Lecturer of Archaeology
Areas of interest
Classical archaeology of ancient Greece; distribution and assimilation of iconographies in the greater Mediterranean; classical architecture; semantics of objects; art and architecture of tomb monuments, etc.
Excavation and research
Sammi has excavated for almost a decade in various locations across Greece, Italy, and Turkey. In Greece she excavated in the Athenian Agora and at the Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project in Arcadia. In Italy she excavated at Falerii Novi, and in Turkey at Sardis. Sammi was a Regular Member and an Advanced Fellow at the ASCSA these past two years. She is interested in cross-cultural artistic connections in the greater Mediterranean, specifically in the distribution and assimilation of iconographies and architectural motifs in the Classical period between Greece, Anatolia, and the Near East. Her dissertation focuses on Classical Anatolian monumental tombs and highlights the artistic choice to incorporate scenes, motifs, and architectural forms from both Greece and Persia in an effort to craft a uniquely Anatolian identity. Her broader research recontextualizes monuments by using interdisciplinary methodologies to highlight the complex sociological nature of their construction.
Representative publication
Sammi has two publications forthcoming. She is studying the Classical and Hellenistic pottery that is currently being discovered during the excavations at Mt. Lykaion and will publish the findings after the completion of the current permit season. A preliminary title is, “The Classical and Hellenistic Pottery from Mt Lykaion.” The other publication she’s working on with Justin Miller, an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan. It is titled, “Phoenicians, Dead or Alive: The Bilingual Phoenician-Greek Funerary Stelai of Antipatros/Shem and Eirene of Byzantium from Athens.”
Other websites
Harvard website, https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/people/samantha-richter