BA (Yale College), MA, PhD (Harvard)
Dr. Metraux is an art historian and archaeologist whose research interests include Greek and Roman art, architecture and urban planning; relationships between the visual arts and literary and social developments in antiquity; and the intersection of art and science in Greek and Roman art history.
Dr. Metraux’s numerous scholarly publications include writings on Greek city-planning and political space in Greece and Rome as well as articles and monographs on the archaeological excavations of which he has been a member, in Turkey (Sardis), Italy (Francolise) and Tunisia (Utica and Carthage). His book on Greek medical science and art, Sculptors and Physicians in Fifth Century Greece, was awarded the Raymond Klibansky Prize by the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation. His most recent publication is The Art of Citizens, Soldiers, and Freedmen in the Roman World, a collection of essays on “ordinary” Roman art, to which he contributed an article on Walter Benjamin and the commercial arts in late Roman times.
From 1992 to 1997, Dr. Metraux served as associate director of the Carthage project, Corpus des mosaiques de Tunisie, a program of archaeological field work and research on the Roman mosaic pavements at the ancient site of Carthage in Tunisia. A discovery he made during that excavation is the focal point of his study on the Christian destruction of ancient art in the Roman world 300 – 600 A.D., for which he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002.
Publications
Selected Publications
Books
The Art of Citizens, Soldiers, and Freedmen in the Roman World, co-editor Eve D’Ambra (Oxford, Archaeopress, 2006).
Corpus des mosaiques de Tunisie, IV, Carthage, Fascicule I, Les mosaiques du Parc archeologique des Thermes d’Antonin, with M.A. Alexander, A. Ben Abed, C. Kondoleon, A. Gonosova, F. Miller et al (Tunis, Ceres, 1999)
Sculptors and Physicians in Fifth Century Greece – A Preliminary Study, (Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995)
The Villa San Rocco at Francolise, with M.A. Cotton (London and New York: British School at Rome and Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, 1985)
Western Greek Land-Use and City Planning in the Archaic Period, (New York: Garland Press, 1978)
Corpus des mosaiques antiques de Tunisie, I, Utique, Fascicules 1 and 2, with M.A. Alexander and M. Ennaifer, eds. (Tunis, Ceres, 1973-1976)
Articles
“Ancient Housing. Oikos and Domus in Greece and Rome,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 58:3-4 (1999) 392-405.
“Villa Rustica Alimentaria et Annonaria,” in A. Frazer, ed., The Roman Villa: Villa Urbana [First Williams Symposium on Classical Architecture] (Philadelphia, The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1998) 1-19.
“Mosaics, Liturgy and Architecture in the Basilica of Dermech I, Carthage,” Actes du VIIIeme Congres international de l’Association international pour l’etude de la mosaique antique (Bulletin de l’AIEMA18, Paris 1998).
with M.A. Alexander and A. Ben Abed, “The Corpus of the Mosaics of Tunisia: Carthage Project, 1992-1994” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 50 (1996) 361-368.
“Patronage and Style in the Mosaics of the Villa San Rocco, Francolise,” Bulletin de l’Association internationale de l’etude de la mosaique antique X:I (1985) 139-149, figs. 1-8.
“Agora and Forum: Civic Spaces in Antiquity,” Cultures: An International Journal 5:3 (1978) 11-26.
