Person

Terpstra, Taco T.

A Dutch citizen, Taco Terpstra studied at the University of Groningen, where he received an MA in Law and Classics. He received a Ph.D. in Ancient History from Columbia University (2011), and joined the Department of Classics at Northwestern University in 2013. Before coming to Northwestern, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Heidelberg, doing research not only in Germany but also the United States at the University of Michigan, where he studied the collections of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. He has worked as an excavator in Ravenna (2005) and Pompeii (2006-11), and as the field director of an excavation project at ancient Stabiae (2011-14). His main area of research is Roman socioeconomic history, with an emphasis on long-distance trade and institutional development. Other areas of interest include the role of writing in the Roman world, papyrology, comparative history, and Roman material culture. His first book, Trading Communities in the Roman World, was published in 2013 (Leiden: Brill). His second book, Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean appeared in 2019 with Princeton University Press. Other publications include field reports, papyrological source publications, and articles on the organization of Roman commercial exchange. Taco Terpstra teaches both first-year and upper-level undergraduate courses on Roman history; he also teaches an upper-level undergraduate course on the archaeology of Roman Campania, which includes the fieldwork he has done in the area.