Alice Clinch is a postdoctoral fellow in Department AAK. Her research studies materiality, craft practices, technology, and the natural sciences in Mediterranean antiquity. Her project at the MPIWG, “Red Earth: Mineralogy and Material Histories of Miltos in Antiquity,” charts the cultural history of an enigmatic pigment used in arts and crafts, agriculture, medicine, and the decoration of ships in Greco-Roman antiquity. Through a detailed archeometric analysis of the elemental and mineralogical composition of miltos, her research establishes the unique physical and chemical properties of this pigment that saw it centred as a potent cultural commodity in the ancient world. At the MPIWG she is a member of the “Metals, Minerals, and the Life Cycle” Working Group.
Alice completed her PhD in History of Art and Archaeology at Cornell University in 2025 with a dissertation on the material and elemental composition of pigments in ancient Greek domestic architecture. She has held predoctoral fellowships from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network PlaCe-ITN (GA no. 956410) at The Cyprus Institute, the A. G. Leventis Foundation, and the Leverhulme Trust. Her research has received fellowships and financial support from the Malcolm H. Wiener Laboratory for Archaeological Science, the Fitch Laboratory of the British School at Athens, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Finnish Institute at Athens, and the Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece, amongst others. She has conducted fieldwork in Greece, Italy, and Cyprus, and is currently active on several projects in Greece and Italy as the specialist in pigments on painted architecture, sculpture, figurines, and ceramics.
