Adam DiBattista received his BA in Archaeology from Boston University (2014), followed by his MA (2016) and PhD from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA (2021). He is an archaeologist researching the creation and use of objects made from animal materials (e.g., bone, antler, ivory) in the Iron Age Mediterranean. His work examines human-animal relationships in the past, 1st millennium ivory trade, and the role of worked animal objects within intercultural exchange.
In his dissertation "Transformations of Animal Materials in Early Greece," he explores how individuals in the Greek world incorporated worked animal objects into funerary and dedicatory practices during the Early Iron Age and Archaic periods. Within this dissertation, he adopts alternate theoretical perspectives on nature and culture to better contextualize animal materials in the ancient world. He also examines the evidence for the production of worked animal objects from the site of ancient Methone, an early Greek colony in the Northern Aegean. The archaeological assemblage from Methone revealed robust evidence for the production of these objects in the form of waste from ivory and other animal materials.
At ISAW, he will continue to investigate how animal materials were sourced, created, used, and exchanged in the ancient Mediterranean. One of the goals of this research is to elucidate the relationship between the extinction of the Syrian elephant and the rise of Iron Age ivory industries of the Levant, Greece, and Etruria.