Antonio (Tony) Giuseppe Sagona (1956 – 2017), was an archaeologist and classics professor who taught at the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia.[1]
Tony Sagona was born in Tripoli, Libya, on April 30, 1956. Accompanying his parents, Salvatore and Maria he migrated to Australia in 1960, initially settling in Williamstown, Victoria.[2]
Sagona received his education at Emmanuel College, Altona, completing his secondary education in 1973[3] and in the Humanities Department at the University of Melbourne. His PhD topic was the archaeology of the early Bronze Age Kura–Araxes culture of the Caucasus Region, which he completed in 1984. This was published as The Caucasian Region in the Early Bronze Age in 1984.[4] Sagona tutored in the Humanities Department during his PhD candidature, and on the sudden death of his mentor and model, Bill Culican, he took over Culican's course and was appointed as a lecturer in Archaeology. He was promoted to senior lecturer in 1989, became an associate professor and reader in 1995, and was appointed to a full Professorship in 2006. He was granted the title of Emeritus Professor shortly before his death in 2017.[2]
He has written a number of books on the archaeology of the Near East, with his fieldwork concentrating on ancient settlements, landscapes and cemeteries in Anatolia, the Caucasus and Syria.[5]
His fieldwork has covers late prehistory to modern historic periods, with a focus on ancient settlements, landscapes and cemeteries in Turkey (Anatolia), the Caucasus, and Syria. His Work in Turkey included the first systematic archaeological investigations of Erzurum and Bayburt Provinces, helping to establish cultural sequences for the area east of the Euphrates River. He also collaborated with the Georgian National Museum in the southern Caucasus at the site of Samtavro. From 2007 he also undertook investigations into the World War I battlefields at Gallipoli, as part of the Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey of the ANZAC Battlefield, for the Australian Department of Veterans' Affairs, and the New Zealand Ministry of Culture and Heritage in collaboration with Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University.[6] An edition of the publication Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta was dedicated in his honour.[7]
^Context and Connection: Essays on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honour of Antonio Sagona, Series: Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta Editors: Batmaz A., Bedianashvili G., Michalewicz A., Robinson A. 2017 ISBN978-90-429-3403-0
Ancient Turkey, (with Paul Zimansky), 2009, Routledge
The Archaeology of the Caucasus : From Earliest Settlements to the Iron Age Cambridge University Press, 2017, ISBN9781107016590
Anzac Battlefield: A Gallipoli Landscape of War and Memory, Antonio Sagona, Mithat Atabay, Christopher Mackie, Ian McGibbon, Richard Reid Cambridge University Press, 5 Jan. 2016
