Department of Aegean and Textile Archaeology

Didactical study tour in Greece – Mycenae’ 2017, photo A. Łaszcz
Didactical study tour in Greece – Mycenae’ 2017, photo A. Łaszcz

Kazimierz Lewartowski is interested first of all in Mycenaean civilization, Bronze Age and Classical burial habits, and memory of the Bronze Age in the Classical Greece.

Małgorzata Siennicka’s research interests focus on the Bronze Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, and more specifically on early balance weights and metrology, small finds, textile production, craftsmanship, settlements and architecture. In her PhD thesis (“OIKIΣMOΣ. Spatial and Social Organisation of Late Helladic III Mycenae and Contemporary Settlements in the Argolid” (2010, Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw) she studied the Mycenaean settlements in the Argolid in Greece. 2013-2017 she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in the Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen with the project “Greek Textile Tools. Continuity and changes in textile production in Early Bronze Age Greece” (PIEF-GA-2012-329910 Marie Curie Actions Intra-European Fellowship FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF). While in Copenhagen, she managed an international research project “First Textiles”. She joined a number of excavation projects in Greece, Russia and Poland. She has gained substantial teaching experience at the University of Warsaw and University of Copenhagen, at both undergraduate and graduate levels. 2017-2020 she is an ERC Associate at the University of Göttingen in the ERC Consolidator Project “WEIGHTANDVALUE. Weight metrology and its economic and social impact on Bronze Age Europe, West and South Asia” (ERC-CoG-2014 – ERC Consolidator Grant, Project ID: 648055) http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/572018.html with the project “Uncanonical weights and metal ingots from the Aegean and Cyprus in the Bronze Age”.

Dr Agata Ulanowska, an Assistant Professor.
Her research interests focus on the Bronze Age Aegean, specifically on textile production and technology, experimental and experience archaeology, and Aegean seals and sealing practices. She holds a PhD in Aegean archaeology from the University of Warsaw. Since 2013, she has continued a pioneering and innovative project, in which the process of gaining hands-on experience in textile techniques from the Aegean Bronze Age is documented, assessed and monitored. The collected records make it possible to compare the work and experience of modern actors, e.g. students and scholars, in an objective manner, and to draw conclusions about the tacit dimensions of textile work, such as kinaesthetics, efficiency, experienced level of difficulty, or attention required at consecutive operational sequences of textile making. She was awarded with two grants of the National Science Centre in Poland for the research project investigating weaving techniques in the Aegean Bronze Age (2015–2017) and the ongoing project investigating relations between textile production and seals and sealing practices in the Aegean Bronze Age (2018–2021)

Dr Stephanie Aulsebrook, an Assistant Professor.

Her project, Forging Society at Late Bronze Age Mycenae, focuses on the role of metal at Mycenae, the leading centre of the Late Bronze Age Mycenaean Greek mainland. Metals have a wide range of uses, with their importance within the political economy garnering the majority of scholarly attention. Yet metals are also a fundamental part of everyday life in a Mycenaean community and this project is designed to develop and apply innovative approaches to investigate this relatively understudied aspect of their role. This work is financed by a grant from the Polish National Science Centre.  She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2013, has held a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh and has contributed to the Well Built Mycenae project.

Research in Greece – The Polish Archaeological Institute at Athens

Grants:

Agata Ulanowska

2018 –Textiles and Seals. Relations between Textile Production  and Seals and Sealing Practices in Bronze Age Greece
research project at the Institute of Archaeology UW, financed by the programme SONATA 13 of the National Science Centre in Poland (UMO-2017/26/D/HS3/00145, 637 052 PLN)

2015 – 2017  Textile Production in Bronze Age Greece – Comparative Studies of the Aegean Weaving Techniques
Post-doctoral internship of The National Science Centre in Poland to the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Centre for Research on Ancient Technologies in Łódź (UMO-2015/16/S/HS3/00085, 300 000 PLN)

Stephanie Aulsebrook

2019 – 2022 Forging Society at Late Bronze Age Mycenae: the Relationships between People and Metals.
Research project at the Institute of Archaeology UW, financed by the programme SONATA 14 of the National Science Centre in Poland (UMO-2018/31/D/HS3/02231, 736,310 PLN)

Katarzyna Żebrowska

2017-2019 “Sicilian Textile Tools from the Bronze Age: Examination of Finds and Comparative Studies on Their Functionality”
Research project (ref. nr 2016/21/N/HS3/02926) financed by PRELUDIUM 11 program of the National Science Centre, Poland