Dr. Caitlín Barrett

Caitie Barrett is an archaeologist who studies everyday life and cross-cultural interactions in the ancient Mediterranean. A 2022 National Geographic Explorer, she teaches at Cornell University as Associate Professor of Classics. She also co-directs an archaeological excavation at Pompeii: the Casa della Regina Carolina (CRC) Project, which explores the lived experience of ancient Roman gardens.

Her areas of specialization include Mediterranean and Egyptian archaeology, household archaeology, the archaeology of religion and ritual, and interactions between Egypt and the Greco-Roman world in antiquity. In addition to her current fieldwork at Pompeii, she has also excavated and surveyed a range of Bronze Age through early modern sites in Egypt, Greece, and the United States.

Barrett earned her PhD from Yale and her BA from Harvard. She is the author of two books: Egyptianizing Figurines from Delos: A Study in Hellenistic Religion (Brill, 2011) and Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens (Oxford University Press, 2019), as well as numerous scholarly articles. Her work has been supported by grants from organizations that include the National Geographic Society, the Fulbright Foundation (two-time recipient), Dumbarton Oaks, the American Philosophical Society, the Rust Family Foundation, the American Research Center in Egypt, and Sigma Xi.

In exploring the material remains of the past, Barrett seeks to better understand some of the most profoundly human aspects of life: the daily experiences, activities, and sensations that made up people’s lives.