Barbara Bohen has a 1979 PhD in Classical Art, Archaeology and Classics from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. From 1981 to 1997 she served as director of the University of Illinois multicultural World Heritage Museum (now Spurlock). She has taught art history, museology, and archaeological methodology, given many public lectures, and published on topics ranging from Athenian burial cult, ceramic studies, and aesthetics to a multidisciplinary study of an Egyptian mummy. Awards include Fulbright, Danforth and Getty fellowships, and a three year NDEA Title IV award for classical studies at New York University Washington Square. The University of Illinois granted the Chancellor's Academic Professional Excellence Award, as well as an Arnold Beckman award for travel and research in Greece which helped further the genesis of the current publication. Bohen has excavated Archaic Native American site Garvies Point on Long Island, Classical Greek sites on the island of Samothrace, Kalo Podi, Aphrodisias, Turkey, and from 1972 to 1981 the Kerameikos excavations of Athens, Greece. Since 2012 Bohen has held an appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, She is currently engaged in the research and publication of Athenian Iron Age archaeology and 'protohistory'. The current publication urges a reassessment of the cultural level of this phase of Athens' prehistory.
