Dr Rachel Phillips

I am currently the A.G. Leventis Fellow in Hellenic Studies at the British School at Athens. I hold a PhD in Classics from the University of Cambridge, where I also completed my BA and MPhil degrees. My research examines the material and visual culture of Late Bronze Age Greece, with a particular focus on the early Mycenaean mortuary sphere. I am interested in the adoption of interdisciplinary approaches to the past, in particular, in the application of art historical methods to archaeological bodies of material.

I have two current research projects. The first is the revision of my PhD thesis for publication as a monograph, titled Curating the Dead: Body and Matter in Early Mycenaean Burials. The book asks how death was transformed into visual experience in the early Mycenaean period, with reference to specific case studies from the Late Bronze Age Peloponnese. The second project examines the intersection of art, death, and ritual action in early Greece, in particular, the aesthetic expressions of ritual depositions across the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages. I want to ask how (and whether) we can write an art history of ritual practice in these time periods, as part of a broader exploration of conditions of materiality and visuality within the prehistoric Greek world.

As a field archaeologist, I have seven years of experience on projects in Greece and Italy, most recently on the Palace of Nestor excavations in Pylos and at Palaikastro in eastern Crete. I am also working on two archival projects. The first, in collaboration with the Mycenae archive in the Faculty of Classics, examines the correspondence between Alan Wace and Arthur Evans in the early decades of the twentieth century. The second looks at the experiences of women at the British School at Athens between 1890 and 1920, with a focus on the intersection of class and gender.