Charlotte Potts

Woolley Fellow & Tutor in Classical Archaeology; Sybille Haynes Lecturer in Etruscan and Italic Archaeology and Art

I joined Oxford as the Sybille Haynes lecturer after an enjoyable career as a content developer for museum exhibitions and visitor attractions in New Zealand, Australia, Southeast Asia, and the United Kingdom, between degrees from Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), University College London, and the University of Oxford.

These experiences have given me special interest in the stories we tell about the past through its material culture. My research focuses on using archaeology, and in particular architecture, to reconstruct the beliefs, institutions, and economies of societies with little or no surviving literature. I am especially interested in how the remains of buildings reveal information about perceptions of the divine and the role of cult, as shown by my work on the civic, social, and economic functions of temples in Archaic central Italy. My research also challenges traditional divisions between pre-Roman and Roman archaeology by examining continuities in material culture and refining our perceptions of early Rome.

My teaching likewise spans pre-Roman and Roman material. I teach papers on the archaeology of Italy between the Iron Age and end of the Roman Empire, and have special interests in Roman art and the archaeology of religion.


Publications

‘Architecture in Ancient Central Italy: Connections in Etruscan and Early Roman Building’
January 2021

‘Introduction: Building Connections’ in Architecture in Ancient Central Italy: Connections in Etruscan and Early Roman Building
January 2021

‘Etruria (Italy), c. 900-300 BCE’ in ‘Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture’
May 2019

‘Made in Etruria: Recontextualizing the ramo secco’, American Journal of Numismatic, 2019


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