Visiting Assistant Professor of Classical Archaeology

Ph.D., Classics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Office: CMLL 228
melanie.godsey@ttu.edu

CV

Melanie is a Mediterranean archaeologist with an emphasis on material approaches to social and economic histories. Her research concerns the interactions between culturally and ethnically varied military and civilian communities in familiar and unfamiliar environments in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Her interest in ancient ceramics drives her work on the lived experiences and daily lives of communities in multicultural spaces with a focus on garrisons and harbors. Her current book project combines landscape approaches with small-scale depositional analyses of the material record to reconsider systems of maritime trade in the third century BCE Mediterranean. This research has implications for socioeconomic frameworks of the Mediterranean past, including the role of the environment in imperial settings, effects of war on the economy, and a material perspective on the role of local and regional mercantile groups.

Melanie is currently a ceramics specialist for the Bays of East Attica Regional Survey (BEARS) in Greece and field director for the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project's excavations at Pyla-Vigla in Cyprus. She has also participated in archaeological survey, excavation, and finds analysis for other projects in Egypt, Greece, and Italy.

Selected Publications

Godsey, M. “Riches, Routes, and Rations: New Evidence from Amphoras at Koroni,” From East to West and Back Again: Societies, Economies, and Ceramics in the Hellenistic World, Proceedings of the 5th Conference of IARPotHP, Seville, Spain June 21-25th, 2021. In press; publication date: 2024.

Gates-Foster, J., Redon, B., and Godsey, M. “Domestic Activities in Alternate Settings: The Ptolemaic Fort at Bi'r Samut, Egypt,” in C. Barrett and J. Carrington (eds.), Households of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt in Context, Cornell University Press, (2023) 297-320.

Murray, S., Godsey, M., Frankl, J., Lis, B., Erny, G., McHugh, M., Stephan, R., Sapirstein, P., Pratt, C., “The Bays Of East Attica Regional Survey (BEARS) Project 2020–2021: New Evidence for Settlement, Production, and Exchange in Porto Rafti (Greece) from Prehistory to Late Antiquity. Museion III.19 (2023), 112-174.

Gates-Foster, J. and Godsey, M. “Ptolemaic Painted Pottery from Ghozza, Eastern Desert, ”Le Bulletin de liaison de la céramique égyptienne 31 (2022), 329-359.

Erny, G. and Godsey, M. “Scholarly networks, gender sociology and knowledge production in Aegean survey and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology,” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 10.3-4 (2022): 343-355.

Godsey, M. and Gradoz, M. “Pottery from Orneai in the Western Argolid (4th c. BCE-2nd c. CE),” in L. Rembart and A. Walden (eds.), Manufacturers and Markets: The Contributions of Hellenistic Pottery to Economies Large and Small, Proceedings of the 4th Conference of IARPotHP, Athens, November 11-14th, 2019, Vienna, (2022) 581-594.

Selected Honors and Awards

Cecil W. Wooten Award for Excellence in Teaching (2023)

Werner P. Friederich Off-Campus Dissertation Research Fellowship (2021-2022)

Homer A. and Dorothy B. Thompson Fellowship, American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2020-2021)

Heinrich Schliemann Fellowship, American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2019-2020)

Phi Beta Kappa