Livingston Vance Watrous

Background

Livingston Vance Watrous was born on April 11, 1943, in the United States. His father was a diplomatic officer and his mother was a teacher.

Education

Livingston Watrous received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Princeton University in 1966. From 1966 till 1969 he did his military service in the United States Navy. Then he went to the University of Pennsylvania where he received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in classical archaeology in 1975.

Career

Livingston Watrous is a professor of the Art History department at State University of New York at Buffalo from 1976. His interests include Aegean and Greek art and archaeology. He is particularly interested in iconography (mainly as it relates to Greek poetry) and the relationship between society, social institutions, and art. In 1993-1994 he was Elizabeth A. Whitehead Professor at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. He also was Director of the Gournia Survey Project, important for the new information it provides about one of the most significant excavations of a town in the Late Bronze Age Aegean.

Watrous is also known as the author of books and articles. He wrote Kommos III. The Late Bronze Age Pottery (1992), The Cave Sanctuary of Zeus at Psychro: A Study of Extra-urban Sanctuaries in Minoan and Early Iron Age Crete (1996), The Plain of Phaistos: Cycles of Social Complexity in the Mesara Region of Crete (2004), An Archaeological Survey of the Gournia Landscape: A Regional History of the Mirabello Bay, Crete, in Antiquity (2012), The Galatas Survey: Socio-economic and Political Development of a Contested Territory in Central Crete During the Neolithic to Ottoman Periods (2017), and other books. He recently published articles on the archaeology of Crete, and on the earliest architectural sculpture known in Greece. He is also a contributor to periodicals, including Hesperia.

Achievements

• Livingston Watrous is known as an outstanding educator and prolific author on archaeology. He received grants from the Archaeological Institute of America, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Geographic Society, the Fulbright Commission, and the Institute for Aegean Studies to support his archaeological fieldwork and studies on Minoan Crete.

Works

More photos

• book

  • An Archaeological Survey of the Gournia Landscape: A Regional History of the Mirabello Bay, Crete, in Antiquity

    (A regional survey was undertaken in the central part of t...)

    2012
  • Kommos III. The Late Bronze Age Pottery

    (Continuing the documentation of the excavation at the Min...)

    1992
  • The Galatas Survey: Socio-economic and Political Development of a Contested Territory in Central Crete During the Neolithic to Ottoman Periods

    (This volume explores the results of the American archaeol...)

    2017
  • The Plain of Phaistos: Cycles of Social Complexity in the Mesara Region of Crete

    (The Plain of Phaistos presents the results on an interdis...)

    2004
  • The Cave Sanctuary of Zeus at Psychro: A Study of Extra-urban Sanctuaries in Minoan and Early Iron Age Crete

    (This book is a study of extra-urban sanctuaries in Minoan...)

    1996

Personality

Livingston Watrous speaks Greek and Spanish.

Connections

Livingston Watrous married an archaeologist. The marriage produced one child, L. Matthew.