The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) has announced Art History doctoral candidate Crystal Rosenthal as the 2021-2022 recipient of the John R. Coleman Traveling Fellowship. The fellowship, a competitive award given to one recipient annually, supports scholars traveling and studying in Italy, the western Mediterranean, or North Africa.
Rosenthal will work toward the completion of her dissertation project, “Agents on the Shore: Harbor Arches in Roman Port Cities,” during her time as an AIA fellow. Her dissertation research aims to examine freestanding Roman harbor arches, with an emphasis on connections between iconography, context, and reception, and how the structures functioned within the communal fabric for urban dwellers, and within political, economic and social realities of the first and second centuries CE. The Fellowship funds will support travel to sites in Italy and to Alexandria, Egypt, in order to visit museums, libraries, and archives.
This is the first time Rosenthal will have the opportunity to conduct object and archival research across a broad geographical area including coastal towns throughout Italy and North Africa. However, is not the first time that Rosenthal will travel to Italy for field research. As an active field archaeologist, Rosenthal has spent years excavating in Italy—in Rome as an assistant trench supervisor at the Villa Maxentius; in northern Florence as a trench supervisor for the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project; and in Bruscoli as a field director for the Albagino Sacred Lake Project.