Excavating in Turkey with Brian Rose

Brian Rose has worked hard for the AIA and archaeology as Cedric G. Boulter Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Cincinnati and now James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also Curator-in-Charge of the Mediterranean Section of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Rose first got the archaeology "bug" when he went to Italy as a 16-year-old exchange student under the auspices of the American Field Service. There he was sent to work on excavations at the Etruscan city of Cerveteri for the summer, rather than stay with a family. "I was desperate to get out of southeastern Ohio," says Rose. "One had to agree in advance that one was willing to go to any country in the world, and that was just fine with me." He later received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and excavated at Aphrodisias in Turkey and at Troy, where he was the head of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine excavations beginning in 1988. He currently directs the Granicus Valley Regional Archaeology Survey Project in Turkey. Among his many accomplishments within the AIA, Rose conceived of and implemented our program of lecturing on archaeology to American troops en route to Iraq and Afghanistan.