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Faculty

Clark Maines

Kenan Professor of the HumanitiesShow Bio and Photo

Kate Birney

Assistant Professor of Classical StudiesShow Bio

Assistant Professor of Classical Studies
Downey House 212
860-685-2067

Assistant Professor, Archaeology Program

kbirney@wesleyan.edu

BA Yale University
MT Harvard University
PHD Harvard University

Fall 2011

CCIV201 - 01
Bronze Age Mediterranean

CCIV409 - 07
Senior Thesis Tutorial

GRK101 - 01
Introduction to Ancient Greek

Spring 2012

CCIV153 - 01
Single Combat in Ancient World

GRK102 - 01
Introduction to Ancient Greek

Personal Homepage:
http://wesleyan.academia.edu/KathleenBirney

Office Hours:
Spring 2012: Wednesdays 1-3 PM (and by appointment)

Research Interests:
I study interaction and cultural exchange between the Aegean and the Near East, both mythological and material. The bulk of my research has been devoted to the transitional Bronze-Iron Age periods, tracking Mycenaean immigrants and tribes of &quot;Sea Peoples&quot; as they move from the Aegean sphere into Anatolia, Syria, Israel and Egypt. For this work I have particularly focused upon analyses of locally-produced Mycenaean pottery, domestic coarsewares, architecture and burial customs. The story of their mass migration is echoed in the works of Homer and finds its way into several Greek foundation legends - particularly that of Mopsus - and also the Old Testament. A secondary interest of mine is infant burial, and I am currently working on the phenomenon of subfloor burial of infants in Philistine houses in southern Israel, and their relationship to Mycenaean and Egyptian treatment of infants and children. I have also worked on material from the 'Tophet', the Phoenician infant sacrifice cemetery at Carthage.

Scholarly Keywords:
Archaeology of the Aegean Archaeology and History of the Ancient Near East/Egypt

Academic Associations:
American Institute of Archaeology American Schools of Oriental Research Society for Biblical Literature American Anthropological Association Society for Humanitarian Archaeological Research and Exploration

Publications:
http://wesleyan.academia.edu/KathleenBirney/Papers

My research and teaching interests also overlap significantly with those of the department of Art History and the Middle Eastern Studies Certificate.

Douglas Charles

Professor of AnthropologyShow Bio and Photo

Professor of Anthropology
Anthropology 21
860-685-3266

Chair, Anthropology
Anthropology 21
860-685-3266

Professor, Archaeology Program
Exley Science Center 301
860-685-3266

Director of Collections, Archaeology Program
Exley Science Center 301
860-685-3266

dcharles@wesleyan.edu

BA University of Chicago
MA Northwestern University
PHD Northwestern University

Fall 2011

ANTH202 - 01
Paleoanthropology

ANTH364 - 01
Pre-Columbian Monuments

ANTH401 - 01
Individual Tutorial, Undergrad

Spring 2012

ANTH349 - 01
The Human Skeleton

Office Hours:
Wednesdays, 1:30-4 pm, Rm. 21, Anthropology Department

Research Interests:
My primary research interest is in understanding the complexity of the political economies of prehistoric foraging/gardening societies, with a geographic focus on Eastern North American, particularly the Mississippi River drainage of the Eastern Woodlands. An early interest in the Archaic period (ca. 6000-3000 bp) has given way to a concentration on Middle Woodland &quot;Hopewellian&quot; cultures (ca. 2050-1550 bp). Much of our knowledge of social and political life in this period comes from the analysis of mounds and linear earthworks concentrated at &quot;ceremonial&quot; gathering sites, which create a landscape of communities (consisting of shifting networks of differing size and composition) and which were an integral part of the complex social world of a population otherwise dispersed in small hamlets. A complete political economy of Middle Woodland societies requires investigation of the hamlets as well, and I am currently analyzing the material recovered during the ca. 1980 Smiling Dan site CRM excavation by the Center for American Archeology. I am also interested in the history and theory of archaeology and how we construct archaeological knowledge. A set of secondary interests--human evolution and skeletal biology--stems from my concentration on biological anthropology in graduate school. My first academic appointment was as lecturer in the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy in the Medical School at Northwestern University. Following that, and before coming to Wesleyan, I was the Leverhulme Visiting Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Prehistory at the University of Sheffield, where I taught courses on mortuary archaeology and paleopathology.

Publications:
http://works.bepress.com/douglas_k_charles/

Sarah Croucher

Assistant Professor of AnthropologyShow Bio and Photo

Christopher Parslow

Professor of Classical StudiesShow Bio

Phillip Wagoner

Professor of Art HistoryShow Bio and Photo

Professor of Art History
Davison Art Center 301
860-685-3779

Professor, Archaeology Program
860-685-3779

pwagoner@wesleyan.edu

BA Kenyon College
PHD University of Wisconsin

Fall 2011

ARHA181 - 01
Mughal India:Intro Art History

ARHA286 - 01
Empire And Erotica

ARHA409 - 06
Senior Thesis Tutorial

Office Hours:
Fall 2011 By appointment pwagoner@wesleyan.edu ext. 3779 301 Davison Art Center

Research Interests:
Phillip B. Wagoner's research focuses on the cultural history of the Deccan region of South India, primarily in the late medieval and early modern periods (1200-1600). His primary interest is in the historical interactions between the region's established Indic culture and the Persianate culture that arrived when the Delhi Sultanate annexed the region in the early fourteenth century. To study the dynamics of this process, he relies on a broad range of literary, epigraphic, architectural, and archaeological evidence, gathered over the course of numerous trips to the field since the early 1980s. Since 1987, he has been associated with the Vijayanagara Research Project, an international team of scholars in different disciplines dedicated to documentation and interpretation of the site of Vijayanagara, capital of the state that dominated the southern part of the Indian peninsula between the 1340s and 1565. This work has led to the publication of two books; one on late sixteenth-century understandings of Vijayanagara based on a Telugu historiographic text written in the region some 35 years after the collapse of the state (Tidings of the King: a Translation and Ethnohistorical Analysis of the Rayavacakamu, University of Hawai'i Press, 1993), and the other a 3-volume work presenting comprehensive architectural documentation of the over 400 temples and other structures preserved in one key zone of the site (co-authored with George Michell,Vijayanagara: Architectural Inventory of the Sacred Centre, New Delhi: American Institute of Indian Studies and Manohar, 2001). He has also published numerous articles on various topics relating to Vijayanagara, including the pre-Vijayanagara history of the site, the reuse of architectural components retrieved from earlier buildings, the system of elite dress at the Vijayanagara court, the ability of political elites to move between the Indic and Persianate worlds, and the significance of Sanskrit historiographic traditions that represent Vijayanagara as a successor state to the Delhi Sultanate. Since 2000, his work has increasingly focused on Persianate Islamic architecture in the Deccan, and his articles have dealt with topics ranging from the first appearance of Sultanate style architecture in the region in the early fourteenth century, to the founding and design of Hyderabad, laid out as a new capital by the Qutb Shahi sultans in the late 16th century. He is currently completing a book, co-authored with historian Richard M. Eaton, titled Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India's Deccan Plateau, 1300-1600.

Scholarly Keywords:
South Asian and Islamic art history, South Indian cultural history,
buildings archaeology and urbanism,
Telugu language and literature