COLLOQUIUM: Caroline Cheung, Princeton, "Dolium Industries and the Roman Wine Trade"

This talk discusses the industries for one of the most vital, yet understudied, containers of the Roman wine trade: the dolium. Used primarily for the fermentation and storage of wine, dolia were expensive and labor-intensive investments. Studying dolia brings to light the ingenuity, cross-craft fertilizations, collaborations, and social and economic constraints of humble craftspeople living and working in the Roman Empire.

Caroline Cheung received a BS in Biochemistry, BA in Classical Civilization, and post-baccalaureate certificate in Classics from University of the California, Los Angeles before completing an MA in Classical Archaeology at Florida State University. She returned to California to pursue a PhD in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2016-2017 she was the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellow Rome Prize fellow at the American Academy in Rome, where she conducted research for her dissertation. She completed her PhD in May 2018 and has been an assistant professor in the Department of Classics at Princeton University since Fall 2018. Caroline works on the socio-economic history of non-elites under the Roman Empire, ancient agriculture and food, and craft production.