Elizabeth Barringer Fentress is a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

archaeologist who specialises in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

and

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

. She has collaborated on the excavation of numerous sites in the Western Mediterranean and published their results. She is also the originator and scientific director of the online database of excavations in Italy, Bulgaria and elsewhere Fasti Online (www.fastionline.org), and editor of its journal Fasti Online Documents & Research (FOLD&R). In 2021 she was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America's 2022 gold medal for distinguished archaeological achievement.

Biography

Fentress was educated at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

(BA 1969 Latin),

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

(MA 1974 Etruscan and Roman Archaeology) and St Hugh's College, Oxford (DPhil 1979 Roman Archaeology, ''The Economic Effects of the Roman Army on Southern Numidia''). She was a Visiting Professor at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

(2007–12), Visiting Fellow of

All Souls College All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of t ...

, Oxford (2010) and Mellon Professor at the

American Academy in Rome The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) in Rome. The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. History In 1893, a group of American architects, ...

(1996–99). Previously, Fentress was a former President of the International Association of Classical Archaeology ( AIAC), corresponding member of the

German Archaeological Institute The German Archaeological Institute (german: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, ''DAI'') is a research institute in the field of archaeology (and other related fields). The DAI is a "federal agency" under the Federal Foreign Office of Germany ...

and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries since 2006. In 2003, she set u
Fasti Online
an international database of Mediterranean archaeological excavation. Then in 2013, she was the winner of the first Archaeological Institute of America Award for Outstanding Digital Archaeology. She is an Honorary Visiting Professor at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. She will be awarded the Archaeological Institute of America's gold medal for distinguished archaeological achievement at the San Francisco meetings in January 2022. Her husband James Fentress, an anthropologist and historian.

Scholarship

Her primary concentration has been on the application of

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

to history of the

longue durée The ''longue durée'' (; en, the long term) is the French Annales School approach to the study of history. It gives priority to long-term historical structures over what François Simiand called ''histoire événementielle'' ("evental history", ...

in both the Italian peninsula and the countries of

. Her work has focused on social and economic aspects of Roman landscapes of all periods, with special regard to the interaction between Roman and non-Roman peoples at their points of contact in areas such as slave markets, the

limes Limes may refer to: * the plural form of lime (disambiguation) Lime commonly refers to: * Lime (fruit), a green citrus fruit * Lime (material), inorganic materials containing calcium, usually calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide * Lime (color), a ...

, and urban areas. She is also a leader in the application of open-area, single-context stratigraphic excavation and intensive survey techniques, and she has directed or co-directed the following survey and excavation projects: * Albegna Valley Survey, Italy (with M. Grazia Celuzza) 1979-84 * Setif, Algeria (with A. Mohamedi) 1979-85 *

Cosa Cosa was a Latin colony founded in southwestern Tuscany in 273 BC, on land confiscated from the Etruscans, to solidify the control of the Romans and offer the Republic a protected port. The Etruscan site (called ''Cusi'' or ''Cosia'') may have ...

, Italy 1990-97 *

Jerba Djerba (; ar, جربة, Jirba, ; it, Meninge, Girba), also transliterated as Jerba or Jarbah, is a Tunisian island and the largest island of North Africa at , in the Gulf of Gabès, off the coast of Tunisia. It had a population of 139,544 a ...

, Tunisia (with Renata Holod and Ali Drine) 1996-2001 *

Volubilis Volubilis (; ar, وليلي, walīlī; ber, ⵡⵍⵉⵍⵉ, wlili) is a partly excavated Berber-Roman city in Morocco situated near the city of Meknes, and may have been the capital of the kingdom of Mauretania, at least from the time of Kin ...

, Morocco (with G. Palumbo and H. Limane) 2000-05 (with C. Fenwick and H. Limane) (2018-) * S. Sebastiano at Alatri (with Caroline Goodson, M. Laird, S. Leone) *

Villa Magna Villa Magna is a large imperial ancient Roman villa near the modern town of Anagni, in Lazio, central Italy. The site lies in the Valle del Sacco some 65 km south of Rome, at the foot of the Monti Lepini, directly under the peak known as ...

, Italy 2006-10 *

Utica, Tunisia Utica () was an ancient Phoenician and Carthaginian city located near the outflow of the Medjerda River into the Mediterranean, between Carthage in the south and Hippo Diarrhytus (present-day Bizerte) in the north. It is traditionally consider ...

(with I. Ben Jerbania, Josephine Quinn and Andrew Wilson) (2010–17)Hay, S., Fentress, E., Kallala, N., Quinn, J., and Wilson, A. 2010. Utica. In Papers of the British School at Rome 78 : 325-29

Publications

* ''Numidia and the Roman Army'' (1979) * ''Fouilles de Setif 1977-1983'' (1991) * (with Michael Brett) ''The Berbers'' (1996) * ''Romanization and the City, Creation, Transformations and Failures'' (2000) * (with A. Carandini, F. Cambi and M. Grazia Celuzza) Paesaggi d'Etruria tra l'Albegna et la Fiora (2002) * ''Cosa V: An intermittent town'' (2003) * (with M. Laird, S. Leone, C. Goodson) ''Walls and Memory: the Abbey of San Sebastiano at Alatri'' (2005) * (with R. Holod and A. Drine) ''An Island through time: Jerba Studies volume I'' (2009) * (with Hendrik Dey) ''The Spaces of European Monasticism'' (2011) * (with Patrice Cressier) ''La Céramique Islamique Maghrébine du haut Moyen Age'' (2011) * (with C. Goodson, M. Maiuro) ''Villa Magna : an imperial estate and its legacies : excavations 2006-10'' (2016) * (with H. Limane) '' Volubilis après Rome. Les fouilles UCL/INSAP. 2000-2005'' (2019)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fentress, Elizabeth 1948 births American archaeologists Living people University of Pennsylvania alumni Alumni of University College London Alumni of St Hugh's College, Oxford American women archaeologists Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London British women historians 21st-century American women