AN INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERDEPARTMENTAL PROGRAM AT COLUMBIA

Jeremy Simmons

Jeremy received his Ph.D. in Classical Studies in December 2019. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (NYU) and will start as Assistant Professor in Ancient History at the University of Maryland, College Park, in Fall 2021. In 2019–20, he was the Emeline Hill Richardson/Millicent Mercer Johnsen Rome Prize holder at the American Academy in Rome; he has also received fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies and the Social Science Research Council. In his dissertation, entitled “Beyond the Periyar: A History of Consumption in Indo-Mediterranean Trade (100 BCE–400 CE)," Jeremy aims to establish a comparative view of the consumption of goods traded across the Indian Ocean in antiquity, addressing representative Mediterranean and Indian commodities in their new social and cultural contexts. Drawing on textual, archaeological, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence, the dissertation explores social and cultural impetuses prompting the demand for particular goods in the Mediterranean and India, changes in consumption patterns as a result of long-distance trade networks, and associations between imported goods and specific social groups or forms of exchange (such as gift-exchange and religious donation). Jeremy has several (forthcoming) publications on topics including pepper consumption in the Greco-Roman world, ancient Indian coinage, and the strategies of seasonal trading communities throughout the Indian Ocean network. Email Jeremy Simmons.