After establishing a background on Antioch and the excavations, I was drawn to thetreatment of the mosaics post excavation – relocation and conservation. From there, I became interested in the shipping and importation of the mosaics, as they were dispersed to several countries around the world. Throughout my research, I reached out to many museums and explored the extensive resources in the Princeton archives.

When I first visited the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) with the Antioch Recovery Project (ARP), I was drawn to a Geometric Panel from the House of the Boat of Psyches. I couldn’t describe what made this image stand out compared to other items in the corpus, but I sought to understand what drew me in. I suspected it was the nature of the 3D maze-like design in the panel’s center. With my love of mathematical patterns and drawing inspiration from Alex Klein’s ARP Phase I “Twisted Ribbon Geometry and Design,” I hoped to gain insight into this panel and the broader corpus of non-figural and geometric mosaics. In my initial proposal, I suggested considering the unit cells of repeated mosaics and the cultural impact that motifs — such as labyrinths — may have had.