Rate My Professor Kate Birney

Kate Birney is Associate Professor of Classical Studies and the Archaeology Program at Wesleyan University, where she serves as Chair of the Classical Studies department. She earned a Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Mediterranean Archaeology from Harvard University in 2007, an M.A. in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School in 1998, a B.A. in Classics (Ancient Greek) from Yale University in 1996, and advanced studies at the MIT Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology from 2018 to 2019. She is currently pursuing an M.S. in Environmental Science at Yale School of the Environment, expected in 2024. Birney joined Wesleyan as Assistant Professor in 2011, advancing to Associate Professor in 2018. Previously, she held a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Harvard University from 2007 to 2008 and serves as Research Associate at the Harvard Semitic Museum since 2010. Her teaching encompasses archaeology and archaeological science, ancient Greek language and literature, and field methods at sites including Ashkelon and Tel Shimron, with courses such as Art and Archaeology of the Bronze Age Mediterranean, Ancient Medicine: Potions, Poisons and Phytochemistry, and Hesiod: The Greek Creation Myth in Mediterranean Context.

A Mediterranean field and environmental archaeologist, Birney studies ecology and commercial exchange, focusing on the cultivation, production, and trade of botanical commodities like plant medicines, perfumes, and crops. She directs the Birney Lab in ArchaeEcophysiology, an interdisciplinary effort at the nexus of environmental science, archaeology, plant chemistry, and classics, supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Birney leads major projects as Head of Persian and Hellenistic Research at Tel Shimron, Israel; Assistant Director of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, Israel; Co-Director of the OpenARCHEM Project and Archaeometric Database; and Co-PI of the Kastrouli-Desfina Archaeological Project in Greece. Her honors include the Andrew W. Mellon New Directions Fellowship (2018-2019 and 2022-2023), National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation grant (2020-2022), and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the W.F. Albright Institute (2014). Key publications feature the monograph Ashkelon 9: The Hellenistic Period (Eisenbrauns, 2022); Rethinking Pliny’s 'Sicilian Crocus': Ecophysiology, Environment, and Classical Texts (Economic Botany, 2024); Hellenistic Agricultural Economies at Ashkelon, Southern Levant (Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 2021); Phoenician Bathing in the Hellenistic East: Ashkelon and Beyond (BASOR, 2017); and Tracking the Cooking Pot à la Stéatite: Signs of Cyprus in Iron Age Syria (AJA, 2008). Her scholarship illuminates Hellenistic economies, ancient residues, and trans-Mediterranean interactions through innovative archaeometric methods.