Dr. Winter received his bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College, where he majored in ancient Greek language, and his doctorate in classical archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania, where he specialized in the study of ancient Greek and Hellenistic ceramics. While working on his doctorate, he lived in Greece as a member of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.

He has excavated in Greece at sites ranging in date from the prehistoric Neolithic period (Franchthi Cave) through classical times (Corinth and Halieis). In Turkey he worked at King Midas' historic capital city of Gordion, and in Cyprus, at the city of Idalion. In the 1970s and 1980s Dr. Winter directed excavations at a number of sites in Yugoslavia, exploring the interconnections between the classical Greeks and the European Celts. His archaeological interests extend beyond the ancient Greeks, however, and Dr. Winter has also excavated at historical sites in Hawaii and the U.S. Northeast, including midtown Manhattan.

Dr. Winter taught archaeology and classical literature in the City University of New York for nineteen years before moving to Washington in 1993 to join the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also taught archaeology in the State University of New York at Albany, Hunter College, and the University of Maryland at College Park. From 1996 to 1998, while on leave from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he was executive director of the joint University of Maryland-University of Haifa excavations at Caesarea Maritima in Israel.

A former National Fellow of the Explorers Club, Dr. Winter is past president of the New York Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, and he served for seventeen years on the Institute's Committee on Professional Responsibilities. He has published numerous articles on the subjects of Hellenistic ceramics, ancient European and classical Greek interconnections, and the archaeology of the late first millennium B.C. Celts. He is currently preparing a study on the archaeology of slavery, a comparative study of the ancient Mediterranean and historic American manifestations of one of history's most pervasive and pernicious institutions.

He is joined on our voyage by his wife, Dr. Joan Smith, who works for Arlington County Mental Health and is an adjunct professor of nursing at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

• Island Empires: Mediterranean Kingdoms from Minos to the Caesars
  The Greeks had a word for it: thalassocracy, or states based on naval power. As we sail Homer's “wine dark sea,” we will trace the history of the maritime empires of Greece and Rome from the second millennium B.C.—era of the legendary King Minos and King Agamemnon's famous expedition against Troy; through the early trading empires of Corinth and Aegina, into the fifth century B.C. when Athens ruled the Aegean; past Alexander's empire and the kingdoms of his successors, to our final destination, the conquest of Rome. This slide-illustrated lecture will examine the close historic connection between the classical world and the seas.

• Counting Backwards: Keeping Time in Antiquity
  From B.C. to A.D., and from the era of the pyramids to the fall of Rome, we will investigate the time reckoning systems of antiquity, looking at how the ancients measured the passage of the years, and how modern archaeologists reconstruct the historic sequencing of antiquity. Our slide-illustrated lecture will begin with the first Pharaohs of Egypt around 3000 B.C., continue with the second millennium B.C., when legend and history blend during the age of the Trojan War, and move through the years of democracy, republic, and empire, in classical Greece and Rome. We will see the time-keeping devices that were in common in Y0K, and review the scientific tools and procedures used today to keep track of the past.

• Greeks, Celts, and Romans
  For the Greek and Roman authors of classical antiquity, the lands of Europe at the headwaters of the Adriatic, into the Valley of the Danube, and across the Alps, were inhabited by tribes of barbarians, greatly feared as crazed warriors but lacking the trappings of civilization. Modern archaeology paints a much more complex picture of Europe in the first millennium B.C., when Mediterranean Greeks and Romans, and European Celts developed complex systems of trade and cultural exchange which culminated in the final centuries of the millennium in the construction of the first cities in central Europe. In our slide-illustrated lecture, examine the gold treasures of the first European Celtic chieftains, the Greek and Roman tales of their northern neighbors, and the civilization that occupied the northern Adriatic and the Po Valley beyond Venice.

• Greece and the Games
  The spirit of the contest has always been part of the Greek world. Recognizable most conspicuously in the great athletic competitions of the Olympic Games, contest and competition were pervasive in ancient Greece. Not even the gods were immune: Apollo and Hercules fought for control of the sanctuary of Delphi; Athena and Poseidon were competitors for the honor of being named the god of Athens. In the mortal sphere, tragic and comic plays were presented in Athens, not as simple entertainment but in contests where artists and their patrons vied for prizes against competing teams. Poets and singers competed in the same sanctuaries and stadiums as wrestlers, runners, and chariot drivers. The prizes in most of these contests were not measured in precious metals or other tangible goods but in honor, which would carry through a successful competitor's lifetime. As we look forward to the 2004 Olympics, when the games return to Greece for only the second time since antiquity, examine the spirit of the games and the contests of the Greeks from the world of Homer in the Eighth Century B.C. until the demise of the Olympics at the end of the Roman era.