IPCAA or the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaoelogy (later renamed IPAMAA) was founded in 1969 and reorganized along its present lines in 1973-74. The core members of its faculty all hold academic appointments in the Departments of Classical Studies or the History of Art, and some are also curators in the Kelsey Museum.
In 1973, the program had two members: John Pedley and Sharon Herbert, both appointed in the Department of Classical Studies. Both Pedley and Herbert are specialists in the Greek world, but in 1974, they were joined by two Romanists: Elaine Gazda (jointly appointed in History of Art and the Kelsey Museum) and John Humphrey (jointly appointed in Classical Studies and the Kelsey Museum). These appointments, complementing the Department of Classical Studies’ existing strength in Roman social history, gave IPCAA a depth in Roman studies that was to become one of its defining characteristics.
The program is supported by a triumvirate of sponsoring units, Classical Studies, the Kelsey Museum, and the Department of the History of Art, committed to the ideal of wide coverage of the Mediterranean world and to active field research (beginning with Herbert’s excavations at Tell Anafa in Israel, and with the new program of research launched by Humphrey at Carthage in 1975).
Between 1974 and 1992, the archaeology faculty doubled. Two more specialists in antiquity were hired jointly by History of Art and the Kelsey Museum (Margaret Root, a scholar of ancient Persia, in 1978, and Thelma Thomas, a specialist in late antiquity, in 1988). In 1989, the Department of Classical Studies hired David Mattingly, a Romanist with special expertise in survey archaeology; he was replaced in 1992 by Susan Alcock, who had a similar intellectual profile, and who came to Michigan together with John Cherry, a prehistorian and a pioneer in modern survey archaeology. Alcock and Cherry gave the program a newly theoretical bent, emphasizing synthetic studies and theoretical inquiry in addition to ongoing fieldwork, and historical and sociological as well as art-historical questions.
Since 1992, the composition of the faculty has changed considerably. Humphrey left in 1995 to devote himself full-time to the journal he had established as a member of the faculty, the Journal of Roman Archaeology (his position in the Kelsey was filled by two Egyptologists jointly appointed in Near Eastern Studies, Janet Richards and Terry Wilfong); Pedley retired in 2001 and was replaced by Lisa Nevett, a Hellenist with a special interest in domestic architecture. In 2006, Thomas accepted a new position at New York University, while Alcock and Cherry left for Brown University. Thomas’s position was not renewed, but Alcock and Cherry were replaced by Christopher Ratté and Nicola Terrenato, both active field archaeologists, the former specializing in the eastern Mediterranean, the latter in the western Mediterranean. In 2015 the retirement of Margaret Root was counterbalanced by the arrival of Natalie Abell, an Aegean prehistorian interested in craft production, especially ceramics. Nicola Barham joined IPAMAA in 2018, with her interests in the material contexts and textual sources of ancient Roman visual culture. After Sharon Herbert's and Elaine Gazda's retirements in 2019 and 2020, respectively, Laura Motta was made an IPAMAA core faculty member, bringing her expertise in paleoethnobotany, Iron Age Italy, and the Bronze Age Carpathian Basin to the program.
In 2023, IPCAA changed its name to IPAMAA, the Interdepartmental Program in Ancient Mediterranean Art and Archaeology, as part of wider reforms within the program following an exhaustive survey of current and former students on a wide range of topics. At present, the IPAMAA core faculty numbers six persons. Abell is participating in analysis of Bronze Age material on the Cycladic island of Kea (Greece); Barham is furthur developing the Kelsey Museum galleries for greater immersion and interactivity; Motta is conducting fieldwork at Gabii and Sant’Omobono (both near Rome, Italy); Nevett is co-directing field projects at Olynthos and Pella (Greece); Ratté is working on excavations at Notion (Turkey); and Terrenato continues his involvement in the excavations at Gabii, which he established in 2007. IPAMAA students are deeply involved in all of these undertakings. In its over 40 years of existence, IPAMAA has emerged as a leading graduate program in archaeology of the Mediterranean, with a dynamic student body and an excellent placement record in academic and non-academic positions.
