About

Naomi Carless Unwin studied for a BA in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Oxford History, before moving to University College London to complete a Masters and PhD in Ancient History. Her research interests primarily concern the history, epigraphy and archaeology of ancient Anatolia, focusing on regional cultural dynamics and local identities. Since completing her doctorate, she has been employed as a postdoctoral researcher at Paris Sorbonne (Fernand Braudel IFER-FMSH fellowship), as a Senior Fellow at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations at Koç University in Istanbul, and as a joint research fellow of the Deutsche Archäologische Institut in Berlin and the Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University. Her first monograph, ‘Caria and Crete in Antiquity: cultural interaction between Anatolia and the Aegean’, was published in 2017 with Cambridge University Press. She has participated for many years in the archaeological excavations at the sanctuary of Labraunda, in southwestern Turkey, where she is responsible for the epigraphy of the site. She is also co-directing an archaeological project aimed at documenting the East Stoa and the associated terrace.

Research at Warwick

Naomi is working on the epigraphic strand of the ‘Materiality of Greek festival culture of the Roman Imperial period’ project, considering the physicality of inscriptions and the role they played in shaping civic space. She is surveying a number of case studies from Roman Asia Minor and mainland Greece, focusing on the local dynamics at play in the celebration of festivals and how they were reflected/presented in an urban context.

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Selected publications

‘Epigraphy and the Power of Precedence in Asia Minor’, in E. Angliker and I. Bultrighini (eds.), Materiality of Texts in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Brepols). Forthcoming.

‘Basket-bearers and gold-wearers: epigraphic insights into the material dimensions of processional roles in the Graeco-Roman East’, Kernos 33 (2020): 89-125.

‘The Epigraphic Curve in Phrygia and its Borderlands’, in K. Nawotka (ed.), The Epigraphic Culture(s) in the Eastern Mediterranean in Antiquity (Routledge, 2020): 144-165.

‘Multilingualism in Karia and the Social Dynamics of Linguistic Assimilation’ in O. Henry & K. Konuk (eds.), Karia Arkhaia: La Carie, des origines à la période pré-hékatomnide (2019): 43-60.

Caria and Crete in Antiquity: cultural interaction between Anatolia and the Aegean (Cambridge, 2017).

'Mylasa and Krete: the context of the Mylasan 'Kretan dossier'', Revue des Etudes Anciennes Vol. 118, no. 2 (2016): 413-442.

'What's in a Name? Linguistic Considerations in the Study of 'Karian' Religion', CHS Research Bulletin Vol. 4, No. 2 (2016).

'A new Olympichos inscription from Labraunda: I. Labraunda 137', with O. Henry, Epigraphica Anatolica 49 (2016): 27-45.

'The Travels of Zeus Labraundos', in L. Karlsson (ed.), LABRYS. Essays in honour of Pontus Hellstrom (2014): 43-56.

Qualifications

• BA (Oxford)
• MA; PhD (UCL)