Affiliation: University of Virginia
Tyler Jo Smith is Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Virginia, where she served as Director of the Interdisciplinary Archaeology Program until 2025. A specialist in ancient Greek figure-decorated pottery and material culture, her research engages with themes of performance and ritual. She is the author of Religion in the Art of Archaic and Classical Greece (UPenn Press, 2021) and co-editor of the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Ancient Greek Art (rev. 2018). Her current research is focused on the visual and material evidence for ancient festivals, representations of animals in the archeological record, and the display and uses of alcohol in ancient cultures across the globe. As a field archaeologist, she has worked on projects in Greece, Turkiye, Sicily, and the Levant, and is currently Associate Director of the Coastal Caesarea Archaeological Project. Tyler Jo is Chair of the AIA’s committee on the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum North America as well as Vice President of the Charlottesville Society. A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, London and the Institute of Classical Studies, London, she serves on the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where she was recently Whitehead Professor (2018-19). In 2026 she was the Thomas Jefferson Visiting Fellow at Downing College, Cambridge and in 2027 she will be the Gale Professor for the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens/University of Sydney.
Sacred landscapes are a well-recognized aspect of Classical antiquity. But what about the objects and images that populated them and, in turn, the people who used them? This talk will feature case studies from ancient Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Anatolia to consider some of the ways material and visual culture played a key role in religious life across space and time. By using a broad definition of religion, including both urban and rural settings, the themes of memory, ritual and identity will emerge as vital to contextualizing the sacred in Greek, non-Greek, and combined settings.
Vases or pots? Art objects or archaeological artifacts? Ancient Greek figure-decorated ceramics produced in the city of Athens and elsewhere survive in abundance. Be they adorning the shelves of modern museums or tucked away in excavation site storage, these objects have long been appreciated for their geometrical perfection and thier dynamic images of ancient myths and ritual practices. At same time, our own perceptions of them have evolved over time. Focusing on collection practices and modern reception, excavation histories and digital accessibility, this talk traces the modern history of ancient Greek vases from antiquity up to today and highlights the importance of archaeological thinking and analysis.
See Tyler Jo Smith's work in the American Journal of Archaeology.
