a co-operative rapport with the Department of Archaeology in the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology, the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and the staff of the Fitzwilliam Museum.
One final, unique asset to be noted is the Museum of Classical Archaeology (housed in the Classics Faculty Building), whose collection includes over 600 plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture and some 10,000 sherds, mainly from excavated sites in the eastern Mediterranean such as Al Mina, the Athenian Agora and Naukratis. This is in addition to the University's renowned Fitzwilliam Museum, with its much larger holdings.
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Mary Beard: honorary professorship
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