Hybrid lecture by Dr. Fiona Greenland, University of Virginia, free and open to all!

Location: Herter Hall 601, UMass Amherst
Zoom link: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/93635373215

In 2018, the Italian Art Squad announced the conclusion of a four-year investigation into a vast looting network that traversed five European countries. "Operation Demeter" was the largest investigation in the unit's history. It recovered 20,000 artifacts valued at some 40 million Euros and resulted in the arrest of 23 people. What did Operation Demeter teach us about the looting and selling of archaeological materials? Today, nearly five years onward, what has changed - if anything - in the looting landscape?

Dr. Fiona Rose Greenland is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, and founder and director of the CURIA Lab (Cultural Resilience Informatics and Analysis). She received a DPhil in Classical Archaeology from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Michigan. She works at the intersection of cultural sociology, comparative and historical sociology, and archaeology to investigate how archaeological materials feature in modern social life. She has conducted fieldwork in archaeological sites, museums, and antiquities shops in Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Her research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures at the University of Virginia. Her book, Ruling Culture: Art Police, Tomb Robbers, and the Rise of Cultural Power in Italy (Chicago 2021), received the 2022 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in Culture from the American Sociological Association.

This lecture is sponsored by the Western Massachusetts Society of the Archaeological Institute of America and hosted by the UMass Amherst Department of Classics.