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Archaeology's Rocco Palermo Awarded $35,000 Loeb Classical Library Fellowship

April 7, 2025
Rocco Palermo leaning over an excavation site
Palermo on site at the Gird-i Matrab Archaeological Project (GMAP) in Iraq

Assistant Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology Rocco Palermo has been awarded a prestigious in the amount of $35,000. The fellowship will support the Gird-i Matrab Archaeological Project (GMAP) in Iraqi Kurdistan, of which Palermo has been the director since 2021.

The Loeb Classical Library was founded to encourage research in the U.S. and abroad in the province of archaeology and Greek and Latin Literature. Today, the continues the historic mission of making all that is important in Greek and Latin literature available to readers anywhere in the world—with accurate, literate, English translations.

GMAP excavation site
GMAP excavation pit

This fellowship will enable the GMAP team to continue its exploration of the lives and economies of rural communities of Mesopotamia throughout the ages. GMAP has a particular focus on the reconstruction of Mesopotamia's domestic economy and its rise in social complexity in the 5th and 4th millennium BCE, as well as the inclusion of rural villages and secondary centers in the interconnected, large-scale empi