Christos Theodorou (Hunter College)

Christos Theodorou is finishing the senior year of his B.A. in Classical Archaeology at Hunter College, where he has been awarded the Claireve Grandjouan Prize in Archaeology and is a member of the Solomon Bluhm Scholars Program for high-achieving students within the college’s Classics department. His interests focus on the archaeology of Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Cyprus, and he participated in his first excavation there in 2022 at the Bronze Age site of Kissonerga-Skalia under the direction of Dr. Lindy Crewe of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute. Most recently, Christos was accepted into the 2022–2023 AIA-NYS Scholars Program, through which he received their 2023 Research Scholarship. With this generous grant, he was able to return to Cyprus and join the excavation team at the Late Bronze Age site of Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios under the direction of Dr. Kevin Fisher of the University of British Columbia. Christos hopes to continue to broaden the foundation of his undergraduate studies at Hunter College through academic research and archaeological fieldwork—and better prepare for post-graduate education.

Migration runs through my family, and my desire to know more about long-lost or deceased family members expanded into learning about our cultural heritage and history. I’ve done research on the history of human and animal migration in the Andes, specifically the Qhapaq Ñan (Inca road) and the tambos lined alongside it. With NYU in December of 2021, I completed my Bachelors cum laude in Anthropology with a concentration in Native American Studies, and I am currently attending University of Florida for a Masters in Latin American Studies with a concentration in Indigenous studies. As an archaeologist, I have worked on various sites in Ecuador and Peru, focusing on human and animal remains, cistas, as well as ceramics and pigments. This past summer I worked on two sites around Huari, Peru, one called Ampas with Bebel Ibarra and the other Reparin with Dr. Jason Nesbitt, both in connection to Tulane University.

☞ Read about Illyamani’s work in the September 2022 issue of the AIA-New York Society Newsletter.

Becca Tauscher graduated from Hunter College and received her B.A. in Classical Studies and Classical Archaeology in the spring of 2021. While at Hunter, she was awarded the Solomon Bluhm Scholarship in classics and the Raab Presidential Research Fellowship. She also was accepted as the 2020–2021 Archaeological Institute of America New York Society Scholar. Her undergraduate thesis focused on Seven Against Thebes iconography in Etruscan material culture during the 5th–2nd century BCE and was written under Professor Joanne Spurza. Becca has worked with the Paideia Institute as a Latin teacher and tutor at ThinkPrep Academy in Manhattan, as well as helped to revive the Latin program at the Williamsburg Charter High School in Brooklyn. This past year she was a Senior Paideia Fellow working in Rome on various Paideia projects and running academic tours for high school and college students in Florence, Naples, Rome, and Greece. Over the summer she attended her first field school with the assistance of the AIA-NYS Research Scholarship. In July she worked at the Necropoli del Vallone di San Lorenzo alongside Italian students from the University of Perugia to excavate four 6th c. BCE tombs of either Etruscan or Umbrian origin. The work focused on four areas that have been surveyed earlier in the season: a collapsed chamber tomb, an exposed child’s burial, a Roman road of a later period, and another tomb that revealed a horse burial. At the end of the month, a fourth burial was discovered of a unexpected type: a cassone-type tomb unique to the necropolis. Rebecca spent her time learning and excavating on site, as well as doing catalog work in the museum of finds from the previous season.

☞ Read about Rebecca’s work in the September 2022 issue of the AIA-New York Society Newsletter.

Since 2019, Christina has been a PhD student at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University (ISAW NYU). In 2018, she received her B.A. in History and Archaeology from the University of Athens. She is presently studying material and textual evidence from the Iron Age Mediterranean, with a focus on the cultural entanglements and socioeconomic relations between Aegean and Levantine societies in the late second and first millennium BCE. Her interests include Greek colonization, the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean, the materiality of writing, and Digital Humanities. Since 2021, Christina has been a member of the Lyktos Archaeological Project, an excavation of the Archaeological Society at Athens. The excavation is co-directed by Dr. Antonis Kotsonas (ISAW NYU) and Dr. Angelos Chaniotis (IAS, Princeton University), in collaboration with Dr. Vasiliki Sythiakaki (Greek Archaeological Service). The project explores the ancient city of Lyktos, located on the island of Crete. During summer of 2021, Christina was involved in the excavation of a building complex dating to the Roman period (the so-called “bouleuterion”), and worked for the project as a GIS specialist. Her responsibilities included topographical documentation, mapping, architectural drawing, photogrammetry, and aerial photography.

☞ Read about Christina’s work on the Lyktos Archaeological Project in the September 2021 issue of the AIA-New York Society Newsletter.