Alumna Profile: Deb T. ('05) in Athens, Greece

I graduated from UE with a major in Archaeology and a double minor in Classical Studies and Anthropology. I was also the Archaeology Club president (and president of my sorority!) and really enjoyed the wide range of scholastic and social events that UE had to offer. Also, UE’s strong endorsement of study abroad programs got me more interested in having the life of a travelling archaeologist. In the fall of 2003, less than a year before the 2004 Olympics, I spent a semester in Athens, Greece with the College Year in Athens Program (CYA). Combining what I learned in the basement of Hyde Hall with on-site instructional classes solidified my decision to become a classical archaeologist.

After graduating from UE, I immediately went on to graduate school at Florida State University, along with three other Aces from the Archaeology program (Philip Griffith, Maureen M., and Lafe Meicenheimer). I was admitted into the Classics Department at FSU, where I earned my MA in Classical Archaeology, and was accepted into the PhD program with a full scholarship, allowing me to teach courses in mythology and Latin. I spent the 2010-2011 school year in Greece as a regular member of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (ASCSA) and received the Philip J. Lockhart Fellowship from the ASCSA, which provided room, board, and a stipend for travels in addition to a Thompson Fellowship from FSU's Classics department. In the fall semester, I, along with other students at the ASCSA, traveled all over Greece – from Vergina to the Mani – giving on-site presentations and learning more about ancient sites from excavators, as well as the modern culture and its recent history.



Deb gives a presentation on the Delphi Charioteer at the Delphi Museum.

In the spring semester, I worked in the Corinth and Mycenae museums, beginning work on my dissertation entitled "Pots in the Periphery: Ceramic Analysis of Mycenaean Cooking Vessels and its Implications for an Integrated World-Systems Model." With the help of my advisor, Dr. Daniel Pullen (FSU), my dissertation involves stylistic, microscopic and chemical analyses of cooking vessels from several Mycenaean (1500-1100 BC) sites, including Mycenae, Zygouries, and Kalamianos, the recently-discovered site under co-directorship of Dr. Daniel Pullen (FSU, Classics) and Dr. Thomas Tartaron (University of Pennsylvania).


Deb working on pottery in the Corinth Museum.

I am now in the fourth year of my PhD at FSU, having earned my candidacy just last year, and am writing this blog entry from Athens, Greece. Even this far away from UE, I still find connections with my alma mater: I’m working on the same vessels from Zygouries that Dr. Thomas did for his dissertation; I continually get asked if I know “so and so” from UE, even though he/she graduated in ’92; I even ran into several Aces on our trips: Vince Valenti, who joined the ASCSA trip to the Argolid, and Melissa Eaby, who is now working at the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP) on Crete. Back at FSU I am classmates with a UE alumna (Hillary C.) and we often talk about going to teach at a school like UE when we graduate. It seems I can’t go anywhere without being reminded of my days as an Ace.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Drs. Thomas, Kaiser, and Ebeling, as well as Dr. Berry in Anthropology and Dr. Ware in Religion, for their support and encouragement to follow the path that I am taking today. I know that the undergraduates at UE are in good hands! GO ACES!

(Left: Deb in front of the Treasury of Atreus, Mycenae)

Student Cynthia Torrez in Athens



Cynthia inside the Parthenon during one of our on-site classes.

During the 2010 fall semester I studied in Athens, Greece with the College Year in Athens program. I feel like I had a unique experience because the program housed us in nearby apartment buildings so my roommates and I had only Greek neighbors. This is definitely something I know some study abroad students never get to experience. From day one we were fully immersed in a culture I knew very little about! This changed pretty quickly, however, and in my Archaeology of Athens, Modern Greek, and Greek Ethnography classes I learned plenty about Greece’s foundations, history and culture. Within the first week of classes, we were already going to on-site locations for my Archaeology of Athens class to get up close and personal with what we were studying. The first day we hiked up the Philopappos Hill, a hill just across from the Acropolis, and we got an amazing view of the city while we learned about the topography of Athens. 

During the first few weekends, my five other roommates and I explored Athens and the surrounding areas; we went to Sounio to see the Temple of Poseidon, to Meteora to see the amazing cliff-top monasteries, and to the island Hydra, where no motorized vehicles are permitted. A few weeks into the program, the school took all 150 students to the island of Crete for a week long field trip. After surviving th e 10 hour overnight ferry ride we arrived in the small town of Heraklion. The teachers were our tour guides as we went to sites around the island. One of the most interesting parts was watching the tour busses navigate the narrow, winding cliffside roads that covered most of the island. I’m still convinced that pure luck and magic got us around some of those sudden bends. After a week of visiting ancient Minoan sites all over the island and relaxing on the beaches during our free time, we headed back to Athens.


At Mycenae.

Later in the semester, the school took us on another field trip around the Peloponnese. My Ancient Greek Athletics professor took his classes to many of the old stadiums and sports sites, like Olympia, and we also visited a few Mycenaean sites. They also made sure we saw some other important modern sites like the man-made Corinth Canal and the new Rio Antirrio Bridge, a feat of engineering. We ended our trip at Delphi where we got to see the site of the oracle then we had to return to our “normal” lives in Athens.



Over Thanksgiving break a few friends and I went to Cairo. We got to see all the main sites but my favorite experience was when we went to some stables after dark and were able to ride horses through the desert to a Bedouin camp and drink tea while peering at the pyramids in the distance.

Sitting on the camp wall in Giza with the pyramids in the background.

However, after break, the semester was finishing up and most of my time was devoted to studying for finals. This didn't stop me from spending my last days wandering around Athens and seeing things I hadn’t seen yet around the city. I also practiced my Greek while souvenir shopping, and by now I could speak almost all Greek from the time I walked into a store to when I left. Most of the locals were surprised to hear I wasn’t at least Greek-American; I was pretty proud of myself about that. But finally the time came to leave. I'll hopefully find myself back there soon.

Student Sara S. and alumna Dani R. in Hungary

Sara studying abroad in Rome in 2009.

Archaeology senior Sara Spatafore is one of seven undergraduate and graduate students in the country selected to participate in a National Science Foundation funded multidisciplinary research project in Hungary, Greece and the USA in 2011.  The Koros Regional Archaeology Project, which is funded by the NSF International Research Experiences for Students Program, will require students to participate in an archaeological research project in Hungary and design an independent research project; work with scientists in Greece, Hungary and the USA to analyze and interpret their data; present their results at conferences; publish their results in peer-reviewed journals; and disseminate their findings via the web and other media.  The Koros team is studying prehistoric European agricultural villages on the Great Hungarian Plain occupied between 5500 and 4500 BCE.

Archaeology alumna Danielle Riebe (’08), currently a PhD candidate in Central Asian Archaeology at the University of Illinois-Chicago, will also participate in the field project in Hungary as the GPS Technician. 

Student Michael Koletsos at Nemea, Greece

This summer I traveled to Greece and worked within the Sanctuary of Zeus at Nemea with a team from the University of California, Berkeley. Our team was divided into smaller groups and every three days we rotated into work at the different trenches or the museum. We opened two trenches in the Hero Shrine to determine what occurred there during the early periods of the site. We also opened a trench in search of the hippodrome that was home to the horse racing event held during the Nemean Games. I especially enjoyed creating my own interpretation of what occurred at the site at the end of the season based upon the evidence we discovered. This opportunity was truly a worthwhile experience for me because I learned more about the process of archaeology, visited many sites in Greece, and met other students from around the country with similar interests.

Michael is a junior Archaeology major at UE. More information about UC Berkeley’s excavations at Nemea can be found here.