Dr. Sarah Beckmann

Sarah Beckmann is a Roman archaeologist specializing in domestic art and archaeology. She is currently working on her monograph, which re-investigates the villa phenomenon of the late antique period (mid-3rd to 5th c. CE). She treats the diverse material culture packages of villas in the western provinces as evidence for regional variations on late antique elite culture. Her book project examines villa sites from the bottom up, so to speak, to bring greater attention to non-elite populations traditionally left out of archaeological discussions. In 2022-23, her research was supported by a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, where she was the Andrew Heiskell Rome Prize fellow in ancient studies.
Other research interests include the sculpture habit of late antiquity, and especially portrait traditions in provincial contexts; representations of women and enslaved children in domestic arts; and creation of ascetic space in the Levant, ca. 4th-5th c. CE. At present she works primarily with archival material and with the recovery and analysis of legacy data, but has excavated throughout the Western Mediterranean in Greece, Italy, and France, and is always happy to chat about opportunities in the field. She joined the faculty at UCLA in 2018, where she teaches courses in Roman visual and material culture at both the undergraduate and graduate level.