, topic of Aleshire's 1989 and 1991 monographs. Aleshire was born Sara Ellen Bavousett in
Lubbock,
Texas, where she achieved a BA in Classics at
Texas Tech University in 1970, co-authoring her first book during her undergraduate studies. She continued her studies at the
University of California, Berkeley with an MA in Linguistics in 1974 and a PhD in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology in 1986. She was a teaching assistant at Berkeley from 1971 to 1973 and a research assistant there in classics and linguistics from 1974 to 1978. After her graduation, she was a permanent research fellow of Berkeley and also a frequent Senior Associate Member of the
American School of Classical Studies at Athens. In 1976, Aleshire played a leading role in reviving the
Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, which had ceased publishing with volume 25 in 1971. She served as the journal's assistant editor and was responsible for the sections dealing with inscriptions of
Attica and the
Peloponnese until her death in 1997. She was a Fellow in the School of Historical Studies at the
Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton from 1992 to 1993, and Watkins Fellow at the Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies at
Ohio State University in 1996. Aleshire was also editor of Gieben's monograph series
ΑΡΧΑΙΑ ΕΛΛΑΣ: Monographs on Ancient Greek History and Archaeology. She published her PhD thesis as
The Athenian Asklepieion: The People, Their Dedications, and the Inventories in 1989, with a companion work,
Asklepios at Athens: Epigraphic and Prosopographic Essays on the Athenian Healing Cults in 1991. These works: Her work on the role of "archaism" in Athenian religion in the time of
Augustus, largely published posthumously, has formed the basis for understandings of the role of tradition and the past in Athenian culture in the Roman period. Aleshire died suddenly of a heart attack in
Athens in 1997. Volume 44 of the
Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum was dedicated to her memory. Aleshire left her collection of
epigraphic squeezes, her personal library, and an endowment to Berkeley, where they formed the basis of the "Sara B. Aleshire Center for the Study of Greek Epigraphy," established in 1999. ==Bibliography==