Jared T. Benton is an archaeologist and historian of the ancient Mediterranean whose research recovers the lives, movements, and choices of people too often obscured by the histories of empires. His work spans Roman archaeology, ancient economies, craft production, migration, and the material cultures of North Africa. His first book, The Bread Makers, uses archaeological, epigraphic, and visual evidence to reconstruct the working and social lives of bakers across the western Roman Empire, revealing how regional traditions and local knowledge persisted within an ostensibly unified imperial economy. His current research explores mobility and identity among the peoples of ancient Mauretania, tracing the radically different experiences of political envoys, soldiers, migrants, enslaved people, and others who moved between North Africa and the wider Mediterranean world.

Benton also directs the Saïss Plain and Zerhoun Massif Archaeological Project in Morocco, an international collaboration investigating a region situated first beyond the effective limits of Roman power and later at the center of profound transformations in the early Islamic Maghreb. Through archaeological survey, excavation, geophysics, scientific analysis, and the study of funerary and religious landscapes, the project asks how Indigenous communities negotiated contact with Rome, participated in exchange across imperial frontiers, and exercised agency amid the spread of Islam. This research connects Roman, Islamic, and Indigenous histories that have too often been studied in isolation, revealing the longue durée through which identities such as Amazigh, Miknasa, and Zenatic emerged. Benton brings the same spirit of inquiry into his teaching, involving students directly in fieldwork, scientific analysis, digital archaeology, and publication while inviting them to understand the ancient world as a landscape shaped not only by states and monuments, but by labor, mobility, adaptation, and human choice.

Recent Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

• 2026, Harvard Loeb ($13,900)
• 2025, Harvard Loeb ($13,900)
• 2024-2025, Brian Rose DAI Berlin Exchange Fellowship
• 2024, Harvard Loeb ($13,900)
• 2024, Rust Family Foundation Archaeological Fieldwork Grant ($6200)
• 2022, ODU Summer Research Fellowship Program ($7000)
• 2021, Archaeological Institute of America’s The Ellen and Charles Steinmetz Endowment Fund for Archaeology ($5500)
• 2020, The Roman Society of London’s Donald Atkinson Fieldwork Grant (£3500)
• 2019, Faculty Proposal Preparation Program Course Reduction
• 2017, ODU College of Arts and Letters Summer Research Grant 
• 2016, Old Dominion Outstanding Mentorship Award
• 2011, Economic History Association Exploratory Travel and Data Grant

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Books

Benton, J. 2020. The Bread Makers: The Social and Professional Lives of Bakers in the Western Roman Empire. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46604-6.

Journal Articles

Benton, J. 2024. "Punitive Labor and Enslavement in the Roman Bakery." World Archaeology (July): 12–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2024.2362168.

Benton, J., C. Schirmer, R. Pelling, S. Bulger, D. Messing, and I. O’Hare. 2024. "The Bakery in the Maison a la Citerne." Mouseion 20, no. 2: 121–155. https://doi.org/10.3138/mous.20.2.01.

Weller, D., O. Orlandini, J. Benton, C. Schirmer, L. LoBue, and S. Culotta. 2021. "The Stone Tools of Volubilis, Morocco: A Socio-Economic Interpretation of Stonework Lithologies." Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 38: 103105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2021.103105.

Book Chapters and Conference Proceedings

Benton, J. 2023. "Economies of Scale: Late-Antique Bakeries outside Large Urban Centers." In Archaeology and Economy in the Ancient World – Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Cologne/Bonn 2018, Vol. 55, edited by Martin Bentz and Michael Heinzelmann, 635–648. Heidelberg: Propylaeum.

Benton, J. 2021. "Pistore Panem Petimus: Vertical Specialization in the Late-Antique Baking Industry." In A Quaint and Curious Volume: Essays in Honor of John J. Dobbins, edited by Dylan K. Rogers and Claire Weiss, 117–135. Summertown: Archaeopress.

Benton, J. 2020. "The Social Construction of Roman Industrial Space: The Limits of Chaînes and the Nature of Roman Baking." In Designating Place: Archaeological Perspectives on Built Environments in Ostia and Pompeii, edited by H. Kamermans, 153–167. Leiden: Leiden University Press.

