Associate Professor Director of Graduate Studies Director for UGA Croatia Cultural Heritage and Archaeology Maymester Program Jordan Pickett is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Classics at the University of Georgia (UPenn, PhD 2015). His work focuses on the environment and geography of architecture and settlement in the Eastern Mediterranean. Jordan has authored or co-authored articles and chapters on climate, earthquakes, infrastructure, and architecture for the Dumbarton Oaks Papers, the Journal of Archaeological Science, PLoS One, the Journal of Late Antiquity, Quaternary Science Reviews, and Cambridge University Press, among others. Jordan has on-going projects concerned with Late Antique eruptions of volcanoes in South America and the evolution of Roman roads in the Balkans, besides various concerns related to environmental and architectural history. Jordan is the lead co-PI with Benjamin Anderson (Cornell) for study of fortifications on the Byzantine Acropolis at Sardis, as part of the joint Harvard-Cornell Expedition to Sardis since 1958. He serves as director for UGA's Heritage and Archaeology Maymester Program in Venice and Croatia that takes 20 students abroad every year, and as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Classics, home of the largest Latin program in the United States. Since 2023, Jordan has presented his research at the Dunhuang Research Academy in China, Oxford University, Cornell University, Indiana University, UCLA, Notre Dame's Medieval Institute at Rome, and the University of Pennsylvania. Education Education: MA and PhD 2015 Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, University of Pennsylvania BA 2006 Art History and Religious Studies, Indiana University at Bloomington Research Research Areas: Archaeology and Art/Architecture History Classical Culture Classical Languages and Literatures Environmental and Climate History Late Antiquity Inclusive Excellence Classical Reception Selected Publications Selected Publications: 2026 "Patterns of Silk Road Exchange and the Eastward Transmission of Roman Bath Technology" for Western Regions Studies 西域研究 (accepted). 2026 "Via illa nostra...militaris: a brief prehistory of the Via Egnatia" for Macedonia in Mediterranean Context, eds. Lindsey Mazurek and Cavan Concannon (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, forthcoming) 2026 "Forest Management in Roman and Byzantine Law" for The Byzantine Forest, eds. Sturt Manning and Benjamin Anderson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming) 2024 “Earthquakes and State Response at Antioch” for Antioch on the Orontes: History, Society, Ecology, and Visual Culture, ed. A. de Giorgi (Cambridge: CUP, 2024), 433-450 [link] 2023 “Earthquakes and Urban Adaptation in Late Antiquity” in The Power of Nature: Agency and the Archaeology of Human-Environmental Dynamics, ed. M. Smith (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2023), 77-98 [link] 2022 “Settlement, environment, and climate change in SW Anatolia: dynamics of regional variation and the end of Antiquity” for PLOS One, lead co-author with Matthew Jacobson, also Alison L. Gascoigne, Dominik Fleitmann, and Hugh Elton. [link] 2022 “Water and Social Relationships in Byzantine Neighborhoods” for Byzantine Neighbourhoods, eds. B. Anderson and F. Kondyli, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies Series (London: Routledge, 2022), 125-152. [link] 2021 “A Social Explanation for the Disappearance of Roman Thermae” for Journal of Late Antiquity 14.2 (2021): 375-414. [link] 2021 “Conflict Architecture: Making History at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Hebron” for Architecture and Visual Culture in the Late Antique and Medieval Mediterranean, eds. V. Marinis, A. Papalexandrou, and J. Pickett (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), 177-192 [link] 2020 “Hydraulic Landscapes of Cities in the East Roman World” for Landscapes of Pre-industrial Cities, ed. G. Farhat, Landscapes Studies Series (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2020), 115-142. [link] 2018 “Earthquakes as the Quintessential SCE [Short-Term Catastrophic Event]: Methodology and Societal Resilience” for Human Ecology 46, special issue with the Princeton Climate Change and History Research Initiative, eds. J. Haldon, A. Izdebski, and S. White (2018): 1-14 [lead co-author with Lee Mordechai] [link] 2017 “Water and Empire in the de Aedificiis of Procopius” for Dumbarton Oaks Papers 71 (2017): 95-125 [link1/link2] 2016 “Architectural energetics for tumuli construction: the case of the medieval Chungul Kurgan on the Eurasian Steppe” for Journal of Archaeological Science 75 (2016): 101-14 [first author with John Schreck, Renata Holod, Yuriy Rassamakin, Oleksandr Halenko, Warren Woodfin] [link] 2016 “Temples, Churches, Cisterns and Pipes: Water in Late Antique Ephesus,” in De Aquaeductu Atque Aqua Urbium Lyciae Pamphyliae Pisidiae: The Legacy of Sextus Julius Frontinus, International Congress on the History of Water Management and Hydraulic Engineering in the Mediterranean Region. Antalya, October 31 – November 9, 2014, ed. G. Wiplinger, Babesch Annual Papers on Mediterranean Archaeology Supplement 27 (Leuven: Babesch/Peeters, 2016), 297-312 [link] 2016 “The environmental, archaeological and historical evidence for climatic changes and their societal impacts in the Eastern Mediterranean in Late Antiquity”, for Quaternary Science Review 136: 189-208 [2nd co-author with Adam Izdebski, Neil Roberts, Tomasz Waliszweski] [link] 2014 “Patronage Contested: Archaeology, Crusader Interventions, and the Early Modern Struggle for Possession at the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem,” in Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, eds. Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, Hanna Vorholt = Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, no. 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 35-45 [link] Courses Taught Courses Taught: CLAS 1020 CLAS 1020H CLAS 3015 CLAS 3040 CLAS 4170 CLAS 4180 CLAS 4190 CLAS 4195 CLAS 4300/6300 CLAS 8020
