News

Joseph L. Rife has been appointed the Director of Record for the Kenchreai Excavations (Greece) by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Kenchreai, which served as the eastern port of Corinth in antiquity, was a booming harbor during the Roman Empire, one of the busiest in southeastern Europe.  The port-town was the home of a diverse and prosperous community, including an early Christian congregation nurtured by St. Paul during his sojourn at Corinth in the middle 1st century C.E.  The archaeological site has been explored over the past century, but most intensively by Greek and American teams in the 1960s and 2000s.

Prof Rife has directed field research under the auspices of the American School at the site of Kenchreai since 2002, and recently in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic.  This campaign has focused on a major cemetery and residential quarter of the Roman era on the northeast edge of the site.

In winter 2011, the American School appointed Rife overseer of all discoveries made around the harbor during excavations in the 1960s by the University of Chicago and Indiana University.  In this new post, Rife directs all study, publication, and maintenance in the core of the archaeological site, including the very well preserved remains of commercial buildings and harborworks, opulent private homes, and early Christian churches dating from the Late Classical to Early Byzantine periods (4th c. BCE-7th c. CE).

Rife’s appointment to this ongoing post will provide Vanderbilt faculty and students with numerous rich opportunities for hands-on research and learning at an archaeological site of the first historical importance in Greece.  Rife offers an annual Maymester (CLAS 242) in conjunction with the Kenchreai Excavations, and he hosts students from across the world as junior staff members for summer sessions of on-site and laboratory work.  His immediate goal is the collation and digitization of all archival records from the 1960s, including drawings, field notes, and photographs.  The first phase of study and publication will concentrate on inscriptions, including epitaphs and sacred dedications; architectural remains, including sculpted decoration, mosaic pavement, and wall-painting; and coins.

Prof Rife discusses the archaeological site of Kenchreai with Dan Smith, U.S. ambassador to Greece (June 2011)