Philip P. Betancourt, a professor at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Betancourt has been a faculty member at Temple since 1970 and is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Art History and Archaeology in the Art History Department at Temple.

He also is an adjunct professor in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania.

Betancourt is an archaeologist who has helped uncover the Minoan civilization of Bronze Age Crete, where he has directed a series of excavations at Bronze Age cities and towns.

As a specialist in pottery and metallurgy, his main interests have centered on the early Bronze Age, during the third millennium B.C. when European civilization was just beginning. 

He has written extensively on Minoan archaeology and history, publishing more than 100 articles and more than 20 books.

Betancourt is regarded as one of the American scholars who have helped transform the field of modern archaeology by bringing together large teams of scientists in many fields to focus on specific problems.

His most recent book, The Chrysokamino Metallurgy Workshop and its Territory (Princeton, 2007), is a detailed and highly technical presentation of the results of an excavation he directed that demonstrated the Minoans were already smelting copper at the beginning of the Bronze Age, using primitive bellows and small furnaces to extract the metal from its ore.

It was once thought that only the Balkans and the Near East were using smelting furnaces this early in history.

Typical of Betancourt’s approach to archaeological research and publication, the book has 31 co-authors, with contributions from metallurgists, physicists, geologists, specialists in faunal studies and paleobotany, and scholars in many other fields, all making important contributions to an understanding of what was excavated and helping to write a new chapter in man’s early history.

“It’s a singular honor, but the recognition is really more to my work than to me,” said Betancourt. “It’s gratifying to see that the history before the Greeks arrived is being recognized for its contribution to the beginnings of state formation, long-distance trade and all the advancements that made our world possible.”

Betancourt was elected as a fellow of the European Academy of Sciences in 2003 and as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2006. In 2003, the Archaeological Institute of American awarded him its annual Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement, which is the highest honor in the field of archaeology in the United States.

Founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the Academy has elected as fellows and foreign honorary members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Ben Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 170 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners.

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