Featured Professor: Nancy Wilkie

Nancy Wilkie, William H. Laird Professor of Classics, Anthropology and the Liberal Arts and co-coordinator of the Archaeology Concentration at Carleton College, has been teaching at Carleton since 1974. She also served as President of the Archaeological Institute of America from 1998-2002 and currently is an Honorary President of that organization.
Her archaeological career began in 1968, when she helped to survey the region around the Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Greece and then excavated at the site of Nichoria from 1969-1975. She also has worked in the region of Delphi and Lamia in Greece, conducted excavations in the Nile Delta of Egypt, and directed an archaeological survey in Grevena, Southwest Macedonia, Greece in all of which many Carleton students were able to participate. More recently her work has focused on working with governmental and private groups to protect historically and culturally important landmarks.Wilkie was appointed to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee by both President Obama and President Bush. As part of this committee, she hears requests from foreign governments for protection of their cultural property through bilateral agreements with the U.S., and says that a lot of the work she does is about reaching across party lines, both nationally and internationally. Wilkie said, ‘‘the opportunity to participate in organizations that make a real difference in the world, protecting our shared cultural heritage, has been one of the most exciting aspects of my career.”As part of these projects she has also worked with the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield, serving as the organization’s secretary, helping to protect the cultural property of Iraq and Haiti during times of military and environmental disasters.
At the end of November she will be leading a Carleton Alumni Adventure to India, during which she will have the opportunity to talk to the group about the threats that exist to the preservation of that country’s cultural heritage. She said,“The more that I can spread the message that participation in the trade in illicit antiquities causes great damage to the world’s cultural heritage, the more pleased I am that I have done something to leave the world a better place.”