Letter from the Director

We made it! On September 1 we welcomed nine doctoral students—four incoming first-years and five second years—and seven visiting research scholars to our first in-person orientation in ISAW's lecture hall since 2019. The following day, classes started in the seminar room and the sixth-floor conference-classroom, with everyone masked to be sure, but no longer reduced to an array of talking heads on a computer screen. Prospects look good for reopening our doors for public events including the Leon Levy and Rostovtzeff Lectures, and a wonderful in-galleries exhibition, in the new year. Meanwhile we hope you will continue to join us for our series of online events this fall.

Adding to the spirit of optimism with which we are starting the new academic year is the fact that three of ISAW's archaeological projects were able to conduct field seasons this summer, with several of our doctoral students taking part. In this issue of the ISAW Newsletter we have Antonis Kotsonas's report from the first campaign of our newest project at Lyktos, Crete, a collaboration with the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the Athens Archaeological Society, and the Greek Archaeological Service. This is a site that, until now, has not been investigated to any extent commensurate with its historical importance, so we can look forward to exciting updates in the coming years.

Each ISAW Newsletter is a complex effort that involves many people, not all of whom are visible in the articles' bylines, and bringing all the parts together into a coherent and attractive whole—and on schedule!—is no small accomplishment. This will be the last Newsletter guided through to publication by Diane Bennett, who is retiring as Associate Director for Administration at the beginning of December after eleven years at ISAW. I wish to thank her here for the devotion and creativity with which she applied herself to the Newsletter as to so much else at ISAW.

- Alexander Jones, Leon Levy Director and Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity