Profile
Biography
Maureen trained as a Classical Archaeologist in Canada, the USA, and Germany. She obtained a BA Honours in Classical Studies at Brock University, an MA in Classical Archaeology at Indiana University, and a PhD in Classical Archaeology at Indiana University and the Freie Universität in Berlin. After over a decade of working for the state archaeological services in Germany and teaching at the University of Cologne, Maureen joined the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield where she was promoted to Professor of Roman Archaeology in 2013. She joined the Department of Archaeology at York as Chair in Roman Archaeology in September 2020.
Maureen is a Roman archaeologist whose key research interests are Roman burial practices, funerary commemoration, Roman dress and identity, and Roman childhood and family studies. She has directed excavations in Germany, Italy, Tunisia, and Britain. The Archaeological Institute of America appointed Maureen as the distinguished Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lecturer in 2019. She has been visiting professor in Switzerland (Universität Basel and Université de Fribourg), Germany (Humboldt Universität in Berlin), and Canada (McMaster University and the University of Calgary).
Maureen stepped back from teaching and supervising in September 2024. In January 2025 she took on the new role of Principal Investigator on the three-year AHRC-funded research project Seeing the Dead. New Insights into Roman Gypsum Burials in Yorkshire (2025-2027).
Research
Overview
Current Project
Seeing the Dead. New Insights into Roman Gypsum Burials in Yorkshire
For reasons that are not yet clear, the Romans in and around York sometimes poured liquid gypsum over the clothed and shrouded bodies of adults and children in lead, stone, or wood sarcophagi before burying them. As the gypsum hardened around the bodies, a negative cavity formed that preserves the original position and contours of the dead for us today. This appears to have been a custom associated with people of high status who had access to exotic aromatic resins from the Mediterranean and Arabia to be used on the textiles. In a pilot project, 3-D images by Heritage360 of a family burial revealed very clearly the imprint of shrouds, clothing, and footwear in the gypsum casing, providing precious evidence for perishable materials that rarely survive in Roman graves.
In this new research project, funded generously by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the evidence for almost 60 such burials of the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. recorded in York and at other sites in Yorkshire are investigated. Twenty-three surviving gypsum casings and their skeletal remains are being studied to understand the nature and potential social status of textiles used in the burials, the health, diet, and origins of the dead, and the cultural, ritual, or practical reasons that might have determined this particular method of handling the dead.
Recent Research Projects
Maureen’s recent research project (2023-2024) Dress and Identity in Early Roman Southwest Italy, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, investigated the interconnected relationship between dress behaviour, ethnic identity, and social status among independent population groups in regions south of Rome in the fourth century B.C. By examining tomb paintings and other material culture, it showed how clothing and bodily adornment acted as important identity markers for which no written testimony exists. Three research papers are now in press.
Maureen’s fieldwork project on the Roman imperial estate at Vagnari in Puglia in south-east Italy was completed in 2020. A comprehensive volume on the excavation, the structures, the finds, and the scientific analysis of artefacts, was published by Archaeopress in 2022 (The Making of an Imperial Estate. Archaeology in the vicus at Vagnari, Puglia). An in-depth investigation of viticulture and the production and storage of wine at Vagnari appeared in the research paper Viticulture, opus doliare, and the patrimonium Caesaris at the Roman imperial estate at Vagnari (Puglia), Journal of Roman Archaeology 35.1, 2022, 221-246.
Her research on Roman childhood was published in the volume Infancy and Earliest Childhood in the Roman World. ‘A Fragment of Time’ (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her multidisciplinary approach dispelled the long-held notion that very young children in the Roman world were marginal beings without any social significance whose lives were treated with indifference in an age of high infant mortality. She also published her research on Roman votive religion and so-called fertility cults in the Papers of the British School at Rome 87, 2019, 1-45 (Mater Matuta, ‘Fertility Cults’, and the Integration of Women in Religious Life in Italy in the Fourth to First Centuries B.C.). This research was supported by the Balsdon Fellowship at the British School at Rome and a Leverhulme Research Fellowship.
External activities
Memberships
Memberships
- Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA)
- Corresponding Member of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut
- Member of the British School at Rome
- Member of the Roman Society
Selected External Appointments
- Member of the Editorial Committee, Journal of Roman Studies (2021-2024)
- Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lecturer, Archaeological Institute of America (2019-2020)
- E. Togo Salmon Visiting Professor, Department of Classics, McMaster University, Canada (2009)
- PhD External Examiner at the Universities of Reading, Nottingham, Leicester, Exeter and King's College London; the University of Amsterdam; Macquarie University; the University of Western Australia; the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology; and Lund University
- Academic book reviewer for Journal of Roman Archaeology; Journal of Roman Studies; American Journal of Archaeology; Antiquity; The Archaeological Journal; Childhood in the Past; The Antiquaries Journal; Cambridge Classical Review; Germania; Latomus; Phoenix; Klio
Invited talks and conferences
Recent Conference Organisation
- Co-organiser of a session on “Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Archaeology of Roman Textiles. A Story told through Threads”, Conference of the European Association of Archaeologists in Rome (2024)
- Organiser of a session on “Children on the Roman Frontiers”, International Roman Frontier Studies Conference (Limes Congress) in Nijmegen (2022)
Recent Keynote Talks
- Finnish Academy in Rome, Annual Festive Lecture in Honour of Amos Anderson, 2024: Woven Identities of Women and Warriors in Southern Italy in the 4th century BCE
- Royal Netherlands Institute, Athens, Conference Consuming the Past: Modern Vines & Ancient Wines Conference, 2023: “Dolia should be bought at Rome”: Exploring heavy ceramics elemental to producing, storing, and distributing wine in Roman Italy
- Roman Archaeology Conference, Split (Croatia), 2022: Age, Gender, and Identity in Roman Funerary Commemoration: Case Study Croatia
