Into Touch with the Remote Past: Interactive Ancient Egyptian Pottery at Smith College

This thesis traces the movements of a collection of Egyptian pottery across continents to its final destination at Smith College. More specifically, I employ the framework of object biography to examine the life history of a single Egyptian pot from this collection from 1895 to 2025. I use a comparative analysis of archival materials to recreate how Egyptian pots were excavated, arranged, transported, and used in museums and small liberal arts colleges. I use this pot to consider the broader history of archaeological science, exploring how Egyptian pottery was initially constructed into a scientific artifact, and how it embodied shifting scientific ideas and approaches to ancient materials over time. The parallel stories elucidate three key themes: I argue that pottery is more than static representations; it is an active social agent, whose life comes to light in its relations with other vessels, people, and ideas. By adopting a pot-oriented perspective, I uncover the dynamic interplay of agency shared between the object and the humans who described and handled it. I (re)write the life-story of a scientific artifact during an era when evolving technologies dominate ways of knowing material culture, and critique the enduring ideology that treats pottery as a mere repository of ancient data. Technology and instrument-mediated interpretation further objectifies pottery. Instead, I emphasize the entangled state of humans and things in the process of knowing. Specifically, I highlight the sentimental impact that ancient materials have exerted on those who engage with them. The emotional and evocative aspects of such objects have been underrepresented in the life profile of the scientific artifact.