May 6, 2025
Here at the AIA we are unleashing the power of archaeology to provide a better understanding of the past and present and to create a brighter future.
The 2025 Fellowship cohort includes four AIA Fellows setting off on journeys across the globe to uncover the past. Their projects will help expand our understanding of human history. And that’s just the beginning of how the AIA is exploring the world through archaeology this year!
Allison Grenda (PhD candidate, University of Michigan) will investigate how civic communities in the Byzantine Empire responded to violent destruction in their cities across the Eastern Mediterranean between the 4th-15th centuries C.E. By utilizing an understudied corpus of localized architecture, sculptures, archaeological remains, and historical source materials, Allison Grenda will explore alternatives to abandonment within the 6th to 9th centuries, visual representations of victory in the 10th to 11th centuries, and enterprises of Byzantines abroad and in exile through the 13th century.
Megan Savoy (PhD candidate, University of Michigan), will continue their research at the site of Roca Vecchia in Apulia, Italy in order to complete an analysis of the human skeletal remains from an Early Iron Age (950-700 BCE) mass grave. Megan plans to continue to clean and identify the rest of the skeletal elements, calculate estimations on the age and sex for the complete individuals, and record paleopathological data such as the presence of disease and trauma. This research will provide a more complete picture of life in Early Iron Age Italy by giving us a glimpse into the living conditions during this period of social and economic change.
The changeover from hunting and gathering to agropastoralism (~10,000 to 5,000 BCE) is recognized as one of the most impactful transformations in Human history. One of these transformations, animal domestication, played a pivotal role as it enabled humans to manage and exploit different animal products, including milk. Through the project “HIDDEN MILK—Uncovering Dairy Consumption in Recent Prehistoric Southern Portuguese Communities via Ancient Human Dental Calculus,” PhD candidate Adriana Carolina Carvalho Ferreira Malheiro Leite (The Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour (ICArEHB), University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal) will conduct dissertation research into Iberia’s dairy culture with support from the AIA’s Archaeology of Portugal Fellowship. HIDDEN MILK will broaden our understanding of behavioral diversity and the evolution of milk and demonstrate how deeply ingrained dairy practices are in our society.
Carly Henkel (PhD candidate, The Cyprus Institute) will investigate plant remains from the Minoan Bronze Age settlement at Karphi, Crete in order to explore the past agricultural choices and adaptations made by a community inhabiting one of the island’s mountainous plateaus. This study aims to uncover the types of plants that the Bronze Age community at Karphi chose to utilize for everything from their diet and agriculture practices to the creation of portable objects and construction materials, thereby addressing a knowledge gap about ancient plant exploitation practices in an upland environment of Crete.
