American archaeologist
Elizabeth Barringer Fentress is a Roman archaeologist who specialises in Italy and North Africa. 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 (BA 1969 Latin), University College London (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).[1]
She was a Visiting Professor at University College London (2007–12), (2018-2023), Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford (2010) and Mellon Professor at the American Academy in Rome (1996–99).[2]
Previously, Fentress is a former President of the International Association of Classical Archaeology (AIAC), corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries since 2006.[3]
In 2003, she set up 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.[4] She is an Honorary Visiting Professor at University College London.[5]
She was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America's gold medal for distinguished archaeological achievement at the San Francisco meetings in January 2022.[6]
Her husband James Fentress is an anthropologist and historian.
Scholarship
Her primary concentration has been on the application of archaeology to history of the longue durée in both the Italian peninsula and the countries of North Africa. 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, urban areas like Cosa in Italy and Meninx, Utica, Sétif and Volubilis in North Africa and an imperial Villa, Villa Magna, in Italy. 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[7]
- Setif, Algeria (with A. Mohamedi) 1979-85[8]
- Cosa, Italy 1990-97[9]
- Jerba, Tunisia; field survey of the island (with Renata Holod and Ali Drine) 1996-2001[10]
- Volubilis, Morocco (with G. Palumbo and H. Limane) 2000-05[11] (with C. Fenwick and H. Limane) (2018-)
- S. Sebastiano at Alatri (with Caroline Goodson, M. Laird, S. Leone)
- Villa Magna, Italy 2006-10[12]
- Utica, Tunisia (with I. Ben Jerbania, Josephine Quinn and Andrew Wilson) (2010–17)[13]
