Department of Classical Studies
Marie-Claude specializes in archaeological science as applied to archaeological ceramics. She completed her PhD in Archaeology at Université Laval, with a focus on Early Bronze Age ceramics from northeastern Syria. Central to her research is the reconstruction of technological traditions, their development over time and across space, as a way to approach social identity. She uses an integrated methodology, combining multiple datasets - contextual, stylistic and analytical - to trace the potter’s choice and action at every step of the production sequence. Her research and teaching interests expand to the East Mediterranean to explore networks of interaction. In the field and in the laboratory she has been involved in a number of archaeological projects in Syria, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey and Southeast Asia. At Penn, she teaches undergraduate courses on ceramic analysis and a graduate course on the petrography of cultural materials.