Staff profile

• My MA research feeds heavily into my current research. For my Masters, I researched gold's place in Egyptian society and how it was valued by its people. Through pXRF detection, I studied gold alloys in artifacts at the Oriental Museum and found that gold was not often alloyed until the New Kingdom. I discovered that goldsmiths, over the course of thousands of years moved from a lower class status to an upper class one that allowed for rich burials in the New Kingdom. These discoveries, along with the deconstruction of modern biases, have proven that gold was not valued in an economic mindset until much later in Egypt's history, but rather its value stemmed from its religious roots in mythology.
• Currently, I am researching goldsmiths in ancient Egypt and their social mobility between the Old and New Kingdoms, to determine why this class of skilled laborers was able to move at all in an other-wise static social caste. I am also continuing my research of gold alloys in Egyptian artifacts through pXRF and microscopic analysis.