Professor Marie Spiro
Late Roman and Early Christian Art and Archaeology

Art History & Archaeology
Mail: 1211-D Art-Sociology Building
Art History & Archaeology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-1335
Email: mspiro@umd.edu

Professor Marie Spiro is a specialist in Late Roman and Early Christian art and archaeology, with a particular interest in the study of mosaics. For many years she was an assistant director of a Tunisian archaeological project and she served as an assistant director and mosaic specialist of the University of Maryland archaeological excavations at Caesarea Maratima in Israel, under the auspices of the Joint Expedition to Caesarea Maritima. At both sites, she examined and recorded Roman and Christian floor mosaics which she then published. She is the author of A Critical Corpus of the Mosaic Pavements on the Greek Mainland, Fourth/Sixth Centuries, with Architectural Surveys and co-author of three volumes in the series, Corpus des mosaiques de Tunisie. Articles, book reviews, and catalogue descriptions have appeared in the American Journal of Archaeology, Byzantine Studies, Bulletin d'Information de l'Association Internationale pour l'Étude de la Mosaique Antique, the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Professor Spiro has also contributed essays to three volumes: IL60: Essays in Honor of Irving Lavin on his Sixtieth Birthday, Caesarea Papers, and to the publication of the Center of Byzantine Research on medieval Albania. At present she is preparing a book on workshop practices, patronage, and inscriptions in mosaic pavements in Greece, and continuing her research on calendrical and seasonal cycles in the Greek East. At the invitation of the Combined Caesarea Expeditions, she will return to Israel this summer to study a newly discovered figural pavement with a vine rinceau which will be published in a volume of Caesarea Papers. After this sojourn, she will spend some time in Greece completing the field work for her book by examining some recent mosaic discoveries.

Professor Spiro's article on "Virgil in Albania: an Early Byzantine Mosaic pavement at Arapaj" appeared in The Medievals Albanians, International Symposium 5, published by the Institute for Byzantine Research in Athens, Greece. She accepted an invitation that same Institute to conduct two seminars in June. The first one is entitled "An Itinerant Workshop in Greece: Patronage and Artistic Invention" and will appear in the Institute's publication, Symmeikta. The second seminar will focus on "Cosmographic Imagery in Secular and Religious Mosaics in the Greek East: Tradition and Innovation."

Professor Spiro accepted another invitation for this summer from Ken Holum, the Director of the Combined Caesarea Expeditions, to work on and publish the mosaics that he and his team uncovered over the past few years.