As a member of the Classics Department, my main focus is on the ancient Mediterranean, and I teach courses in ancient Greek as well as in the archaeology of the Greek and Roman worlds.  Since 1970, I have been working at the Ancient Agora of Athens, a major, ongoing excavation involved in the archaeological investigation of the center of the ancient city of Athens.  My work there has included both excavation and publication and has focused primarily on ceramics.  Since pottery is abundant, serves a range of practical functions, and is subject to rapid change, it is a valuable marker of behavior and offers insight into a broad range of past human activities. 
      Excavations that I supervised in the 1970’s led to the study and publication of a rich deposit of material (primarily ceramics) that had been used by the public magistrates of Athens in the 5th century BC.  It shed light on the ancient Athenian custom of public dining, which has developed into a continuing interest of mine.  I am currently engaged in a long-term project publishing the Hellenistic pottery (330-1st century BCE) found at the site.  This particular type of pottery has until recently been ignored in favor of the aesthetically more attractive ceramics of earlier periods.  Creation of a fine-grained chronology allows the use of these ceramics for the investigation of new problems, such as the cultural transformation of Athens in the wake of the Roman conquest, and changes in Athenian cooking, dining, and drinking.  I am also working with colleagues in physical anthropology and zooarchaeology on a well deposit, excavated in the 1930’s, which along with ceramics includes the bones of 450 newborn infants and some 150 dogs.  We are attempting to understand the events or practices that resulted in this unique collection of material. 
      Although most of my research has been conducted in Athens, I have also worked on other sites in the Mediterranean, most recently at Sardis and Troy, in Turkey.  The indigenous populations of these areas were not Greek, but they had considerable contact with the Greek world, and, after the conquests of Alexander the Great at the end of the 4th century, they became part of kingdoms ruled by Greeks and Macedonians.  This political change resulted, over the centuries, in a certain degree of “Hellenization”, as Greek customs and the Greek language were adopted by some of the inhabitants.  Ceramics also show signs of this process of adaptation to, or rejection of, the Greek model, and can throw new light on the process of acculturation. 

Courses 

Greek Art and Archaeology, Roman Art and Archaeology, Ancient Athens, Greek and Roman Pottery, Ancient Sanctuaries 

Selected Publications 
 

1984	Spool Salt Cellars in the Athenian Agora.  Hesperia 53: 343-354.
1992	with J. H. Oakley, Debris from a Public Dining Room in the Athenian Agora (Hesperia, Supplement 25).  Princeton:  American school of Classical Studies.
1997	The Athenian Agora XXIX, Hellenistic Pottery:  Athenian and Imported Wheelmade Tableware. Princeton:  American School of Classical Studies
1998	“The Greeks and the Other in the Age of Alexander,” in Greeks and Barbarians, J.E. Coleman and C.A. Walz, eds.  Bethesda: 221-235.