Susan Sherratt

Elizabeth Susan Sherratt (née Dobson; known as Sue), was born on 26 September 1949 in Houston, Scotland. She studied for a BA in Classics at New Hall (now Murray Edwards College), University of Cambridge, from 1968-1971, and then moved to Somerville College, University of Oxford, for a Postgraduate Diploma in Classical Archaeology (1973) and a DPhil on 12th century BCE Mycenaean pottery, supervised by Mervyn Popham (1982).[1][2]

After completing her DPhil, Sherratt held a range of academic positions in Oxford including as a Research Assistant on various projects, Sackler Research Fellow (1993-1995), Director of Studies for Archaeology and Anthropology for several colleges (1994-2002), and Assistant Curator and Honorary Research Assistant to the Arthur Evans Archive in the Ashmolean Museum.[1] In 2004 she held a Visiting Fellowship at Heidelberg University, and took up an Academic Fellowship and then a permanent lectureship in the Department of Archaeology at Sheffield in 2005.[1] She has published on a wide range of topics in Late Bronze Age Greek, Cypriot, and eastern Mediterranean archaeology, including the economy of pottery, metals, and other aspects of material culture; the relationship between the Homeric epics and archaeological evidence; trade and other cultural interactions; and the history of museums and collecting.[1] She is a member of the Sinop Regional Archaeological Project, which is investigating long-term patterns of land-use and settlement and communication networks in the Black Sea coastal region of Sinop, Turkey,[3] and of the Palaepahos Urban Landscape Project studying the site of Ancient Paphos.[4][5][6]

A collected volume of essays celebrating Sherratt's important contributions to archaeology, 'ΑΘΥΡΜΑΤΑ Critical Essays on the Archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honour of E. Susan Sherratt', was published in 2014.[7] In the same year, Sherratt was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship by the British Academy for the project 'Silver before coinage: a history of silver from the fifth millennium to the mid-first millennium BC'.[8] She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.[2]

Sherratt married Andrew Sherratt, also an archaeologist and Assistant Keeper of Antiquities in the Ashmolean Museum, in 1974; they had two sons and one daughter, and published articles together on topics such as Indo-European origins, the economy of the eastern Mediterranean, relationships between the Aegean and the wider world, technological change and exchange.[1]