Faculty Research Fellow
Sarah Murray is an archaeologist and historian whose research examines the socioeconomic institutions of early Greece. She received a Ph.D. in Classics at Stanford University in 2013. She is the author of The Collapse of the Mycenaean Economy (Cambridge, 2017) and Male Nudity in the Greek Iron Age (Cambridge, 2022) and single- or co-authored articles and reports in scholarly journals including the Journal of Field Archaeology, Journal of Archaeological Research, American Journal of Archaeology, Hesperia, Antiquity, Mouseion, and Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
Fellowship Project: Descending through Hephaistos’ Sooty Realm: Metallurgy, Pyrotechnology, and Death Ritual in Early Greece
The Greek Early Iron Age witnessed the emergence of two cultural novelties: the invention of iron metallurgy and the use of cremation burial. This project proposes that the two developments are best understood as closely intertwined elements within an emergent ideology of fiery transformation related to the invention of iron smelting. The project draws on comparative evidence to highlight the supernaturally fraught position of metallurgical transformation in a wide range of premodern societies. By centering the dark, hot underworld of ancient Aegean miners and smiths, my project offers a new theory about the origins of some Greek eschatological beliefs.