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 Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

who specialises in

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

and

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

. 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 (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

(BA 1969 Latin),

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

(MA 1974 Etruscan and Roman Archaeology) and

St Hugh's College, Oxford St Hugh's College is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford. It is located on a site on St Margaret's Road, to the north of the city centre. It was founded in 1886 by Elizabeth Wordsworth as a ...

(DPhil 1979 Roman Archaeology, ''The Economic Effects of the Roman Army on Southern Numidia''). She was a visiting professor at

(2007–12), (2018-2023), Visiting Fellow of

All Souls College All Souls College (official name: The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed, of Oxford) 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 me ...

, 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 in Rome, Italy. The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. History 19th century In 1893, a group of American architect ...

(1996–99). Fentress is a former president of the International Association of Classical Archaeology ( AIAC), corresponding member of the

German Archaeological Institute The German Archaeological Institute (, ''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, Federal Foreign Office of Germany. Status, tasks and ...

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 The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) is North America, North America's oldest learned society and largest organization devoted to the world of archaeology. AIA professionals have carried out archaeological fieldwork around the world and ...

Award for Outstanding Digital Archaeology. She was an Honorary Visiting Professor at

between 2018 and 2023. She was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America's gold medal for distinguished archaeological achievement at the San Francisco meetings in January 2022. Most recently she initiated a new platform, the North African Heritage Archives Networ
NAHAN
an open- access repository for the archives of North African archaeology. Her husband James Fentress is an anthropologist and historian.

Scholarship

Her primary concentration has been on the application of

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

to history of the

longue durée The (; ) is the French Annales School approach to the study of history. It gives priority to long-term historical structures over what François Simiand called ("evental history", the short-term time-scale that is the domain of the chronicler a ...

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: * ''Limes'' (Roman Empire), a border marker and defense system of the Roman Empire * ''Limes'' (Italian magazine), an Italian geopolitical magazine * ''Limes'' (Romanian magazine), a Romanian literary and political quarterly ma ...

, 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 * Setif, Algeria (with A. Mohamedi) 1979-85 *

Cosa Cosa was an ancient Roman city near the present Ansedonia in southwestern Tuscany, Italy. It is sited on a hill 113 m above sea level and 140 km northwest of Rome on the Tyrrhenian Sea coast. It has assumed a position of prominence in Ro ...

, Italy 1990-97 *

Jerba Djerba (; , ; ), also transliteration, 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. Administratively, it is part of Medenine Governorat ...

, Tunisia; field survey of the island (with Renata Holod and Ali Drine) 1996-2001 *

Volubilis Volubilis (; ; ) is a partly excavated Berber-Roman city in Morocco, situated near the city of Meknes, that may have been the capital of the Kingdom of Mauretania, at least from the time of King Juba II. Before Volubilis, the capital of the 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 Mon ...

, 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 conside ...

(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