AIA: Stanford welcomes Prof. Amanda Reiterman

Professor Reiterman will be joining our Stanford AIA Chapter on Friday, October 10, 2025 at 7:00pm
Lecture is free and open to the public.

Agamemnon’s scepter, Pelops’s spear, Eriphyle’s necklace, Medea’s robes—ancient Greek literature is full of references to objects kept as heirlooms by the ruling class. But what about ordinary people? In fact, archaeologists do encounter artifacts that predate their assemblages substantially or exhibit ancient repairs, and thus, might be described as “curated” in the past. These chronological anomalies have the potential to inform us about the intimate relationships between people and things in antiquity and ancient attitudes toward the past within different Mediterranean communities. Through a series of case studies focusing on individual artifacts, this talk will explore how archaeologists might disentangle the motives for ancient curation and recognize the nuanced roles of objects from the past in the ancient present. As we will see, people in the past kept things over time for many of the same reasons as we do today.

For Professor Reiterman's university site & publication list:

Professor Reiterman's University site