About 

                                          Dr. Marie (Nikki, or Doc to her students) Nicole Pareja Cummings

                                          is an archaeologist, art historian, and anthropologist who currently

                                          works as an Assistant Professor of Art History in the Art Department                                           at Salisbury University in Maryland. She also works with the

                                          University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and

                                          Archaeology.

                                         

                                        Focusing first on Minoan tripod cooking vessels and then on Bronze                                         Age Minoan and Cycladic iconography, she earned her MA and PhD                                         from Temple University (2013, 2015). While finishing her first book in                                           2017, Monkey and Ape Iconography in Aegean Art, her interest

                                        shifted beyond the Aegean Islands, to include Ancient Egypt,                                                     Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley,

                                        and beyond. She now focuses on movement and exchange during

                                        the Bronze Age in Afro-Eurasia, which includes such topics as craft

                                        specialization, iconography, maritime trade, and the adaption

                                        and adoption of various prehistoric ideologies. 

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Doc teaches cross-listed, transdisciplinary classes for Archaeology, Anthropology, Art History, Design, and Humanities departments. Some of her students' favorite classes are those that Doc independently created, including Myth Making in Ancient Afro-Eurasia, The Archaeology of Death, and Art of the Supernatural: Sky Gods, Earth Mothers, and Hybrid Creatures. Doc also offers the typical introductory courses, including World Archaeology, Archaeological Methods, Introduction to Art History, Mesopotamian Art, Ancient Egyptian Art, Bronze Age Aegean Art, Greek Art and Archaeology, Roman Art and Archaeology, Art of the Renaissance, and all survey art history and archaeology courses.

 

Because she believes that hands-on, experiential learning is a key component of education, Doc designed, built, and directed the first outdoor dig simulator for Pennsylvania State University as a critical component of her World Archaeology course. Excavation is a necessarily destructive practice, and therefore archaeologists have a great responsibility to preserve and document as much as possible. Because of this, and the anxiety it often inspires in students about digging, she created the simulator. Now students who are interested in Archaeology can participate and train in excavation from a controlled, low-risk environment while also learning many of the practical skills that are useful within the discipline, broader academia, and beyond (for more on student excavation at PSU and Marshall University, where a university asked Doc to launch a second outdoor simulator in 2023, check out @docsdig on Instagram). 

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Doc is the founder and director of the Aegean Bronze Age Studies Initiative (ABASI), and the Plasters Analysis Project (PLAN), which is grounded in the University of Pennsylvania Museum's Center for the Analysis of Ancient Materials (CAAM). She is co-founder and co-director of the Aegean-Indus Bronze Age Research Network (IA-BARN), a project that grew out of the first international workshop on Bronze Age relations between the Indus and Aegean, at University of Oxford. She is actively involved in several excavations, as well. For more on these, check out the Projects tab at the top of the page. 

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