Rate My Professor Gijs Tol

Gijs Tol is Associate Professor of Roman Archaeology in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Melbourne, serving as Deputy Head of School for SHAPS. His research centers on the archaeology of the Roman countryside, emphasizing rural settlement organization, local and regional economic networks, and the study of Roman material culture such as coarse and cooking wares, amphorae, and fine table wares. Tol pursues interdisciplinary approaches, collaborating with specialists in geoarchaeology, geomorphology, archaeobotany, archaeozoology, ceramic petrography, and metallurgy. He engages the public through lectures for social clubs and schools, exhibitions, and contributions to newspapers and popular websites.

Tol earned his PhD from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, in 2011, with a dissertation entitled A fragmented history: a methodological and artefactual approach to the study of ancient settlement in the territories of Satricum and Antium. Before joining Melbourne in 2016, he served as a postdoctoral researcher and principal investigator for the Minor Centres Project (2011-2016) at Groningen, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, which explored the role of rural nucleated centres in supplying goods and services in Roman Italy. He co-directs the Pontine Region Project with Tymon de Haas of Leiden University, examining human-environment interactions in the Pontine Plain wetlands, and the Marzuolo Archaeological Project with Astrid van Oyen of Cornell University and Rhodora Vennarucci of the University of Arkansas, excavating an early Imperial craft centre at Podere Marzuolo, Tuscany. Notable publications include A fragmented history (2012), co-edited The Economic Integration of Roman Italy: Rural Communities in a Globalising World (Brill, 2017), A guide to good practice in Mediterranean surface survey projects (2020), 'Forging the Roman rural economy: a blacksmithing workshop and its toolset at Marzuolo (Tuscany)' in the American Journal of Archaeology (2022), and 'Ephemeral Economies? Investigating Roman Wetland Exploitation in the Pontine Marshes' (2022).