Biography

Caroline Carter is a Ph.D. candidate in the Program in Mediterranean Art and Archaeology studying Classical Archaeology under Dr. Tyler Jo Smith. Her research interests are interdisciplinary, focusing on ancient Greek religion and ritual (primarily during the Archaic and Classical periods), myth and iconography, animal studies, the archaeology of sacred landscapes, and the regions of Attica and Arcadia in Greece.

Her dissertation focuses on caves with archaeological and textual evidence for religious ritual activity in ancient Athens and its surrounding territory ca. 750-300 BCE. As part of this study, it incorporates a detailed analysis of the caves and their relationship to features in the natural and built environments in order to better understand how the caves operated individually and as a possible network of religious activity in the landscape. It is hoped that such an approach will deepen our already rich understanding of ancient Greek religion and its associated practices.

Caroline received B.A. degrees in Classics (Classical Archaeology) and Religious Studies (Ancient Religions) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2014. She also completed their Post-Baccalaureate Program in Classics in 2017. She received her M.A. in Classics (Classical Archaeology) from the University of Arizona in 2019 where she wrote her thesis entitled, “Theriomorphic Forms: Analyzing Terrestrial Animal-Human Hybrids in Ancient Greek Culture and Religion.”

She has participated on several excavations: Huqoq Excavation Project (Israel) (2011-12), Azoria Excavation Project on Crete (Greece) (2014), the Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project in Arcadia (Greece) (2018-2019, 2025), and the Caesarea Coastal Archaeological Project (Israel) (2022-present). She has also interned in curatorial departments, namely working with collection material from the ancient Mediterranean at the North Carolina Museum of Art (2017) and Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2016-2017). She co-curated an exhibition entitled, Pink, as a Ruffin Gallery Curatorial Graduate Fellow at the University of Virgina (2022).

From 2022-2023, Caroline was a Fellow in the Praxis Program for Digital Humanities at the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia.

During 2023-2024, she was the Jacob Hirsch Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

For 2025-2026, Caroline is a recipient of a I.K.Y.- Fulbright Ph.D. Research Award in Greece, affiliated with the Department of History and Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.