This article was originally published here and written by Max Cole.
Michael Lane, an assistant professor of ancient studies, has been awarded $40,000 in grants from the Institute of Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP).
Lane and his co-investigator, Eleni Kountouri, Director of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities at the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, will use the grants to conduct field work around the Kopaic Basin in central Greece.
INSTAP awarded Lane and Kountouri $20,000 for the 2017 season and pledged another $20,000 for the 2018 season. In addition to an international group of specialists, Lane will bring nine UMBC undergraduates and a UMBC alumnus to assist him in his fieldwork in summer 2017.
“This news is fantastic. I hope to supplement INSTAP’s grant with grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society in the year ahead,” says Lane. “The pledge of money for 2018 assures that I will be able to complete the bridge to a more extensive landscape archaeology project to be realized from 2019 onward and involving more students in a field school.”
Professor Lane specializes in archaeological survey and excavation, anthropological theory in archaeology, Bronze Age economies in the Eastern Mediterranean, and Mycenaean Greek and the Linear B script in which it was written. He teaches a variety of archaeology courses and Ancient Greek.
For the last several years, Lane has helped lead the Ancient studies study trip during spring break, which in recent years has visited Greece, Turkey, and Italy. The program will visit Spain next month.
To learn more about Professor Lane’s research, visit the Ancient Studies department website.
Image: Michael Lane conducts field work. Photo courtesy Michael Lane.