As the semester comes to the final stretch, my attention gets scattered across a number of smaller projects, teaching, family life, and future travel. Thing the First Every now and then a conference paper sticks with you mostly because they really good (or comically bad). I’ve heard lots of conference papers in my 20+… Read More →
As I’ve gotten older and my bandwidth has become more attenuated, I’ve mostly fallen out of the habit of reading new journals when they appear. There are a few that I keep an eye on, though, and more often than not read some of them: the AJA, Hesperia, and the Historical Archaeology. Last week, Hesperia… Read More →
I have many simmering anxieties as a scholar. Among them is my worry about having to publish the North Basilica at Polis on Cyprus by myself. This means immersing myself again in the literature of Early Christian architectural history. Among the most interesting features of the North Basilica is the presence of apsidal exedrae on… Read More →
It’s something like week 12 of the semester and I’m all over the map. This feels like as good a time for a Three Things Thursday as any. Thing the First My colleague Ty Reese pointed out to me that the city of Grand Forks recently published online a map showing the lead service pipes… Read More →
I’m starting to read and think about walls more partly for a paper that I’m giving at Michigan State in the fall and partly because at some point Richard Rothaus and Scott Moore and I will have to publish some of our work at the Roman Bath at Isthmia and we need to find ways… Read More →
One of the challenges of a summer reading list is staying to true to it enough to get through at least some of it while also being flexible enough to read unexpected books that come my way. Catherine Keane’s More than a Church: Late Antique Ecclesiastical Complexes in Cyprus (2024) is just such a book.… Read More →
It is a pretty exciting time for scholars of Early Christian architecture and archaeology. A new generation of scholars is returning to fundamental problems and sites in our field with new ideas and renewed vigor. There is no better example of this than TWO major articles on the Christian building at Dura Europos appearing in… Read More →
Today’s post is as much an advertisement as anything else and for that, as always, I apologize. On Thursday evening, I’m giving a paper to the Friends of ASOR, which is a bit like the AIA lecture series. The paper will celebrate 20 years at the ancient harbor of Pyla-Koutsopetria on Cyprus and officially mark… Read More →
I’m finally getting some reading done again and started to slowly churn my way through my “to read” pile. This weekend, I managed to read one book to prep myself for going to the ASOR annual meeting next week and one book for some vague future project that is distracting me. Book the First I… Read More →
As I am getting older and more “senior” in my field, I am trying to say “no” to fewer things and do a bit more to give back to the field, my institution, and my colleagues. Sometimes this works our really well and sometimes… well, not so much. In general, people don’t ask me to… Read More →
I’ve long wanted to give a paper on our work on Cyprus which adapts the chronology and discourse of the Roman and Late Roman period to the conventions of the Cypriot and Aegean Bronze Age. Thus, instead of talking about the Roman or Late Roman period, we’d talk about things like the Middle Roman IIIC… Read More →
For some reason baptistery projects take a long time to come out. This week, two baptistery related projects of mine somehow reached milestones. It’s a Christmas miracle. The first is the MASSIVE Cambridge Guide to the Architecture of Christianity edited by Richard A. Etlin. I had only a tiny contribution to this gigantic and long… Read More →
I have to admit that today’s blog post is a bit of a hot take on the very recently published volume: On the Edge of a Roman Port: Excavations at Koutsongila, Kenchreai, 2007-2014 edited by Elena Korka and Joe Rife. I’m not going to come out and say that this is the perfect holiday read, but runs… Read More →
Next semester, I am going to teach Roman History for the first time since 2005 (I think). My Roman historian friends have assured me repeatedly that not much has changed. (I’m probably kidding here.) That said, I still need to teach the class and it is clear that the traditional lecture+discussion format of my original,… Read More →
One of the things that I’m trying to do as I find myself well and truly a “mid career” scholar is to focus on small things. Maybe it has to do with my interest in craft and even slow practices. Maybe it has to do with my distaste for senior (generally male) scholars producing BIG BOOKS about… Read More →
