Gwyn Davies

Bio

Professor Gwyn Davies specializes in ancient history and military history. Trained as an archaeologist, he has conducted extensive fieldwork to identify the component structural elements of offensive Roman siege operations, establishing how "siege system" selection was determined, and ascertaining the connotative aspects of siege structures. He has conducted fieldwork in Albania, Britain, France, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Spain and Turkey. Dr. Davies is a specialist in all aspects of the Roman army and is interested in the mechanisms of imperial security in upland/desert areas that did not undergo the conventional, urban-oriented process of assimilation, including the role of local elites in maintaining hegemonic networks of control. With his interest in ‘superpower’ interactions in the classical world, strategic approaches to imperial expansion, establishing the limits of empire and investigating the dynamics of the imperial-indigenous interface are subjects that inform his research agenda.

He has been co-director of field excavations at the late Roman fort site of Yotvata in Israel’s Arava Valley and at the multi-phase site at Tel Achziv in the western Galilee.

Dr. Davies has taught introductory courses on Western Civilization and early European history and regularly offers upper division courses and graduate seminars that cover Greek History, Roman Provinces, Roman Britain, the Age of Alexander, the Ancient Mediterranean and Armies and Frontiers in the Classical World. With his interest in comparative military history, Dr. Davies also offers graduate seminars on Conflict in the Age of Imperialism, Warfare in the Long 19th Century, Crisis and Conflict on the Imperial Periphery, World War One and World War Two.