Sheira Cohen

Sheira earned a BA (Honours) in Ancient History and Anthropology from the University of Auckland and an MA in Classics at the University of Sydney. Her research interests include community and identity formation, urbanism, mortuary archaeology, mobility, state formation, connectivity and cultural interaction, and the history of early Rome.

Her dissertation focuses on community formation and seasonal mobility in first millennium BCE Italy, especially the interplay between pastoralists and agriculturalists. Her project uses a combination of ethnographic, historical, and archaeological data; it incorporates stable isotope analysis of human and animal remains to assess mobility. She is developing a strontium baseline map for central Italy in collaboration with colleagues at UM and abroad.

Sheira has been a staff member at the Gabii Project since 2015 and her primary excavation interests are hut deposits and burials from the Iron Age and Archaic period. She recently published the grave assemblages from the Orientalising infant burials from Gabii.

Sheira is also interested in digital publishing in archaeology and its potential to drive innovative research and public engagement. She has worked with Michigan Publishing to explore new directions for their online platform (Fulcrum), focusing on supporting both academic scholarship and community participation in archaeology.