MARTHA JOUKOWSKY

JOUKOWSKY--Martha. Martha Content Little Sharp Joukowsky, a world-renowned archeologist who managed to transcend the burdens of her middle names: never content in the face of social injustice or lax scholarship; little in physical stature but hugely influential among scholars of Ancient Greece, Egypt, and the Near East; and anything but sharp, whether mentoring grad students, tolerating editors, or indulging the dogs that accompanied her during fieldwork--died, after protracted illness, at her Providence, Rhode Island home on January 7, 2022. She was 85. Professor Joukowsky was widely honored by her peers for deepening their understanding of Neolithic ceramics through pioneering advances both in excavation technique and data analysis. Professor Glen W. Bowersock, an authority on Ancient Greece and Rome, noted, in a celebratory volume presented to Professor Joukowsky when she turned 65: "I have always said that as a historian I am merely a scavenger who comes along to see what others have worked so hard to discover. You," he said of his colleague, "have been the discoverer," adding "but not only that. You have been the interpreter, the mediator, the diplomat and the muse." Proof of that wide-ranging impact finds expression elsewhere in the birthday book, which includes salutations from foundation and university presidents, library directors, refugees, hotel cooks, archivists, four generations of family members, Bedouin camel drivers, Baptist ministers, two movie stars, one convicted mayor, a hotel porter, a Russian orthodox archbishop, a high-ranking Gambian diplomat, and grateful reminiscences from some of the hundreds of students Professor Joukowsky educated in the classroom and in the field. Professor Joukowsky received her Doctorat d'Etat from Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne in 1982 based on her dissertation on prehistoric Aphrodisias, a predominately Greco-Roman site in Turkey. From 1982 to 2002, the professor taught at Brown University's Center for Old World Archaeology and Art and in its Department of Anthropology. She also served as the President of the Archaeological Institute of America (1989-1993) and was a Trustee of both the American University of Beirut and Brown University. Over the course of her career, Professor Joukowsky conducted fieldwork in Lebanon (1967-1972), Hong Kong (1972-1973), Turkey (1975- 1986), Italy (1982-1985), and Greece (1987-1990), but it was her 15 years of excavation in Jordan of the Great Temple at Petra, a colonnaded complex built by the Nabataeans, that earned her the greatest recognition, both for the discoveries she made and the under and graduate students she mentored. Converting the basement of her Providence home into a classroom and research center, Professor Joukowsky trained two generations of archeology majors in excavation technique by filling sandboxes with kitty litter and pink plaster that she then larded with broken dishware to emulate conditions in the field. "The history of the world," she regularly told her students, "is found in its pottery." Vartan Gregorian, a close family friend and former President of Brown University from 1989 to 1997, characterized her ceaseless energy as a "one-person swarm". The professor acknowledged her unusual stamina in a letter to a friend describing a typical work week: "I have had seven honors theses to read, four Ph.D. defenses, two masters students' meetings, along with my own writing, serving on university committees, grading undergraduate exams and reading student papers, not to mention good old-fashioned teaching. As such, I am kept off the streets and out of harm's way." Well, not always. When the Six-Day War halted her excavations in the Beqaa Valley, the professor ignored State Department warnings and returned to the site less than a week after the cease- fire. She showed a similar tenacity, after an earthquake devastated the Hellenistic city of Aphrodisias, in Turkey, by surveying the damage to her students' trenches even before the aftershocks had subsided. Professor Joukowsky brought a field-marshal authority and style to all her digs. She favored khaki pants and tops, a desert uniform she embellished with a military cap bearing oak-leaf clusters, a millinery extravagance dramatically at odds with the three-tiered tulle veil (fastened to a coronet of seed pearls) she wore when she married her college sweetheart A. W. Joukowsky, an entrepreneur and philanthropist of Russian noble lineage. (Mr. Joukowsky predeceased his wife in 2021.) During their 64 years of marriage, the couple cherished their three children--Nina Joukowsky Koprulu, Artemis Joukowsky, and Michael Joukowsky--in addition to Michael's wife, Jane Joukowsky, many grandchildren, as well as some two-dozen dogs, most of which bore names honoring the ancient cultures the professor studied. Her canine companions included namesakes of a Phoenician god (Melqart), a Roman emperor (Caesar) an Imperial general (Pompey), a Nabataean god (Dushara), and an Egyptian deity (Resheph). Occasionally, she would veer from archeological resonant appellations: She named one of her dogs Pushkin, in recognition of her husband's origins, and had a much-beloved terrier named Mephistopheles, a nod to a devilish spirit that all who knew Martha Joukowsky will recognize and miss terribly. Funeral services are private.