Birkbeck, University of London, and the British Museum

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award PhD Studentship

BETWEEN ASIA AND EUROPE: MEDITERRANEAN NETWORKS AND ISLAND IDENTITY ON RHODES, 8TH TO 5TH CENTURIES BC

The British Museum and the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London, are pleased to invite applications for a fully funded doctoral studentship awarded to Birkbeck and the British Museum under the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Collaborative Doctoral Award scheme.

This 3-year studentship is for research in Classical Archaeology on the topic ‘Between Asia and Europe: Mediterranean networks and island identity on Rhodes, 8th to 5th centuries BC’, starting in autumn term 2014. The studentship will be awarded on the basis of academic merit.

The successful applicant is expected to have obtained (by October 2014) a Masters Degree in Classical Archaeology or a related field and should be familiar with using artefacts as historical sources.

PhD scope, methods and research questions The successful applicant will prepare a doctoral dissertation that investigates how the island community of Rhodes developed in response to changing patterns of inter- and cross-cultural connectivity, by examining how local and imported material culture was employed in the negotiation of social and cultural identities.

The studentship provides a unique opportunity to work directly with the rich archaeological material in the collections of the British Museum. Artefact assemblages from Rhodes – in the majority tomb groups and sanctuary dedications – in the British Museum and elsewhere provide the starting-point for analyzing the interactions of the island’s communities with the broader Mediterranean world and the effect which these interactions had on the formation of a Rhodian regional identity that cut across the island’s three autonomous city-states.

The PhD project is expected to focus on questions of identity within the dynamic context of maritime interaction: how do island communities develop in response to evolving patterns of inter- and cross-cultural connectivity? How is local and foreign material culture employed in the negotiation of social and cultural identities? Can traditional, text-based historical narratives of the development of ‘Greek culture’ be enriched or challenged by a close study of social practice from the archaeological record?

Rhodes was a significant node in the maritime networks of the eastern Mediterranean, subject to power politics ranging from Assyrian, Persian and Athenian imperialism, to the imperial conflicts of modern times that occasioned the island’s archaeological exploration. Artefact assemblages from Rhodes provide the basis on which the student will analyse the interaction of the inhabitants of Rhodes with the broader Mediterranean world and the impact this had on the formation of a pan-Rhodian identity foreshadowing the political unification of the independent poleis into a federal state in 408 BC. In so doing, the student will test what has arguably become a new consensus in historiography: namely, that the emergence in the 6th century BC of a self-aware Greek ‘civilization’ transcending the geographically dispersed Greek-speaking polities was down to the ‘back-ripple effect’ of joint overseas commercial, military and colonial ventures in early Archaic times. To date, however, the scholarship on Archaic Greek networks is based almost exclusively on literary sources, on the basis of which it has tended to make broad claims about cultural identities and practices. Archaeology rarely features as evidence, and even if it does, the resulting network studies tend to be compromised by the fact that major recent advances in scholarly understanding of material culture assemblages are not taken into account. A prime example is the ubiquitous East Greek pottery, once believed to be locally produced (‘Rhodian’) but now recognised as mostly imported from Ionian coastal cities. Why did local production decline in the 7th century, and what role did imports play in the construction of local identities?

The British Museum holds important well-documented yet essentially unstudied archaeological assemblages from cemeteries and sanctuaries of the period in question, excavated in the 19th century. Other finds from Kameiros, from the trade harbour of Vroulia and sanctuaries at Lindos and Ialysos, are known through publications. The assemblages offer a unique opportunity to illuminate the island’s cultural formation and its long-distance links stretching from Egypt to Cyprus, Phoenicia, Ionia and mainland Greece, and provide a rich body of evidence from which the student can shape their own research. In order to address the research questions and critically review generalizations made in recent scholarship, the student will analyse and compare artefact assemblages from the cemeteries and sanctuaries of the Rhodian cities (Ialysos, Kameiros and Lindos) and trade harbours (Vroulia), and set them against selected assemblages from sites within the Rhodian network of trade and settlement (including e.g. Gela in Sicily and Naukratis in Egypt), investigating commonalities or divergences in material choices that offer insight into the ritual and everyday practices (including foodways and belief systems) through which identities were maintained, and evaluating the impact of topographical conditions (accessibility, place on trade routes and in island distribution networks) at different sites. A multi-pronged approach to establishing object provenance will include an exploration of the usefulness of scientific analyses.

The PhD is expected to:  Systematize the Late Geometric to early Classical Rhodian finds in the British Museum (first-hand) and elsewhere (through publications), reconstruct their original archaeological contexts with the help of the rich extant excavation documentation, and situate them within the overall Rhodian context  Analyse and compare Rhodian assemblages with a representative selection of well-preserved artefact assemblages from associated sites and in their Aegean and wider Eastern Mediterranean context  Produce a graphic record (maps, GIS modelling) of the relevant Rhodian sites to assist archaeological landscape analysis (training at Birkbeck GEDS)  Assess Rhodian colonial foundation legends and the synoikismos of 408 BC within the context of Aegean political history, and assess the role played by changing patterns in local, regional and ‘international’ economic and religious connectivity for these events

Supervision and training The PhD will be supervised jointly by Dr. Christy Constantakopoulou (Birkbeck), Dr. Caspar Meyer (Birkbeck) and Dr. Alexandra Villing (British Museum). The degree will be awarded by the University of London. The student will be able to participate in additional training and other opportunities provided to CDA students by the National Museums, British Library and National Archives. The Studentship The award pays fees up to the value of the full-time home/EU rate for MPhil/PhD degrees as well as maintenance (the latter is available to UK citizens and residents only, see http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/Student-Funding- Guide.pdf). In addition, the student is eligible to receive up to £1000 a year from the British Museum towards research expenses.

Entry requirements The normal minimum requirement for applicants is to have completed (or to be near completion of) a taught or research Master’s degree in a relevant subject at a UK university (or an equivalent international qualification) with a confirmed (or predicted) overall grade of Merit (60+) or above, and a grade of 65+ in the dissertation.

Applicants whose first language is not English (or who have not previously obtained a University degree in English) are required to demonstrate their proficiency in the English language. Our normal minimum requirement is an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) score of 7.0 overall (with at least 7.0 in writing and 6.5 in the other elements).

Application process The deadline for the application is 15 April 2014. Applicants are advised to send a CV (including information on degrees held and their classification, a list of publications (if appropriate), and the names and contact details of two referees) and a covering letter, outlining why the applicant is suitable for this position (500 words). The application documents should be sent to [email protected], by 15th April 2014, with the subject line of the e-mail stating: ‘HCA-CDA Rhodes’.

In addition, applicants must submit, by the deadline, the electronic College application form accessible under: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/2014/phd/programmes/RMPCLARC/. Please enter the reference ‘HCA-CDA Rhodes’, in the section ‘details of scholarship or grants’, and the 500-word statement under the section ‘research proposal’.

Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed in the week commencing 19 May 2014.

For further information, please contact Christy Constantakopoulou ([email protected]) or Caspar Meyer ([email protected]).

Birkbeck is an equal opportunities employer and encourages applications from all candidates irrespective of gender, ethnicity, age, disability, religious belief and sexual preference.