October 6, 2026

by Nicole Constantine

With the support of the Anna C. & Oliver C. Colburn Fellowship , Nicole Constantine spent three weeks in Greece conducting museum research for her dissertation on the daily lives of Mediterranean sailors during the Hellenistic period. Below, Nicole shares what these seemingly ordinary objects reveal about the people who ate, drank, worked, and lived aboard the ship.

My project uses shipwreck assemblages to explore the world of Mediterranean sailors during the Hellenistic period. I consider the rhythms of daily life aboard ships, and how sailors – through their labor, experience and embodied knowledge – contributed to the making of a hyper-connected Mediterranean.…