Overview

My research focuses on the material culture of the Nile Valley and on the methodology of archaeological recording. I am particularly interested in kingship, monumentality, the contexts and audiences for art and architecture, and cultural interactions. I co-direct an excavation at Uronarti, Sudan, with my colleague Christian Knoblauch (Swansea University).  There we are examining a monumental fortress built by the conquering Egyptian kings in the early 2nd millennium BC, the extramural settlement associated with it, and the relations between Nubians and Egyptians in this frontier zone. A recent book, Violence and Power in Ancient Egypt: images and ideology before the New Kingdom, examined the making of pictures of violence as a tactic of power in the early Egyptian state. On the methodology side, I am currently engaged in a project to develop a universal tablet-based archaeological recording system that does not rely on the internet for synchronization. This system has been used at numerous sites on Brown projects from Italy to Peru, and non-Brown projects from Egypt to Cyprus to Wellesely, MA. I hold a BA from Brown and MA and PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.

Brown Affiliations

• Archaeology and the Ancient World
• Egyptology and Assyriology
• History of Art and Architecture

Research Areas

On the Web

Uronarti Regional Archaeology Project

Kiosk Archaeological Recording Platform