Sophie Crawford-Brown’s research centers on Roman and early Italic art and archaeology, using material culture as a lens for addressing broader historical problems such as colonization processes, cross-cultural interaction, and the transition from Republic to Empire. Her first book, Religious Architecture and Roman Expansion: Temples, Terracottas, and the Shaping of Identity, 3rd-1st c. BCE (Cambridge University Press, 2025), focuses on the brightly painted architectural terracottas that dominated Italic temple decoration before the reign of Augustus, asking what these terracottas can tell us about interactions between colonists and indigenous populations, and how they were used to promote communal identity in the face of Roman military expansion. Her current book project explores plant and landscape imagery produced in a range of media during the first centuries BCE and CE. Taking an ecocritical perspective, the study situates these images within the broader story of human attitudes towards the natural world and our place within it.
Dr. Crawford-Brown has excavated at archaeological sites in Cyprus and Italy, and has worked on museum projects at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. She is the recipient of the Archaeological Institute of America’s John R. Coleman Fellowship and was a teaching fellow at the University of Tübingen’s Institut für Klassische Archäologie. She received the Irene Rosenzweig/Lily Auchincloss/Samuel H. Kress Foundation Rome Prize for 2016-2018, and lived in Rome for three years before coming to Rice in 2020.
BOOKS
Religious Architecture and Roman Expansion: Temples, Terracottas, and the Shaping of Identity, 3rd-1st. c. BCE. Cambridge University Press, 2025.
SELECTED ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
“Mixing and Matching on Italic Temple Roofs.” Selected Papers on Ancient Art and Architecture 9, forthcoming.
"Ecocriticism on the Wall: Roman Landscapes at the San Antonio Museum of Art.” (Museum Review) American Journal of Archaeology 128.1, 133-143, 2024.
“Down from the Roof: Reframing Plants in Augustan Art.” Journal of Roman Archaeology 35, 33-63, 2022.
Review: Cosa: The Sculpture and Furnishings in Stone and Marble, by Jacquelyn Collins-Clinton (MAAR Suppl. 15). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2020. In American Journal of Archaeology 125.2, 2021.
“Mixing Traditions: The Architectural Terracottas from Minturnae.” In Deliciae Fictiles V: Networks and Workshops, Fifth International Conference on Architectural Terracottas and Decorative Roof Systems in Italy, ed. P. Lulof and C. Rescigno. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 366-370, 2019.
“Regionalism or Romanitas? Network Approaches to Architectural Terracottas at Minturnae and Cosa.” In Cosa and the Colonial Landscape of Republican Italy (Third and Second Centuries BCE) ed. A. U. de Giorgi. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 182-203, 2019.
"Italisch-Etruskische Vorläufer der Campana-Platten." In Fragmentierte Bilder: Die Campana-Reliefs des Instituts für Klassische Archäologie Tübingen, ed. and trans. P. Baas and M. Flecker. Tübingen: Museum der Universität Tübingen MUT, 18-26, 2016.
"Cosa Excavations: The 2013 Report"; with R. T. Scott, A. U. de Giorgi, A. Glennie, and A. Smith. Orizzonti 16, 11-22, 2015.
RECENT SEMINARS OFFERED
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