Daphne D. Martin is an archaeologist and art historian whose work focuses on the Mediterranean during the first millennium BCE. Her particular expertise lies in Archaic Sparta and Lakonia, where she examines how objects and built environments shaped identity and religious experience while recovering the material histories of women, non-elite communities, craftspeople, and other populations often obscured by literary sources and canonical accounts of classical art. Her broader interests include making and materiality, especially within ancient sanctuaries; Mediterranean mobility and cultural exchange; restitution and cultural patrimony; and public archaeology in Greece and Italy. Across these fields, her scholarship advances a more plural, interconnected, and ethically engaged history of the ancient Mediterranean.
Martin combines object-based scholarship and teaching with archaeological and curatorial practice. She is a senior staff member of EVOKE (Exploring Vythoulas’ Origins in Kythera Environs), where in addition to developing the field-school curriculum she is leading the study and publication of the site’s Archaic and Classical material. Her museum work extends across institutions in the US, Europe, and Australia, and has included a Provenance Research Fellowship at the Allard Pierson (Collections of the University of Amsterdam); curating Spartan religion at the Fitzwilliam Museum (University of Cambridge); and public tours and object-handling for the Greek diaspora at the Chau Chak Wing Museum (University of Sydney).
Her current book project examines Sparta and Lakonia as a center of artistic experimentation and challenges the marginal place of its artistic tradition within histories of Greek art.
Prior to her appointment at the University of Oklahoma, Martin was the Stavros Niarchos Fellow in Classical Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She received her PhD and MPhil in Classics (Classical Art and Archaeology) from the University of Cambridge and her BA in Classics and History of Art from Yale University.
Selected Publications
(Co-authored with Rogier A. A. Kalkers and Stijn van Rossem) “Re-imagining an ethics of ownership: Provenance research into the archaeological collections of the Allard Pierson” Museum International 77, 2026.
(Co-authored with Sherry Lee) “The Feminine Semiotics of Dedication at Epizephyrian Locri (6th-3rd century BCE): from pinakes to votive epigram” In The Materiality of Ancient Greek Identities, edited by E. Gooch and J. Ruddick. Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025, 187–218.
“Sensing Devotion at Sparta: The Ivory Adornments at the Sanctuary of Artemis Ortheia (750-600 BCE)” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 37 (2), 2022: 137–157.
“Archaeology in Greece 2021-2022: Newsround” Archaeological Reports 68, 2022: 43–92.
"The Color of Cult: Artemis Brauronia and the krokotos" In Textiles in Ancient Mediterranean Iconography, edited by C. Brøns, S. Harris and M. Zuchowska. Ancient Textiles Series. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2021, 79–90.
