Richard Hodges (archaeologist)

Richard Hodges
Dr. Richard Hodges, President of The American University of Rome (2012).
11th President of The American University of Rome
Incumbent
Assumed office July 1, 2012 (2012-07-01)
Preceded by	Robert Marino Andrew Thompson (acting)
Personal details
Born	Richard Hodges (1952-09-29) September 29, 1952 (age 64) Bath, England, United Kingdom.
Residence	Rome, Lazio, Italy.
Alma mater	University of Southampton
Profession	Archeologist
Website	Office of the President of The American University of Rome

Richard Hodges OBE, FSA (born 29 September 1952) is a British archaeologist and president of The American University of Rome. A former professor and director of the Institute of World Archaeology at the University of East Anglia (1996–2007), Hodges is also the former Williams Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia (October 2007- 2012). His published research primarily concerns trade and economics during the early part of the Middle Ages in Europe. His earlier works include Dark Age Economics (1982), Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe (1983) and Light in the Dark Ages: The Rise and Fall of San Vincenzo Al Volturno (1997).

Hodges’s academic career has focussed upon the archaeology of the later Roman world and the early Middle Ages in western Europe. Many of his excavations and publications have highlighted the transformation of classical antiquity and the birth of Europe. Beginning with Dark Age Economics (1982), he reviewed the changing regional patterns of urban phenomena – especially emporia – in the making of north-west Europe. Following this, with David Whitehouse, in Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe (1983), he reappraised Henri Pirenne’s celebrated historical thesis about the collapse of antiquity and the rise of Europe in the Carolingian age. Perhaps his most significant contribution to this theme was the 18-year (1980-98) excavations at San Vincenzo al Volturno, an Italian Benedictine monastery of the Carolingian renaissance, where together with the art historian, John Mitchell, the history and culture was unearthed and set within a European context. In the many reports on these excavations the architectural history and the art history, including well preserved cycles of paintings in the crypt of San Vincenzo Maggiore, were situated within the changing social and economic circumstances of 9th-century Italy.