Eloise Jones
Depictions of Female Figures on Lycian Tombs from the Classical to the Roman Period: An Iconographic Study Supported by Virtual Reflectance Transformation Imaging.
Biography
Eloise was awarded a BA in Ancient History (2019) and an MA in Archaeology (2020) from Durham University. Her research focused on traditions of funerary iconography in Greece and Western Anatolia respectively. Following this, she worked for two years as a Research Assistant at the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), where she played a key role in helping with the creation of the BIAA Digital Repository; an open-access online archive storing digital data relating to the Institute's collections and projects.
She is now a PhD student in Archaeology, focusing on the funerary iconography of Lycian tombs from the Classical through to the Roman period, whilst exploring how digital techniques can be used to record and study at-risk tangible heritage. She is part of the Milesian Tales research group; a group of researchers at the University of Liverpool working on the history, archaeology and cultural heritage of the ancient city of Miletos and the surrounding regions of Ionia and Western Anatolia.
Research Interests
This thesis will aim to provide a breadth study of the female figures which appear in reliefs associated with Lycian tombs. Whilst Lycians have often been defined as ‘Asiatic Greeks’, particularly throughout the 20th century, their funerary art displays a marked difference to that of major contemporary Greek poleis, in that whilst Greek art displays an abundance of women mourning, conducting funerary rites, and performing other ritual behaviours, there is comparably scant evidence of women and female figures visible in or on Lycian tombs. This thesis will therefore seek to assess exactly where women or female figures do appear, how these figures can be categorised, and why they are (or are not) displayed.
Following recent successful field trials of Virtual Reflectance Transformation Imaging (V-RTI), Eloise is also looking to use this technology to facilitate the recording and study of these reliefs.