Caitie Barrett
Caitlín Eilís (Caitie) Barrett is an archaeologist who investigates everyday life, religious experience, and cross-cultural interactions in the ancient Mediterranean. A 2022 National Geographic Explorer, she is currently co-directing an excavation at Pompeii (http://blogs.cornell.edu/crcpompeii, https://www.nationalgeographic.org/find-explorers/caitlin-eilis-barrett) and working on a new book about the archaeology of ancient Greek religion.
Prof. Barrett has published extensively on interactions between Egypt and the Greco-Roman world. Her first book, Egyptianizing Figurines from Delos: A Study in Hellenistic Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2011), investigated religious change and cultural hybridization in the household through a study of locally-made "Egyptianizing" terracotta figurines from the Hellenistic trading port of Delos. Her second book, Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens (Oxford University Press, 2019), is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian imagery from Roman domestic contexts.
Prof. Barrett's work has received national and international grants from the National Geographic Society, the Fulbright Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Rust Family Foundation, the American Research Center in Egypt, and Sigma Xi, among other sources; and at Cornell, her work has been supported by the Classics Department, the Cornell Institute for Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS), the Einaudi Center, the Grants Program for Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences, the Midas-Croesus Fund, the President’s Council of Cornell Women, the Provost's Special Research Fund, and the Society for the Humanities. In 2014, she received the Robert A. and Donna B. Paul Award for Excellence in Advising in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell, and in 2022, she received a Rosenthal Advancement Award. She has excavated and surveyed at a range of Bronze Age through early modern sites in Italy, Egypt, Greece, and the United States.
Prof. Barrett teaches a range of graduate and undergraduate courses on topics related to Classical archaeology and culture; ancient Greek religion and ritual; the archaeology of the Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean; Egypt in the Greco-Roman world; Greco-Roman receptions of Egyptian culture; Greeks and "others"; and the ancient Egyptian language and hieroglyphic script. She welcomes applications from graduate students in Classics, Archaeology, Anthropology, and Near Eastern Studies.
Address: Department of Classics, Cornell University, 120 Goldwin Smith Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-3201
Prof. Barrett has published extensively on interactions between Egypt and the Greco-Roman world. Her first book, Egyptianizing Figurines from Delos: A Study in Hellenistic Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2011), investigated religious change and cultural hybridization in the household through a study of locally-made "Egyptianizing" terracotta figurines from the Hellenistic trading port of Delos. Her second book, Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens (Oxford University Press, 2019), is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian imagery from Roman domestic contexts.
Prof. Barrett's work has received national and international grants from the National Geographic Society, the Fulbright Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Rust Family Foundation, the American Research Center in Egypt, and Sigma Xi, among other sources; and at Cornell, her work has been supported by the Classics Department, the Cornell Institute for Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS), the Einaudi Center, the Grants Program for Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences, the Midas-Croesus Fund, the President’s Council of Cornell Women, the Provost's Special Research Fund, and the Society for the Humanities. In 2014, she received the Robert A. and Donna B. Paul Award for Excellence in Advising in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell, and in 2022, she received a Rosenthal Advancement Award. She has excavated and surveyed at a range of Bronze Age through early modern sites in Italy, Egypt, Greece, and the United States.
Prof. Barrett teaches a range of graduate and undergraduate courses on topics related to Classical archaeology and culture; ancient Greek religion and ritual; the archaeology of the Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean; Egypt in the Greco-Roman world; Greco-Roman receptions of Egyptian culture; Greeks and "others"; and the ancient Egyptian language and hieroglyphic script. She welcomes applications from graduate students in Classics, Archaeology, Anthropology, and Near Eastern Studies.
Address: Department of Classics, Cornell University, 120 Goldwin Smith Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-3201
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Books by Caitie Barrett
Within Pompeian gardens, visual evocations of Egyptian landscapes appear in multiple media: both two-dimensional (e.g., paintings and mosaics that depict the Nile) and three-dimensional (e.g., water features and garden statuary). These objects and images interact with their settings to construct complex entanglements of “foreign” and “familiar,” “self” and “other.” Representations of Egyptian landscapes in Pompeian gardens enabled individuals to articulate and perform social identities as cosmopolitan, sophisticated citizens of empire. Yet at the same time, household material culture also exerted an agency of its own: domesticizing, familiarizing, and “Romanizing” once-foreign images and objects. That which was once alien and potentially dangerous was now part of the domus itself, increasingly incorporated into cultural constructions of Romanitas. Through participatory multimedia assemblages evoking landscapes simultaneously local and international, the houses examined in this book made the breadth of oikoumene compatible with the familiarity of home.
This monograph investigates the spread of Egyptian religion into the Greek world through an interdisciplinary study of the iconography, archaeological contexts, clay fabric, and manufacturing techniques of terracotta figurines of Egyptian deities found at the important Hellenistic Greek trading port of Delos. Extant studies of Hellenistic terracotta figurines often take an art-historical approach, rather than considering the webs of social relations and practices surrounding these artifacts. However, when examined in their proper archaeological context, these figurines can shed light on many issues important to anthropologists as well as Classicists and Egyptologists. In particular, the presence of themes from so-called “official” religion in mass-produced, widely accessible objects such as terracotta figurines suggests a closer, more complex relationship between “popular” and “official” cults than is often acknowledged.
Papers by Caitie Barrett
Please note that because of copyright restrictions, the uploaded PDF contains only the title page.
Within Pompeian gardens, visual evocations of Egyptian landscapes appear in multiple media: both two-dimensional (e.g., paintings and mosaics that depict the Nile) and three-dimensional (e.g., water features and garden statuary). These objects and images interact with their settings to construct complex entanglements of “foreign” and “familiar,” “self” and “other.” Representations of Egyptian landscapes in Pompeian gardens enabled individuals to articulate and perform social identities as cosmopolitan, sophisticated citizens of empire. Yet at the same time, household material culture also exerted an agency of its own: domesticizing, familiarizing, and “Romanizing” once-foreign images and objects. That which was once alien and potentially dangerous was now part of the domus itself, increasingly incorporated into cultural constructions of Romanitas. Through participatory multimedia assemblages evoking landscapes simultaneously local and international, the houses examined in this book made the breadth of oikoumene compatible with the familiarity of home.
This monograph investigates the spread of Egyptian religion into the Greek world through an interdisciplinary study of the iconography, archaeological contexts, clay fabric, and manufacturing techniques of terracotta figurines of Egyptian deities found at the important Hellenistic Greek trading port of Delos. Extant studies of Hellenistic terracotta figurines often take an art-historical approach, rather than considering the webs of social relations and practices surrounding these artifacts. However, when examined in their proper archaeological context, these figurines can shed light on many issues important to anthropologists as well as Classicists and Egyptologists. In particular, the presence of themes from so-called “official” religion in mass-produced, widely accessible objects such as terracotta figurines suggests a closer, more complex relationship between “popular” and “official” cults than is often acknowledged.
Please note that because of copyright restrictions, the uploaded PDF contains only the title page.
Accordingly, this conference brings together perspectives from contemporary research on houses and households in both Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. In so doing, we also seek to place the archaeology of Greco-Roman Egypt in dialogue with recent theoretical and comparative research on households, dwelling, and daily practice. In order to best explore that potential, the theme and structure of this conference are intentionally multidisciplinary. Our speakers represent a broad range of disciplines, including archaeologists, papyrologists, historians, and art historians. In order to facilitate further dialogue, we have also invited respondents whose work has made important contributions to household archaeology for earlier historical periods in both Egypt and the Classical world.