Director

Professor Rebecca Sweetman

British School at Athens
52 Souedias Street
Athens, 10676
+30 211 1022 801

director@bsa.ac.uk

Rebecca Sweetman
Research

As an archaeologist, my research specialty is on Greece in the Roman and Late Antique periods. My interests began in Roman and Late Antique Crete and following several articles concerning the island in this period, I published a monograph on the archaeology of Crete (1st BCE to 7th CE), focusing on mosaics and their craftspeople and patrons. In this work I have looked at evidence for Globalization processes, particularly at Knossos in the Roman period. I have worked extensively in the Peloponnese, focusing on Late Antique church building, Christianization and the strategic and organic processes involved in the spread of church building. At the heart of this project was work on the Acropolis Basilica, Sparta with Dr Evi Katsara. I am currently working on the Cyclades in the Roman and Late Antique periods. Here my interests in islands, networks, as well as strong and weak ties have been used to look at why the islands did so well in challenging times such as becoming part of the Roman empire and then Christian world. Another aspect of my research concerns collaborative interdisciplinary work with colleagues in Computer Science on digital reconstructions of archaeological sites and with colleagues in Neuroscience on studies of haptic experiences with archaeology for wellbeing. Our work with colleagues in Neuroscience led to being awarded the 2021 Chandler Screven Memorial – Visitor Studies Outstanding Paper Award.

PhD Supervision:

I am seconded from the School of Classics, University of St Andrews where I am Professor of Ancient History & Archaeology. I currently supervise students on Late Antique Ports and Trade, Late Antique women in funerary spaces, Haptic experiences with archaeology for well-being, and on the Cult of Isis. I have supervised topics on Sparta, the Cyclades in the Late Antique and Byzantine periods and on the Cyclades and Crete in the Iron age. I am always happy to offer advice and mentoring to BSA members.

