Maggie Beeler of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology has successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled "The Social Dynamics of Early Helladic Sealing Practices: Seal Use and Social Change in Early Bronze Age Greece." Her work investigates the social dynamics of sealing practices in Early Helladic Greece (ca. 3100-2000 BCE). In much of the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world, ornate and highly symbolic seals were used to certify documents, trade goods, and transactions between people, and in some places, with gods. Maggie challenges previous scholarship that exclusively correlated sealing practices with institutional hierarchies and the personal signatures of elites, a practice known from later periods in Greece. Instead her dissertation suggests that Early Helladic seal iconography reflects group emblems of communities and their access to pooled resources, especially goods used for communal feasting. Her dissertation was advised by James C. Wright, Professor Emeritus in Archaeology and former Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1995-2000).
Maggie is currently Adjunct Instructor in Greek and Roman Classics at Temple University, currently teaching the class "Race in the Ancient Mediterranean." Next semester she will continue as an instructor at Temple as well as teach the course "Cult and Community" on ancient Greek religion at Rutgers University, Camden. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences warmly congratulates Maggie Beeler on her success.