Darcy Tuttle is this year's Donald and Maria Cox | Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Rome Prize Fellow at the Academy. She is a social historian and archaeologist with interests in ancient Roman religion, law, and funerary practice and recently completed her Ph.D. in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation argues that many ancient Romans primarily viewed the afterlife as a community one hoped to join more than a place, like the heavens or the underworld, that one might aim to go to. The project examines how membership within – and exclusion from – this community were negotiated and contested in the period between the first century BCE and the third century CE.
While her dissertation focuses on the Roman Principate, her research projects span the fourth century BCE to the 5th century CE and encompass Etruscan studies as well as cultural contact between the Roman Mediterranean and Central Asia. Her most recent work, published in The Journal of Roman Studies, analyzes the Tomb of the Scipios as a case study for reconstructing mid-Republican Roman historical culture. In the fall, she will be joining the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University as a Research Scholar.
How has your time in Rome shaped or shifted the direction of your project so far?
Much of my research involves considering how the broader archaeological context in which a funerary inscription is found should shape our understanding of how the text was meant to be read and how people interacted with the space in which it was located. Being in Rome has allowed me to think much more deeply about space and the physicality of the materials I study. Easy access to sites, museums, and colleagues studying similar materials has exposed me to many additional tombs and inscriptions relevant to my research that have pushed me to ask new questions.
What part of your daily routine or environment at the Academy has most influenced you and your work?
I often start the day by sitting in the cortile with a cappuccino (perfectly created by Gabri!) and a notebook. The cortile is my favorite place to work because I am surrounded by the kinds of objects I study: the remains of funerary monuments embedded in the walls. They remind me of the people whose stories I am trying to tell.
Have any encounters – with people, places, new information – opened up new paths in your research or practice in the past months?
Being physically in Rome, and in the Academy in particular, has meant that I have spent the year regularly stumbling upon new ideas and research directions at museums such as the Baths of Diocletian; sites like the Portus Necropolis, and the Academy itself. In fact, now that I've completed my dissertation I am working on a short article inspired by one of the funerary inscriptions preserved in the walls of the cortile. But the people I've met have shaped my thinking even more than the places I've gotten to visit. I've enjoyed discussing death, funerals, commemoration, and martyrdom with T.J. Dedeaux-Norris; different kinds of underworlds (supernatural and sewage-based) with Nastasya Kosygina; and sepulchral poetry with David Keplinger, to provide just a few examples. I can already see how these conversations have not only shaped my current research but will continue to echo in my work in the years to come.