Books
  • The Mosaics of Roman Crete: Art Archaeology and Social Change (Cambridge University Press 2013)
  • 100 years of Solitude: Roman colonies in the first century of their foundation. Proceedings of the conference held in St Andrews 2007 (ed. Sweetman) (Oxford 2011)
  • Archaeology of the Cyclades in the Roman and Late Antique period (Under Review)
  • Late Antique Lived Spaces (in prep) eds. Machado & Sweetman
Articles & Book Chapters
  • ‘Networking Christians? The spread of Christianity in the Eastern Mediterranean’ in Strong Ties: Networks and the Spread of Ideas in the Past, A. Collar (ed) Routledge. (2022)
  • ‘Material culture, museums and memory: experiments in visitor recall and memory’ with Alison Hadfield & Akira O’Connor, Visitor Studies 23: 1, (2020), 18-45.
  • ‘Islands and Resilience: Christianization processes in the Cyclades’ in  Change and Resilience. The Occupation of Mediterranean Islands in Late Antiquity, edited by C. Mas Florit and M. A. Cau Ontiveros (Rhode Island) (2019).
  • ‘The Early Christian Archaeology of Achaea, Macedonia, Crete and the Cyclades’, for the Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology, edited by D. Pettegrew and W. Caraher (2019)
  • Material Culture as Art or Artefact: The Role of 3-D Viewing in Museums’ with Alison Hadfield. UMAC (2018)
  • ‘The Cyclades in the Late Antique period. Churches, networks and Christianization’, with Alice Devlin and Nefeli Piree Iliou, for Cycladic Archaeology: new Approaches and Discoveries, edited by E. Morais Angliker and J. Tully (2018).
  • ‘Networks and Church building in the Aegean: Crete, Cyprus, Lycia and the Peloponnese’, ABSA 2017, 1-60.
  • ‘Networks: Exile and Tourism in the Roman Cyclades’ in Beyond Boundaries: Visual Culture in the Roman Provinces, edited by S. Alcock, M. Egri & J. Frakes (Getty Publications 2016)
  • ‘The Christianization of the Peloponnese: The case for emergent change’ Annual of the British School at Athens 110 (2015), 285-319.
  • ‘Memory, Tradition and Christianization of the Peloponnese’, American Journal of Archaeology 119.4 (2015), 501-531.
  • ‘Religion and Culture in Late Antique Greece’, Archaeological Reports 59 (2013)
  • ‘Roman Greece: Mediterranean Context and Continuity’, Archaeological Reports 58 (2012), 30-41.
  • ‘Memory and loss in the late Antique cities of Knossos and Sparta’ in N. Christie and A. Augenti eds. Vrbes Extinctae. Archaeologies of Abandoned Classical Towns. (Farnham, 2012), 243-273.
  • ‘Domus, Villa and Farmstead: The Globalization of Crete’  in K. Glowacki and N. Vogeikoff-Brogan (eds). STEGA The Archaeology of Houses and Households in Ancient Crete from the Neolithic Period through the Roman Era. Hesperia Suppl. 44 (2011), 441-50.
  • ‘The Knossos Medical Faculty Basilica in its Cretan context’ Proceedings of the 10th International Cretelogical Congress B2 (Chania 2011), 49-67
  • ‘Christianization of the Peloponnese: The Topography and function of Late Antique churches’ Journal of Late Antique studies Vol. 3.2 (Fall 2010), 203-61.
  • ‘Roman Knossos: Discovering the city through the evidence of Rescue excavations’ Annual of the British School at Athens 105 (2010), 339-79.
  • ‘Games, methodologies and immersive environments for virtual fieldwork’, (with C. Allison, K. Getchell, A. Miller & R. Nicoll), in IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies 2010, 0192.
  • ‘Acropolis Basilica, Sparta: the broader research issues’ Proceedings of the International Conference Sparta and Laconia From Prehistory to PreModern ed. W. G. Cavanagh, C. Gallou & M. Georgiadis BSA Studies (2009), 331-43.
  • ‘Exploring the second life of a Byzantine Basilica’ (with C. Allison, K. Getchell & A. Miller) in Petrovic, O. & Brand, A. (eds). Serious games on the move (New York) (2009), 165-80
  • ‘Geographic Overviews, Circum-Mediterranean: Mediterranean: Eastern Roman Colonies’ in The Encyclopaedia of Archaeology ed. D. Pearsell (2007)
  • ‘Identification of space through a study of mosaics: A case study, Knossos, Crete’, proceedings of the conference ‘Building Communities: house settlement and society in the Aegean and Beyond’, BSA Studies (2007), 363-72
  • ‘Roman Knossos: the nature of a Globalized city’, American Journal of Archaeology 111.1, (2007) 61-81
  • ‘A new group of mosaics from Corinth in their domestic context and in the context of the colony’, (with G. Sanders) in Morlier, H. (ed) La Mosaique Gréco-Romanie IX. Proceedings of the 9th International Colloquium on Ancient Mosaics (2005), 358-69
  • ‘Knossos Medical Faculty site: Late Antique graves and other remains’ Annual of the British School at Athens 100 (2005), 331-86
  • ‘Early Medieval Knossos: reassessing the contexts’, Annual of the British School at Athens 99 (2004), 315-54
  • ‘The mosaics of Roman and Early Christian Knossos: interpretating the contexts and workshop production’ in Atti del convegno internazionale Iraklion, 23-30 settembre 2000 Creta romana e protobizantina (Padua 2004), 1173-85
  • ‘The Roman mosaics of the Knossos Valley’, Annual of the British School at Athens 98 (2003), 517-547
  • ‘The changing nature of Knossos: Roman to Early Christian – Some problems’, Proceedings of the Knossos: Palace, City, State Symposium. Iraklion November 2000, BSA Studies (2003), 481-488
  • ‘The Sparta Basilica Project 2000 – preliminary report’, (with E. Katsara) Annual of the British School at Athens 97 (2002), 429- 468
  • ‘Phylakopi 2003, Redefining a prehistoric city: Fieldwork 2003: Abstract’, American Journal of Archaeology 107 (2003)
  • ‘The Evidence of Itinerant Craftspeople from the mosaics of Roman Crete’. La Mosaïque Gréco-Romaine VIII, Actes du VIIIème colloque international pour l’étude de la mosaïque antique et médiévale. Lausanne: 6-11 octobre 1997, (2001), 249-260
  • ‘The Evidence of Itinerant Craftspeople from the mosaics of Roman Crete’. La Mosaïque Gréco-Romaine VIII, Actes du VIIIème colloque international pour l’étude de la mosaïque antique et médiévale. Lausanne: 6-11 octobre 1997, (2001), 249-260
Submitted
  • ‘Churches as nodes in the network: the case of Late Antique Crete’ for Coutsinas Networks of Roman Crete (Brepols)
  • Crete and the Cyclades’, for Blackwell’s Companion to the Archaeology of the Roman Empire, edited by B. Burrell 2021.
  • ‘Pilgrims, piety and pragmatism: Roman sanctuaries and late antique churches in the Cyclades’ in Comparativism and the Study of Ancient Mediterranean Pilgrimage, A. Collar and T. Kristensen eds. (Aarhus).  2019
In preparation:
  • ‘Space and Place: Late Antique churches and place re-making’ for Machado & Sweetman eds. Late Antique Lived Spaces (Routledge)
  • ‘Female mobility & church building in the East’ for Angliker and Jensen The Archaeology of Traveling and Cult Practices in the Ancient Mediterranean