Maggie Beeler

I am a field archaeologist by training and my research centers broadly on issues of social difference and intersectionality in the ancient Mediterranean world. I believe that studying the past helps us to better understand the present, just as learning a new language helps us with our native tongue, and I use archaeology as an opportunity to teach students crucial source evaluation and critical analysis skills that serve them beyond the classroom. 

Before joining the Pitt Classics faculty, I lived and worked in Philadelphia as Visiting Assistant Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Art and Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Instruction of Greek and Roman Classics at Temple University. I took my Ph.D. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology in 2018 at Bryn Mawr College, where I wrote my dissertation on emerging social complexity and early inequality in Greek prehistory. 

My global approach to the ancient world draws from my background in Near Eastern Archaeology to highlight multiculturalism in the ancient Mediterranean world. Integrating both textual and material sources, my courses highlight historical points of cross-cultural contact that shaped the development of the classical tradition, from Late Bronze Age internationalism and “orientalizing” art of the Archaic period to anti-Persian antagonism of the Classical period, cultural hybridity in the Hellenistic world, and Roman imperialism.

Exploring social differences at various points of cultural contact affords students perspective on the diversity of the ancient world that helps them to navigate an increasingly globalized modern world. In addition, such an intersectional approach to the ancient Mediterranean challenges the supremacist narrative that western civilization is strictly Europe in origin and development, prompting students to interrogate other racialized receptions of Greek and Roman antiquity that continue to shape the world around them.