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Anna Shaw Benjamin died on July 21, 2013. Dr. Benjamin received both undergraduate and graduate education at the University of Pennsylvania (B.A. 1946, Ph.D. 1955) and at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. At the latter she held two fellowships, being a Thomas Day Seymour Fellow (1948/1949) and a Fulbright Fellow (1949/1950).

Dr. Benjamin commenced her devoted teaching career in 1951, as Instructor in Classical Languages and Humanities at Juniata College, a small institution in Pennsylvania, which she left for the University of Missouri-Columbia after receiving her Ph.D. in 1955. There, over almost a decade, she moved from Instructor in Classics and Archaeology to Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor, and Chair. In 1964, she came to Rutgers University as a Full Professor in the Department of Classics from which she retired in 1987. During her years at Rutgers she served at various times as Chairperson and/or Director of Graduate Studies and created an archeology program within the Classics Department. Most summers were spent at digs in Greece with colleagues at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and later at excavations at Aphrodisias in Turkey.

Throughout her long and distinguished career, Dr. Benjamin received a number of honors for her scholarly work. She was twice a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ). In 1972 she was appointed Editor of Archeology (A.I.A.) for a five year term. She devoted her considerable skills to expanding the content and breadth of the journal. In that era the editor was unpaid, but for Dr. Benjamin serving as editor was a labor of love for a field to which she was wholly committed.

Professor Benjamin was a member of the APA Board of Directors from 1973 to 1976 and served the APA in several other capacities as well. In 1979 she was inducted as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and in 1994 she received the Martha & Artemis Joukowsky Distinguished Service Award from the Archeological Institute of America. Those two honors recognizing her contributions to both the fields of Classics and Archeology were particularly important to her as they reflected her life’s work.

She is survived by her nieces, Lydia Parke and Janet Boosz.

Janet Boosz