The LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts announces that Associate Professor Caroline Sauvage has assumed the role of National Endowment for the Humanities Chair of Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Director of the Archaeology Center. Following on Father Bill Fulco’s announcement of his retirement last spring, and as an outgrowth of multi-year planning by two BCLA Deans and the Department of Classics and Archaeology, Prof. Sauvage will be the new NEH Chair and Director of the Archaeology Center, which includes leading curation of the extraordinary collection developed by Father Fulco over his many years at LMU.
Prof. Sauvage received her BA in Art History and Archaeology and her MA and PhD in Archaeology from the Université Lumière Lyon 2 in France. Her research interests include trade and maritime exchanges in the eastern Mediterranean, the development and use of textile tools during the Late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, and the definition of social groups. Her main focus is on exchanges, the status of objects, the use of objects and representations as social and identity markers across the eastern Mediterranean. Her work as an archaeologist is based on the study of material artifacts and their interconnections, but also combines the use of iconography and literary evidence to further her interpretations, based on extensive fieldwork in Cyprus, Egypt, and Syria since 2002.
Her book, “Routes Maritimes et Systèmes d’Échanges internationaux au Bronze Récent en Méditerranée Orientale,” was published in 2012. Her professional honors include the Young Researcher Award in Humanities from the city of Lyon, France (2007), and the “Prix Louis de Clerc” from the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (Paris) in 2011. In 2014, her first year as a member of LMU’s faculty, Prof. Sauvage was named a Marie Curie Experienced Researcher Fellow and worked at the Getty Research Institute in collaboration with the Center for Textile Research in Copenhagen.
The Archaeology Center is an important educational resource in BCLA and forms a vibrant part of our academic programs in Classics and Archaeology, offering valuable resources for students and faculty. As the new director, Prof. Sauvage endeavors to increase the visibility and accessibility of the Archaeology Center and its collection on campus and beyond the bluff. She hopes to maximize the use of the collection for research and teaching purposes by collaborating with interested LMU colleagues wishing to provide a unique hand-on experience of the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern World through the study of artifacts, and to support student skill development in the curation, study and exhibit of ancient artifacts.