AIA News

January 28, 2021

2021 AIA Grant and Fellowship Winners


The Archaeological Institute of America is thrilled to announce our latest AIA grant winners.

The AIA recently awarded almost $300,000 in grants to 17 individuals and archaeological projects around the world. The grants will support excavation, analyses, and research in over a dozen countries, and the preservation of a historic African-American cemetery in the USA.

We congratulate all the winners and look forward to hearing about their work. To learn more about AIA grants and fellowships, visit https://www.archaeological.org/programs/professionals/grants-awards/

The Kathleen and David Boochever Endowment Fund for Fieldwork and Scientific Analyses:
Katherine D. van Schaik of Harvard University (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School) for Aging, the Epigenetics of Skeletal Repair, and Differential Survival of Skeletal Injury and Degeneration.
Award amount: $4,000.

The Julie Herzig Desnick Endowment Fund for Archaeological Field Surveys:
Cassandra (Beth) Koontz Scaffidi of the University of California, Merced for Wari Imperial Expansion and Dissolution: Insights from Pedestrian, UAV, and Isotopic Survey in the Caravelí Valley, Peru.
Award Amount: $4,350.

The Richard C. MacDonald Iliad Endowment for Archaeological Research:
Muge Durusu-Tanriover of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey for her project entitled, Conflict, Domination and Resistance in Late Bronze Age Anatolia.
Award amount: $20,000.

The Ellen and Charles Steinmetz Endowment Fund for Archaeology:
Jared Benton of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA and Christy Schirmer of The University of Texas at Austin, for The Urban Economy of Volubilis Project: Lithologies of Workshop Technologies.
Award amount: $5,500.

The Site Preservation Grant:
Saving Oberlin Cemetery – An Historic African-American Cemetery in Raleigh, NC.  
Award amount: $15,000.

AIA-NEH Grants
Small Grants:
Alexia Smith of University of Connecticut, for Cultivating a Broader Field of Archaeobotany: An Examination of Akkadian and Post-Akkadian Food, Fuel, Farming, and Adaptation at Tell Leilan, Syria.
Amount: $14,800

Jan F. Simek of University of Tennessee, Knoxville, for Photogrammetry at Picture Cave, USA.
Amount: $14,546

Laura Motta of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan, for Herding, Husbandry and the City: Stable Isotope Analysis of Gabii’s Animals, Italy.
Amount: $10,805

Natalie Abell of University of Michigan, for Chronological and Environmental Assessment of Charcoal from Neolithic and Bronze Age Kea (Cyclades), Greece.
Amount: $15,000

Sarah A. James of University of Colorado Boulder, for Western Argolid Petrography Project, Greece.
Amount: $15,000

Philip Sapirstein of University of Toronto, for Lydian Architectural Terracottas from the ‘Felsbarre’, Didyma, Turkey.
Amount: $5,700

David W. Mixter of Binghamton University, for Dating Changes in Preclassic Maya Monumental Architectural Styles at Actuncan, Belize.
Amount: $14,936

Maurizio Forte of Duke University, for Digital Vulci: Urban Development and Water Cults in Southern Etruria, Italy.
Amount: $9,213

Large Grants:
Akinwumi Ogundiran of The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, for Archaeology of Dependency in the Royal Necropolis of the Oyo Empire (Nigeria), Nigeria.
Amount: $31,200

Michael Cosmopoulos of University of Missouri-St. Louis, for Emergence of States in Myceanean Greece: Excavation at Iklaina, Greece.
Amount: $38,037

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, Teotihuacanos in Escuintla: Early Classic Interaction between Valley of Mexico and Pacific Coast of Guatemala, Guatemala.
Amount: $40,763

Cynthia Robin of Northwestern University, for Aventura: Economic Factors of City Longevity, Belize.
Amount: $40,000

Olivia James Traveling Fellowship:
Amanda Cates Ball of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for Identity Formation in Sacred Contexts of Aegean Thrace.
Award Amount: $24,000

John R. Coleman Traveling Fellowship
Crystal Rosenthal of the University of Texas at Austin for Agents on the Shore: Harbor Arches in Roman Port Cities
Award Amount: $10,000

Harriet and Leon Pomerance Fellowship:
Vasiliki Tsikritea of the University of Cincinnati for An Archaeology of Cult at Juktas, Crete, in the 12th-7th Centuries BCE: Pottery and Figurines.
Award Amount: $5,000

Archaeology of Portugal Fellowship:
Dr. Ana Abrunhosa of the University of Porto and the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour at Universidade do Algarve for Characterization of lithic raw materials exploited during Prehistory in western Iberia.
Award Amount: Varied

Publication Subvention Grants:
“The Bethlehem of Hellas.” Argos and its Archaeological Heritage in the Modern Era, by Dr. Jonathan M. Hall of the University of Chicago, published by Cornell University Press.

Leptiminus (Lamta), Report no. 4. The East Cemetery: Stratigraphy, Ceramics, Non-ceramic Finds and Bio-archaeological Studies, co-edited by Lea Stirling of the University of Manitoba, Nejib Ben Lazreg of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia, and Jennifer Moore of Trent University, Canada, published by the Journal of Roman Archaeology.

Isis in a Global Empire: Greek Identity through Egyptian Religion in Roman Greece, by Lindsey Mazurek of Indiana University, published by Cambridge University Press.

AIA/DAI Study in the U.S. Fellowship:
Melanie Jonasch, Field Project Manager of the German Archaeological Institute for New communities in old places: Greek colonization and processes of community building in archaic Sicily

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