Dr Susan Sherratt
Lecturer
MA, DPhil
Email address: s.sherratt@sheffield.ac.uk
Telephone: 0114 22 25102
Department address: 109 West Court
Biography
I read Classics as an undergraduate and subsequently did research on Aegean pottery of the 12th century BC. I taught for many years in Oxford before coming to Sheffield.
Research interests
My research interests are in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages of the Aegean, Cyprus and the wider eastern Mediterranean, particularly in all aspects of trade and interaction within and beyond these regions.
I am also interested in exploring the ways in which the Homeric epics and the archaeological record can most usefully be combined.
Current and recent research projects/collaborations
The Linking up of the Mediterranean, 3000-700 BC.
The period between c. 3000 and c. 700 BC (roughly the Bronze and Early Iron Ages) saw the progressive growth of economic and cultural links between regions bordering the Mediterranean (both maritime and overland) which became increasingly direct in nature.
This project builds on various aspects of my past research in an attempt to produce a multi-dimensional account of the long-term development of these interconnections, investigating the patterns of maritime and overland trade and communication networks, and the economic, social, cultural and ideological contexts and repercussions of contact and exchange.
ArchAtlas
The web-based ArchAtlas project was founded by the late Andrew Sherratt in 2003, and transferred to the Department of Archaeology in 2005. Since his death I have acted as academic director, along with Debi Harlan and Toby Wilkinson exploring ways in which it can continue to develop as a useful tool for research and teaching.
The project aims to provide a visual summary of spatial processes in prehistoric and early historic times, such as the spread of farming, the formation of trade contacts, and the growth of urban systems, and to illustrate the development of settlement history at a variety of scales. In partnership with other projects and groups, it also aims to create a scholarly digital atlas (eventually including sites, environments, cultures and chronologies). Visual essays which explore a range of archaeological problems and themes are published in the ArchAtlas Journal.
Other projects I am involved in:
Sinop Regional Archaeological Project
A collaborative, interdisciplinary archaeological research project, directed by Professor Owen Doonan of California State University-Northridge and Dr Alex Bauer of Queens College, City University of New York.
Its aim is to investigate long-term patterns of land use and settlement and communication networks in the Black Sea coastal region of Sinop, Turkey, from the inland valleys and mountains to the sea, by employing both extensive reconnaissance of its numerous ecological zones and intensive techniques of systematic survey and excavation in selected zones.
Palaepaphos Urban Landscape Project
This project, directed by Professor Maria Iacovou of the University of Cyprus, aims to trace the long-term development and topography of the urban centre of Palaepaphos in south-west Cyprus in the 2nd -1st millennia BC. It is also concerned with the development of a framework of principles in which modern development and the preservation of archaeological landscapes can co-exist.
Materiality and Practice: Cultural Entanglements between 2nd millennium BC East Mediterranean Societies
This project (2007-12), co-ordinated by Professor Joseph Maran, forms part of a large interdisciplinary project, ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows’, based at the University of Heidelberg. It explores how the processes of appropriation of new goods and ideas contributed to the transformation of societies and cultures in east and west.
Current research supervision:
- Rik Vaessen – The Ionian migration reconsidered from an archaeological point of view
- Toby Wilkinson – Tying the threads of Eurasia: trans-regional routes in eastern Anatolia and western Central Asia, 3000-1000 BC
Teaching:
Undergraduate
- Aegean Archaeology and Texts
- Discoverers and Discoveries in Old World Archaeology
- World Civilisations
- Later Prehistoric Europe
- Swords and Sorcery: Northern Europe 1000 BC-AD 500
Postgraduate
- The Archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean, 14th-7th centuries BC
- The Archaeology of Cyprus
- Archaeology and Texts in the Aegean, 1700-700 BC
- Current Issues in Aegean Prehistory
Selected recent publications:
Edited book:
- Interweaving Worlds: Systemic Interactions in Eurasia, 7th to 1st Millennia BC. Oxford: Oxbow (with Toby C. Wilkinson and John Bennet)
Articles, etc.:
- “The history of East Mediterranean and Aegean interaction: some when, how and why questions” in H. Matthäus, N. Oettinger and S. Schröder (eds.), Der Orient und die Anfänge Europas: kulturelle Beziehungen von der späten Bronzezeit bis zur frühen Eisenzeit, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011, 3-13.
- “Greeks and Phoenicians: perceptions of trade and traders in the early 1st millennium BC” in A. Agbe-Davies and A. Bauer (eds), Trade as Social Interaction: New Archaeological Approaches, Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2010, 119-42.
- “The Aegean and the wider world: some thoughts on a world-systems perspective” in M. Galaty and W. Parkinson (eds), Archaic State Interaction: The Eastern Mediterranean in the Bronze Age, Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2010, 81-106.
- “Homer’s Trojan War: History or Bricolage?” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 53:2 (2010), 1-18.
- “Representations of Knossos and Minoan Crete in the British, American and Continental press, 1900-c.1930” Creta Antica 10:2 (2009), 619-49.
- “Vitreous Materials in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages: Some Questions of Values” in C.M. Jackson and E.C. Wager (eds), Vitreous Materials in the Late Bronze Age Aegean, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2008, 209-32.
- “The Neolithic of Crete, as Seen from Outside” in V. Isaakidou and P. Tomkins (eds), Escaping the Labyrinth: The Cretan Neolithic in Context, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2008, 291-302 (with A. Sherratt).
Other professional activities:
- Editor, Annual of the British School at Athens (email: bsaeditor@sheffield.ac.uk)
- Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries
- Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland