BU Archaeology Offers Tribute and Think Tank in Honor of Professor Andrea M. Berlin

  • By: Shannon Landis

On Wednesday, November 19, the BU Archaeology Program is holding a half-day informal gathering entitled, “From Artifact to History – An Afternoon Honoring Prof. Andrea Berlin,” as both a tribute and think tank to bring together students, colleagues, and friends to ask, “…how humble sherds reveal systems of power and local negotiation, how domestic ritual refracts social change, and how the study of ceramic fabrics redraws the routes of ancient trade.”

Dr. Berlin (CAS, Archaeology & Religion), a James R. Wiseman Chair in Classical Archaeology, has been excavating in the eastern Mediterranean since 1973, working on projects from Troy, in Turkey, to Coptos in southern Egypt.  She focuses on the eras of the later ancient empires: the Achaemenid Persians, Alexander the Great and his Hellenistic successors, and the Romans and is especially interested in understanding the realities of daily life under these regimes and in exploring the intersection of politics and cultural change in antiquity. She received the P.E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award in 2021 honoring an archaeologist who, during their career, has made outstanding contributions to ancient Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology. In 2010-11 she was named a National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellow, Albright Institute of Archaeological Research. Dr. Berlin received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1988, her A.M. in Syro-Palestinian Archaeology from University of Chicago in 1988, and an A.B. with honors from University of Michigan in double majoring in Classical Studies and Near Eastern Studies in 1976.

The November 17th program will offer two sessions moving from broad theoretical and imperial questions to regional politics, and tracing the life cycle of objects: local workshop craftsmanship, industrial-scale production, contextual adaptation, wartime disruption, ritual afterlives, and long-distance exchange. The gathering will serve as a living preface to the Festschrift From Artifact to History: authors preview their chapters, listeners probe the arguments, and the closing round-table reflects on the day’s themes and points toward future directions. This collaborative format embodies Andrea’s conviction that archaeological knowledge flourishes through open exchange. Taken together, the concise papers and generous discussion highlight her enduring insight that meticulous attention to ceramics can restore human stories—even the most intimate—to the grand narratives of antiquity.

For more information or to register, visit From Artifact to History – An Afternoon Honoring Prof. Andrea Berlin.

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