Philip P. Betancourt
Laura H. Carnell Professor of Art History and Archaeology
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
M.A., Washington University
B.S., Southwest Missouri State University
Philip P. Betancourt is a specialist in the Aegean Bronze Age. His main research centers on the Minoan civilization of ancient Crete, and he has directed several archaeological projects on the southern Aegean island. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970 and an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Athens in 2000. He has been teaching at Temple since 1970, and he holds the Laura H. Carnell Professorship in Art History and Archaeology. He served as department chair for 19 years, and he teaches both in the department’s undergraduate and graduate programs as well as in the university’s Core Program. He is regarded as a specialist in ancient pottery, and he has also worked extensively with early Greek architecture. Among his many books are The Aeolic Style in Architecture (1977), The History of Minoan Pottery (English edition 1985; Greek translation 1993), and several volumes resulting from his excavations. Among the places where he has worked are Pseira, a Bronze Age seaport in eastern Crete (published as Pseira vols. I to IX), Kommos, a large town in southern Crete (Kommos vol. II, 1974), and Chrysokamino, the earliest copper smelting workshop excavated in Greece (Chrysokamino: The Metallurgy Site and Its Territory, 2006). As the Executive Director of the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, a non-profit institute, he planned and then oversaw the construction and operation of the American research center in eastern Crete (the INSTAP Study Center), a facility that now accommodates over a hundred scholars and students every year (including many from Temple’s Art History department) and supports their research in ancient studies of many types. In 2003, he received the Archaeological Institute of America’s Gold Medal for a lifetime of distinguished archaeological achievement, which is his field’s highest award.