Archaeology's Rocco Palermo Awarded $35,000 Loeb Classical Library Fellowship
Assistant Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology Rocco Palermo has been awarded a prestigious Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship in the amount of $35,000. The fellowship will support the Gird-i Matrab Archaeological Project (GMAP) in Iraqi Kurdistan, of which Palermo has been the director since 2021.
The Loeb Classical Library was founded to encourage research in the U.S. and abroad in the province of archaeology and Greek and Latin Literature. Today, the digital Loeb Classical Library continues the historic mission of making all that is important in Greek and Latin literature available to readers anywhere in the world—with accurate, literate, English translations.
This fellowship will enable the GMAP team to continue its exploration of the lives and economies of rural communities of Mesopotamia throughout the ages. GMAP has a particular focus on the reconstruction of Mesopotamia's domestic economy and its rise in social complexity in the 5th and 4th millennium BCE, as well as the inclusion of rural villages and secondary centers in the interconnected, large-scale empires of the later Hellenistic and Parthian-Roman period. The fellowship will support the project expenses related to excavation, analyses, and dissemination of archaeological discoveries.
"The LCLF has traditionally supported archaeological research in the wider Mediterranean world, with limited engagement beyond the geographic scope of Classical civilizations," says Palermo. "By supporting GMAP, the LCLF will facilitate a deeper understanding of the influence—or absence thereof—of the Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman empires on rural communities in Mesopotamia."