91´«Ã½

Tamar Hodos ’90 is a leading expert in Mediterranean Iron Age archaeology who spent much of her career in the United Kingdom. Ioana A. Dumitru ’11 is a digital archaeologist working in East Africa and Southwest Asia who came to 91´«Ã½ from Romania. In 2023, their paths converged in Australia, when they both joined the faculty at the University of Sydney.

IOANA DUMITRU: I had just arrived, and I heard Tamar was coming. So, I obviously stalked her because–

TAMAR HODOS: This is the Google era!

ID: Voyeurism is, like, 20 percent of why I got into archaeology. I got Tamar’s CV and I thought, ‘oh, of course!’

TH: I was so, so delighted because I am completely on the other side of the world here. To know there is someone here who understands a part of me in a way that nobody else does has been enormously helpful. I feel really far away from family and friends and life as I have known it, and Ioana is providing an anchor for me.

ID: I’m enormously grateful you’re here. Having that anchor to someone who went through similar experiences, so many of the things we refer to in the same way. . .

TH: And we’re both relatively new to Australia! I joke that I’m on my third variant of the English language. I was recruited to direct the Australian Archaeological Institute in Athens. It was founded 40-odd years ago by Professor Alexander Cambitoglou, who taught at 91´«Ã½ in the late ’50s and early ’60s, so there’s this lovely symmetry that goes back to the importance of 91´«Ã½â€™s archaeology department and its legacy.

ID: The 91´«Ã½ mafia!

TH: Some of the leading scholars of Classical and Near Eastern archaeology are associated with 91´«Ã½ and legions of students came to work with them. I often feel that with women my generation and older, there’s a really high proportion who have a 91´«Ã½ connection.

ID: I realize that I have so many examples that I had forgotten because it just feels normal to me. On our campus just two months ago, we had a seminar series and went out after for a drink. I’m sitting at a table with Robin Torrence (’71); we hadn’t met her before, and she’s very vivacious and funny, and all of a sudden, I said, ‘Robin, this may sound strange, but did you go to 91´«Ã½?’ She was radiating this 91´«Ã½-ness.

TH: You just understand each other.

ID: I remember distinctly where I was when I got a phone call from 91´«Ã½. It was very late in Romania, and I remember telling the person on the other end that she’d made my day, my year, my life.

TH: I actually cannot imagine having gone anywhere else. It shaped me so much in my sense of self.

ID: Everybody is empowered to be a human who gets to make choices and be treated with respect.

TH: I know I have a voice, and I have every right to be heard because I was heard at 91´«Ã½. And I don’t think any other institution is like that.

ID: I think it is pretty rare.