24.8.2018
16:15-17:45
Auditorium IV, University of Helsinki main building (Unioninkatu 34, 00100 Helsinki)
Steven Ellis (University of Cincinnati): Context and Complexity in the Social and Structural Making of Pompeii.
Dr. Steven Ellis (PhD Sydney, 2005) is a Roman archaeologist whose research activities and publications spring from his interests in ancient cities and urban life. He has conducted fieldwork principally throughout Italy and Greece, but with other field activities in Spain, Portugal, France, Morocco, and Algeria. Dr. Ellis directs the University of Cincinnati's excavations at Pompeii (the Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia); and co-directs (with Eric Poehler) the Pompeii Quadriporticus Project and (with Timothy Gregory) the East Isthmia Archaeological Project in Greece. The results of these activities are a range of publications that cover field reports to synthetic works, on diverse topics across the field of Classics such as Roman retail spaces; urban waste management; Greek and Roman superstitions; Roman coins; site formation processes; urban and sacred infrastructure; movement in cities; social structures and their hierarchies, especially the urban sub-elites; the use of new technologies in archaeological fieldwork; and the Roman fish-salting industry. He is the author of The Roman Retail Revolution (Oxford, 2018). In 2011 he edited The Making of Pompeii: studies in the history and urban development of an ancient city (JRA suppl. 85, Portsmouth, RI). The recipient of several major grants and fellowships (from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, National Geographic, and the 'Rome Prize' from the American Academy in Rome), his forthcoming work includes a multi-volume publication on the Pompeii excavations. Dr. Ellis is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Cincinnati.