About

Mark Letteney is an assistant professor and Carol Thomas Endowed Professor of Ancient History at the University of Washington. His research focuses on the ancient world, archaeology, classics, digital humanities, early Christianity, the history of incarceration, and material culture. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, an M.A. from Yale University, and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Letteney is affiliated with the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies and the Comparative Religion Program. He serves as assistant director on the excavation of the Roman 6th Legion at Legio, Israel, where he directs excavations in the legionary amphitheater, and is co-director of the Solomon's Pools Archaeological Project. His scholarly work includes the monograph 'The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity: Intellectual and Material Transformations,' published by Cambridge University Press in October 2023, which explores how imperial Christianity transformed scholarly practices and manuscript culture in late antiquity. This book received the 2024 Lautenschläger Award and was shortlisted for several prestigious awards, with reviews in multiple academic journals and the Times Literary Supplement. His second book, 'Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration,' co-authored with Matthew D. C. Larsen and published by the University of California Press in August 2025, synthesizes documentary, archaeological, literary, and visual evidence to analyze the ideology and experience of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean from 300 BCE to 600 CE. Letteney's research has been recognized with awards such as the Simpson Center Summer Fellowship, the Oscar Broneer Traveling Fellowship, and the Paul Mellon/Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize. His scholarly contributions include numerous articles and reviews in leading journals, focusing on late antiquity, biblical studies, legal history, and archaeology.

Research topics

• Philosophy
• Archaeology
• Classics
• History
• Literature
• Political Science
• Art
• Linguistics
• Epistemology
• Genealogy
• Ancient history
• Law

Selected publications

• Experiences of Incarceration

  2025-08-12

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Spaces of Incarceration: A Typology of Prisons in Antiquity

  2025-08-12

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Prison Management

  2025-08-12

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Legio – 2023

  Ḥadašŵt ʾarkeyŵlŵgiyŵt. · 2025-04-22

  article

  In June and July 2023, excavations were conducted at Legio (License No. J-23/2023; map ref. 217762–8040/720007–585), as part of a research project on the Roman military base at the site, serving the II Traiana and IV Ferrata legions. The excavation, undertaken on behalf of the Jezreel Valley Regional Project (JVRP), was directed by M.J. Adams and Y. Tepper, with the assistance of M. Letteney (assistant director; Area G supervisor), M. Cohen (Area B supervisor), W. Więckowski (paleoanthropology; Area E supervisor), H. Azrad (registration), E. Anderson, J. Chyla, H. Farrell and A. Garza (assistants to area supervisors), L. Perry-Gal (archaeozoology), Y. Gorin-Rosen (glass), O. Peleg-Barkat (architecture), W. Eck (epigraphy), A. Shapiro and N. Willer (geology), B. Zin and H. Mamalia (quarrying methods), R. Linn (conservation), E. Ernenwein (remote sensing), J. Dray and N. Mammon (metal detector), Israel Institute of Archaeology (logistics), A. Lavit-Cohen (community outreach) and A. Linder and G. Tal of Kibbutz Megiddo (security and logistics). Further support was provided by the IAA and the community of Kibbutz Megiddo, with assistance from workers from Jenin, students and volunteers allocated by the JVRP, as well as from Kibbutz Megiddo and the wider region.

  PublisherDOI

• Legio – 2022

  Ḥadašŵt ʾarkeyŵlŵgiyŵt. · 2025-04-22

  article

  In May and June 2022, excavations were conducted at Legio (License No. J-19/2022; map ref. 217762–8040/720007–585) as part of a research project on the Roman legionary base at the site (the II Traiana and VI Ferrata Legions). The excavation, on behalf of the Jezreel Valley Regional Project (JVRP), was directed by M.J. Adams, S. Cohen and Y. Tepper, with the assistance of M. Letteney (assistant director, area supervisor), S. Gutfeld and O. Gutfeld (administration), A. Linder of Kibbutz Megiddo (security and logistics), K. Fauria, T. Keep and L. Nash (area supervisor assistants), H. Azrad (registration), W. Więckowski (paleoanthropology), L. Perry-Gal (archaeozoology), Y. Gorin-Rosen (glass), T. Levine (pottery restoration), A. Shapiro (geology), H. Mamalya (quarrying), R. Linn (conservation), E. Ernenwein (remote sensing), T. Meltsen (artistic reconstruction), S. Huot (OSL dating) and S. ‘Ad (drawing). Further assistance was provided by workers from Jenin, volunteers allocated by the JVRP, and those from Kibbutz Megiddo.

  PublisherDOI

• Ancient Mediterranean Prison Societies

  2025-08-12

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Incarceration and the Law

  2025-08-12

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration

  2025-06-17

  bookSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction: The Ancient Prison in Historiography

  2025-08-12

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Legal Pluralism as a Category of Analysis

  Law and History Review · 2024-05-01

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract A debate has raged for decades over legal pluralism and its value for the study of law. Much of this back and forth has resolved to a fight over what law “is” and push-and-pull between legal centrists and pluralists. This introductory essay proposes a new framework for thinking about legal pluralism. Turning away from the centrist/pluralist binary, we instead ask what work legal pluralism as a category of analysis can do. The debate, we suggest, is a fundamental methodological disagreement about the normative work that categories of analysis do and the costs that historians should be willing to pay to reap the benefits of theoretically sophisticated frameworks of analysis which are interoperable between times and places. The debate about legal pluralism, we argue, can be productively reframed as a question about the benefits and drawbacks of the legal pluralist framework.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Matthew D. C. Larsen

  2 shared

• Max T. B. Peers

  John Brown University

  1 shared

• Simcha Gross

  California University of Pennsylvania

  1 shared

• Matthew J. Adams

  1 shared

• Abraham Jacob Berkovitz

  1 shared

• Jessica M. Marglin

  1 shared

Labs

• Ancient Mediterranean IncarcerationPI

Education

• PhD

  Princeton University

  2020

Awards & honors

• Lautenschläger Award (2024)
• Summer Fellowship, Simpson Center for the Humanities (UW, 20…
• Premi di merito alla ricerca, “Christianizing Knowledge” (As…
• Oscar Broneer Traveling Fellowship (American School of Class…
• Paul Mellon/Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Pre-Doctoral Rome P…