Looking Through the Glass

Joining Sydney University’s Expedition to Pella as an Honours student started Margaret O’Hea on a career specialising in glass studies. For the last four decades, this has taken Dr O’Hea to projects in Jordan, Syria, Türkiye, and Greece. Tonight’s lecture will explore some of those projects and how they have changed our understanding of the material culture and technologies of the Mediterranean world in the Hellenistic, Roman and early Islamic periods.

Dr Margaret O’Hea apart from being a field archaeologist (often at Pella in Jordan), specialises

in the analysis of glass in the ancient Near East – how it was used, in what proportions to other media of utensils, and how those uses changed over time and across regions. Most of this work is centred upon the Roman-Byzantine and early mediaeval periods in Jordan, Syria, southern Turkey and now central Greece. Occasionally, Dr O’Hea is given the opportunity to study earlier material, and she has published on glass in the Iron Age.

Dr O’Hea teaches at the University of Adelaide, and is also the Director of our Departmental Museum of Classical Archaeology.