Professor Dr. Patrick Degryse is on his way to the Getty Villa

I've known Patrick Degryse for about ten years starting when we were both struggling graduate students. More recently, we have been on expedition together at the Wadi Natrun in Egypt trying to understand how the Romans used this salt deposit for glass making (and, yes, for those of you who have heard the rumors, we were shot at by helicopter gunships). As shown in the image taken from this trip, Patrick is crouching in the foreground with his trowel in hand, Dr. Andrew Shortland (Cranfield University) standing, Dr. Jean-Luc Schwenninger (Oxford) to the left, and our mindful keeper from the Egyptian Geological Survey is in the back with a cap. We have just published the results from this survey online in the journal Archaeometry (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2010.00573.x/abstract).

Today Patrick remains one of my principal collaborators and just happens to be one of the foremost researchers in the use of isotopic ratios in the analysis of art and archaeology. He is professor of archaeometry at the Katholic Leuven University (Belgium), where he is director of the Centre for Archaeological Sciences. He leads a team of over 20 PhD students, post docs and technicians, researching the provenance of raw materials for ancient ceramic, glass, metal and stone production. He uses geological techniques (petrography and isotope geochemistry) to study ancient trade and economy. Main research projects include the European Research Council project “ARCHGLASS” and the excavations of Hellenistic-Byzantine Sagalassos and Duezen Tepe (Turkey), but also object studies in co-operation with Harvard University and the Getty Conservation Institute.

He will be spending the month of July in my lab at the Getty Villa, so please stop by and say hello.

Also, if you are interested, he will be giving the GCI a science lecture entitled "Chemistry and Culture- How Isotopes can be used in Museums".

July 20, at 12:30-1:30 held in the GRI Lecture Hall, Plaza level.

Following the lecture Patrick will be available for informal discussions which will be held in the Palenque conference room, East building L2.

Please RSVP to Tina Segler tsegler@getty.edu if you plan on attending and feel free to forward this announcement to any colleagues you think would be interested in joining us.

We look forward to seeing you at the lecture.