Undergraduate Research Opportunity / Workstudy Position


Database of Frescoed Wall Painting Fragments from the Ancient Mediterranean
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The great palaces of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East represented power and 
authority, with decoration that matched. From 2000-1500 BC, a period of international 
relations embraced Egypt, Minoan Crete, and the Mediterranean coast of the Middle East 
(present-day Turkey, Syria, and Israel) that found expression in a common type of palace 
decoration – frescoed wall paintings. My current research analyzes the remains of these 
wall paintings within their architectural and geo-political environments in order to 
examine their shared or divergent socio-cultural meaning and their role in the emergence 
and maintenance of elite ideologies. 

A major obstacle for studying these frescoes is their fragmentary state of preservation; 
they are typically found collapsed in jumbled heaps, and pieces larger than several 
centimeters rarely survive. To help overcome this limitation, the undergraduate project 
will digitally archive surviving fragments in order to reconstruct individual images and 
facilitate comparison with other images. 

The project will entail designing and implementing a database for archiving, searching, 
sorting and combining two-dimensional images of the fresco fragments. It will require a 
relatively experienced programmer who is also sensitive to the database-human interface. 
The project offers unusual exposure to the archaeology, art and history of ancient 
civilizations and may provide material for a senior honors thesis. There is also the 
potential for research beyond the database creation.