Anna Stevens

I am an archaeologist, specialising in ancient Egypt, with research interests that include urbanism in the ancient world, lived religion, cultural interaction and the archaeology of cult. I am especially interested in how material culture and urban space can shed light on the lives of the non-elite in ancient Egypt.

I have worked as an archaeologist in Egypt, Sudan, the UK and Australia, but my primary fieldwork project is at the New Kingdom city of Akhetaten, built by Egypt’s monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten. I am Assistant Director of the Amarna Project (University of Cambridge), the long-running archaeological expedition to the site.

My main research focus at present is the multidisciplinary investigation of the non-elite cemeteries of Amarna, co-directed with Dr Gretchen Dabbs (Southern Illinois University) and funded by sources that have included the National Endowment for the Humanities, British Academy and the Egypt Exploration Society. The project integrates archaeology and bioarchaeology to shed new light onto health in ancient urban centres, non-elite funerary practice in ancient Egypt and life under Akhenaten. For more information, please see:

A. Stevens. 2018. Death and the city: The cemeteries of Amarna in their urban context. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 28, 103-26.

B. Kemp, A. Stevens, G.R. Dabbs, M. Zabecki and J.C. Rose. 2013. Life, death and beyond in Akhenaten’s Egypt: Excavating the South Tombs Cemetery at Amarna. Antiquity 87, 64-78.

And our web reports on the South Tombs Cemetery and Northern Cemeteries, and publications page.

I am also currently working on a project to develop outreach and site management initiatives for Amarna in collaboration with Dr Kate Spence and Dr Gemma Tully (both University of Cambridge) and serve as editor, alongside Dr Gianluca Miniaci (University of Pisa) and Dr Juan Carlos Moreno Garcìa (CNRS), for the book series Ancient Egypt in Context (Cambridge University Press), which seeks to connect Egyptology to the broader social sciences.