Current Grad Students in Archaeology

Katie Breyer 

Katie Breyer is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. She received her B.A. in both Archaeology and Classical Civilizations from the University of Cincinnati in 2018 and her M.A. from Bryn Mawr College in 2020. Her M.A. thesis focused on the transformation of Naqš-e Rostam from a royal, Achaemenid necropolis into a Sasanian political landscape. She has previously excavated at Morgantina in Sicily, the Vagnari Cemetery in southern Italy, worked with a small finds team at Pompeii, and most recently worked with the Sinus Archaeological Survey and the S’Urachi Project in western Sardinia. Her main interests are in spatial and landscape archaeology, settlement patterns, the construction of power and identity, and post-colonial approaches to the Roman empire. Her dissertation, focused in Sardinia, explores the changes to the rural landscape during the Punic and Roman periods through the lens of ritual and religious practices. kbreyer@brynmawr.edu

Tracey Cian

Tracey is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. She obtained her B.A. in Heritage Studies at the University of Pisa in 2010, focusing her research on Egyptology and Near Eastern studies. She subsequently graduated from University College of London in Qatar in 2015 with an M.A. in Archaeology of the Arab and Islamic World, and in 2019 she received her second M.A. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College. She has previously worked on excavations and surveys in Italy, Greece, Oman, northern Lebanon, and Qatar. Most recently, she returned to the field to work on two early Islamic sites in northern Qatar, while this year she participated in the excavation of a Bronze Age site, which was led by the German Archaeological Institute, in north-western Saudi Arabia .

Her research primarily focuses on the societal interactions within the Arabian Peninsula and in the larger SWANA region, and on the ritual features of the Arabian Peninsula during the Bronze Age and Iron Age. However, her research interests also include analysing Late Islamic ceramics from the Gulf, trading connections between the Gulf, the SWANA region and the Far East, and Ancient South Arabian epigraphy.

Jeff Cumonow

Jeff Cumonow is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. He received his B.A. in History and Anthropology at Eckerd College in 2013. He subsequently graduated from The University of Chicago in 2019 with an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies with a focus in Near Eastern History and Late Antique-Early Islamic Archaeology. He received his second M.A. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College in 2022. He has previously been employed as a conservator and archaeologist for cultural ministries in the southern Levant and as Head of Museum Archives at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago. He has worked at numerous locations across the Mediterranean, including Cyprus, Turkey, Spain, and the Southern Levant. Sites he has led excavations at include the large Late Bronze-Early Iron Age settlements of Tel Keisan, Zincirli Höyük, Idalion, and Cerro del Villar.

Jeff’s dissertation explores the archaeology of Late Bronze and Early Iron Age landscapes in the southern Levant. His work focuses on change, continuity and large-scale transitions of settlement patterns, and in examining how these appear in optimal and sub-optimal regions and in rural and urban locales. His additional research interests are in cultures of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age eastern Mediterranean, spolia and reuse, and Late Antique and Early Islamic urban morphology and architecture.

Daniel D'Elia

Daniel D'Elia is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. He received his B.A. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology with a Minor in Physics at Bryn Mawr College in 2022 and his M.A. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr in 2023 with the thesis, "Chian Mastic: A Reconsideration of Recent Chemical Studies and a Diachronic Survey of Ancient Greek References to Mastic and its Natural Products." Daniel has excavated in the United States, Romania, and Greece, and has most recently participated as a volunteer at the Agora Excavations in Athens under the American School of Classical Studies in 2022 and 2023. His primary research interests include human and non-human interactions, particularly in relation to agriculture, subsistence, and trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. He is also interested in ancient conceptions of embodied experience and physical reality, encompassing the archaeology of the body and senses, along with ancient science.

Kari Fossum

Kari Fossum is an M.A. candidate in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. She received her B.A. in Classics at Mount Holyoke College in 2021. Her research interests include connectivity, mobility, and identity formation during the Archaic period in the culturally Greek ‘colonies’ on the northern and eastern Black Sea littoral, interactions between these Greeks and Scythians, the evolution of attitudes towards archaeology in the modern nations occupying this area, and contemporary cultural heritage issues, especially in regions impacted by conflict. Kari has excavated in Italy at the Etruscan site of Poggio Civitate.

Yusi Liu 

Yusi Liu (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology (CNEA) at Bryn Mawr College. She received her B.A. with honors in Art History and Classics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018 and her M.A. in CNEA at Bryn Mawr in 2021 with the thesis "Art Meets Archaeology on Delos: Antony Gormley's SIGHT as a Heuristic Tool to Read the Archaeological Site." Her research interests include Greek art and archaeology, classical receptions, and museum and collection studies. She participated in the American School for Classical Studies in Athens Summer Session in 2019 and the Tulane-Siena Summer Study Institute for International Law, Cultural Heritage & the Arts in 2023. Yusi has experience at the Bryn Mawr Art & Artifacts Collection, the Penn Museum, the Athenian Agora Excavation Archive, the Ancient Corinth Museum, and the Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum. She was a graduate Antiquities curatorial intern at the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2023-24. Her dissertation examines the history of exhibitions of ancient Greek art in the United States from the mid-20th century, exploring the ways in which these exhibitions shaped cultural exchange, diplomatic relations, and public perceptions of ancient Greece and archaeology. yliu2@brynmawr.edu

Ashley Mason

Ashley is an M.A. candidate in the Department of Near Eastern and Classical Archaeology. She received her B.A. from the Ohio State University in classics and ancient history in 2010, and her M.A. from Texas Tech University in classics in 2012, where she served as adjunct faculty from 2012-2015. Her research interests include the material culture of religion, religious transformations in Magna Graecia and the Levant, Greek and Roman sanctuaries, and the archaeology of Jordan. She has excavated in Greece, Roman Britain, and currently excavates in Jordan and Italy.