Benton, J., B. Gorham, J. F. Huemoeller, L. Lieberman, D. Massey, R. Souza, and A. Walthall. 2015. "Relazione sul recente lavoro a Morgantina: The Contrada Agnese Project (2013–2014)." In Atti del convegno nazionale ‘la geoarcheologia come chiave di lettura per uno sviluppo sostenibile del territorio’ – Aidone (EN) 4-5 luglio 2014, edited by Giovanni Bruno, 19–24. Rome: Società Italiana di Geologia Ambientale.

Benton, J. 2021. "The Bakeries of Volubilis: Process, Space, and Interconnectivity." Mouseion 17, no. 2: 241–272. https://doi.org/10.3138/mous.17.2.003.

Peer-Reviewed Preliminary Reports

Schirmer, Christy, D. Alex Walthall, Andrew Tharler, Elizabeth Wueste, Ben Crowther, Randall Souza, Jared Benton, and James Millar. "Preliminary Report on the 2018 Season of the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP)." FOLD&R Italy, no. 500 (2021). http://www.fastionline.org/docs/FOLDER-it-2021-500.pdf.

Tharler, Andrew, D. Alex Walthall, Elizabeth Wueste, Christy Schirmer, Ben Crowther, Jared Benton, Randall Souza, and Katharine P.D. Huemoeller. "Preliminary Report on the 2017 Season of the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP)." FOLD&R Italy, no. 487 (2020). http://www.fastionline.org/docs/FOLDER-it-2020-487.pdf.

Souza, Randall, D. Alex Walthall, Jared Benton, Elizabeth Wueste, Andrew Tharler, and Ben Crowther. "Preliminary Report on the 2016 Field Season of the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP)." FOLD&R Italy, no. 450 (2019). http://www.fastionline.org/docs/FOLDER-it-2019-450.pdf.

Walthall, D. Alex, Randall Souza, and Jared Benton. "Preliminary Report on the 2015 Field Season of the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP)." FOLD&R Italy, no. 408 (2018). http://www.fastionline.org/docs/FOLDER-it-2018-408.pdf.

Walthall, D. Alex, Randall Souza, and Jared Benton. "Preliminary Report on the 2014 Field Season of the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP)." FOLD&R Italy, no. 364 (2016). http://www.fastionline.org/docs/FOLDER-it-2016-364.pdf.

Walthall, D. Alex, Randall Souza, Jared Benton, and James F. Huemoeller. "Preliminary Report on the 2013 Field Season of the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP)." FOLD&R Italy, no. 322 (2014). http://www.fastionline.org/docs/FOLDER-it-2014-322.pdf.

Reference Entries

Benton, J. 2016. "Roman Baking." In The Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by S. Goldberg and M. Anderson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8055.

Podcast Interviews

Podcast Interview with Peopling the Past Season 2, Episode 9 2021
https://peoplingthepast.com/2021/08/10/podcast-season-2-episode-9-rolling-in-the-dough-bread-making-and-roman-bakeries-with-jared-benton/

Book Reviews

Benton J. 2026. “New voices and old harbors” - M. L. Caldelli, N. Laubry , and F. Zevi , eds. 2023. Ostia e Portus dalla Repubblica alla Tarda Antichità. Collection de l’École française de Rome 612. Rome: École française de Rome. Journal of Roman Archaeology. 2026:1-7. 

Benton, J. 2025. Review of Querns and mills in Mediterranean antiquity. Tradition and innovation during the first millennium BC, edited by Natàlia Alonso, T. J. Anderson, Luc Jaccottey. Bryn Mawr Classical Review. https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2025/2025.02.19/

Benton, J. 2021. Review of Volubilis après Rome: Les fouilles UCL/INSAP, 2000-2005, edited by Elizabeth Fentress and Hassan Limane. American Journal of Archaeology 125, no. 4 (October). https://doi.org/10.3764/ajaonline1254.Benton.

Benton, J. 2019. Review of Les boutiques d’Ostie: l’économie urbaine au quotidien. Ier s. av. J.-C.–Ve s. ap. J.-C., by Julien Schoevaert. American Journal of Archaeology 123, no. 3 (July). https://doi.org/10.3764/ajaonline1233.benton.