Illizt Elena Castillo Pineda

Illizt Elena Castillo Pineda is an international M.A. student from Mexico. She has a B.A. in English Language and Literature (with Honorific Mention) and a B.A. in Classics (also with Honorific Mention); both degrees conferred by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Pending is her forthcoming MA in Comparative Literature also from UNAM, as she is currently completing her M.A. thesis on the analysis of plants and tree allegorical-symbolic imagery featured in the poetry of both T.S. Eliot and Seneca. Illizt’s research interests are Bronze Age glyptic, Etruscan material culture, trade and transport networks of antiquity, the ancient seafaring and waterways, and ancient technology and materiality.

Caroline Pope

Caroline is an M.A. candidate in the department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. She received a B.A. in both Classical and Mediterranean Studies and Anthropology from Vanderbilt University in 2023. Her research interests include queer people in the ancient past, especially in ancient Greece, as well as archaeobotany. She is currently working at an archaeological excavation in Lixus, Morocco, where she is studying viniculture during Roman occupation of the site.

Clare Rasmussen 

Clare Rasmussen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. She received her B.A. in anthropology and classical archaeology from the University of Michigan in 2015 and her M.A. in Classics from the University of Arizona in 2017. She has worked at several sites in Italy and the United States, but more recently the Mt. Lykaion Survey and Excavation Project (2016-2018), Gordion Archaeological Project (2019), and Gird-I Matrab Archaeological Project (2024).  She was an ACOR-CAORC Pre-Doctoral Fellow for the 2022-2023 year, where she researched her dissertation while living in Amman, Jordan. She is primarily interested in Roman archaeology with a particular focus on water studies, city planning, architecture, landscape, and cultural identity.  Her dissertation focuses on the design of water supply systems and water consumption practices at the sites of Jerash, Gadara, and Amman in the Roman Decapolis, a micro-region in Southwest Asia. ckrasmusse@brynmawr.edu

Andrea Samz-Pustol 

Andrea is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. She received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in Classics and Art History in 2010, her M.A. from the University of Kansas in Classics in 2014, and her M.A. from Bryn Mawr in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology in 2017. Andrea’s M.A. thesis examined the logistics of land transportation of quarried stone for temples, city walls, and houses at Agrigento, Selinunte, and Syracuse in Sicily. She studied the temporal and spatial context of stone transport and used Google Earth to study and map transport roads. Her research interests include Greek sanctuaries, the ancient diet, agriculture, Magna Graecia, sculpture and architecture, artistic practices, construction processes, and cross-cultural interaction. Andrea's dissertation examines the function and symbolism of vegetal representations offered in Greek sanctuaries within the wider context of sacrifice, offerings, and diet. She has excavated at the Villa delle Vignacce in Rome, the Porta Marina in Ostia, Gournia in Crete, Corinth in Greece, Tharros in Sardinia, and has worked at Morgantina in Sicily since 2015.  She was an associate member at the American School for Classical Studies in Athens (2018-2019).

Megan Sligar

Megan is a Ph.D. candidate currently working on her dissertation, provisionally set to investigate the intersection of landscapes, burial structures, and burial goods as reflections of the cosmologies of Eurasian pastoralists. In 2016 she earned her M.A. from Bryn Mawr College with the thesis, “Nomads and the Luristan Bronzes: Politics, the Excavations of Louis Vanden Berghe, and the Formation of Archaeological Discourse in Twentieth Century Iran." In 2013 she completed the post-baccalaureate program in classical languages at Georgetown University. She received her B.A. from Tufts University in 2011. She has excavated at the Roman fort of Binchester in the UK, Gabii in Italy, and Apollonia Pontica in Bulgaria. Most recently (2017 and 2018) she has worked on the joint Uzbek-American excavations in the Bukhara Oasis of Uzbekistan. Her interests include nomadism and the material culture of pastoralists in the steppe lands from Ukraine to Central Asia, landscape theory, object theory, and mortuary practice. Other interests include museum studies and practices, object care and conservation, public reception of antiquity, Late Antiquity, and frontier studies.

Lala St. Fleur

Lala St. Fleur is an M.A. candidate in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. She received her B.A. in anthropology from Brooklyn College in 2018, with a concentration in Japanese archaeology, and a double minor in classics and history. She received her M.A. in liberal studies from the City University of New York's Graduate Center in 2020, with a concentration in the archaeology of the Classical, Late Antique, and Islamic worlds. Lala's research interests include comparative studies of world mythologies, chthonic cults, hero cults, and religious iconography.

Bingxian Yu

Bingxian is an M.A. student in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. She received her B.A. in History from East China Normal University in 2020, and her M.A. in History from Fudan University in 2023, with a thesis focusing on seals from Persepolis Fortification Archive in the Achaemenid Empire. Bingxian's research interests are seals and sealings in the ancient Near East, especially the Achaemenid period, and the functions of seals in social life.