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Throughout the twentieth century, Greek society invested in the enhancement and management of archaeological sites and monuments seen as particularly important for the nation's political and diplomatic agendas. Antiquities have always been part of public life in modern Greece, as evidenced by national campaigns emphasizing the timeless value of ancient Greek culture, promoted in the service of national, political and economic ends. In this context, the Greek Archaeological Service has long carried out works for landscaping and demarcating archaeological sites, as well as for enhancing access to them. This study, drawing on archival material of the Directorate for the Management of the National Archive of Monuments (DMNAM) and other sources as well as two case studies--the Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae/Andritsaina and the archaeological site of Delphi--examines the factors that have determined the relationships between antiquities and Greek society. In particular, it focuses on contradictions, and occasional conflicts, related to such relationships during the interwar period (1918-1939) and the social impact of the promotion and enhancement of archaeological sites. The paper also emphasizes local communities' and authorities' involvement in managing archaeological sites in their regions due to high tourist interest during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the ultimate aim of the dominant heritage discourse and practice is to preserve culture in a way that contributes to peace and human prosperity, its paradoxical outcome has been to erase the variety of ways that people can relate to the past and to normalize ethnic and religious conflicts as well as globally deepening inequalities of class, race and gender. In this context, searching for civilization in the past has become an increasingly irrational activity, specifically in geopolitically important zones such as the Middle East and Turkey, where millions of immigrants, along with numerous minorities and economically impoverished populations, are currently denied access to the living standards of modern civilization. This paper aims to highlight these paradoxes inherent in the dominant heritage discourse and practice through the example of a recent heritage awareness-raising and capacity-building project, Safeguarding Archaeological Assets of Turkey (SARAT). Furthermore, based on two ethnographic case studies of treasure hunting from Turkey and Greece, it is also argued that the past is embodied in our questions of who we are and in our difficulties of belonging in today's social landscape. Heritage, therefore, will continue to be in conflict and danger, unless people come to understand that they relate to the past in a variety of ways as regards the very core of the thick history of world politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite systematic archaeological research since the mid-1970s, developments in prehistoric northern Greece are not well understood. The paper focuses on the Late Bronze Age and the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age transition (c. 1700/1500-1100/1000 BC). This is often considered a formative period for the appearance of institutionalized inequality at the end of the Late Iron Age (Archaic). One of the main sets of evidence in the discussion regarding state emergence in northern Greece pertains to food storage. This paper reviews some of this evidence and presents new data from an ongoing comparative study of storage practices in the region (Northern Greek Storage Project). This further affords the opportunity to revisit the question of state emergence and sociopolitical complexity within an anthropological framework that stresses historicity, agency. and a focus on the local scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This response to a set of wide-ranging papers on the dimensions of reciprocity in Bronze Age Greece introduces three areas for further research, in order to expand the framework in terms of gender, space, and time. These include greater emphasis on the role of women and gender relations in the circulation of labor, land, goods, and prestige; the question of reciprocal relations beyond the Aegean; and, last but not least, the afterlife of prehistoric relationships of reciprocity in ritual practices and elite display in Iron Age Greece. Alternate methodologies are required for these investigations, particularly in archaeological science for exploring diet, health, and foodways that indicate access to resources, in the analysis of non-Aegean documents relevant to Late Bronze Age Greece, and in the juxtaposition of Homeric views of reciprocity with those identified in Bronze Age Greece. As in the evolving development of theories of reciprocity and gift exchange over a century, the ethnographic and ethnohistoric record, largely outside Greece, informs Aegean research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the role of reciprocal relations in processes of social change. More precisely, I discuss the transformation of modes of interaction and sumptuary behavior across a long period, from the collapse of the Early Bronze Age proto-urban societies, through the slow recovery during the Middle Bronze Age, to the intensification of social change during the transition to the Mycenaean period. A deep crisis swept across the southern Aegean at around 2200-2000 bc, bringing an end to the prosperous Early Helladic societies. While the causes of this crisis have been hotly debated, its consequences for the social fabric of the mainland communities have not been addressed systematically. In this study, I suggest that depopulation, social regression, and the ensuing fragmentation of the social body during Middle Helladic (MH) I-II (ca. 2100-1800 bc) were countered by two sets of practices: on the one hand, the establishment of reciprocal and segmentary networks of exchange that held together domestic groups, communities, and entire regions, and on the other, an emphasis on the continuity of the household that ensured its survival in this unstable period. The incorporation of the mainland into wider networks of interaction during the transition to the Mycenaean period (ca. 1800-1600 bc) brought about the transformation of kin-based MH societies to the differentiated Mycenaean polities. It is argued that this transformation relied on the manipulation of reciprocal exchanges and the subtle redefinition of modes of cooperation between households and kin groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the Greek Mesolithic record in the light of refinements to the international calibration curve and recent archaeological research. Central to the discussion are the timeframe usedfor this period of Greek prehistory, and the diagnostic potential, or visibility, of Mesolithic stone tools. Rather than offering a comprehensive account of Mesolithic sites across Greece, this study focuses on afew known cave sites in the northwest, in order to bring out some less pronounced aspects of their material record. Close and comparative examination of their radiocarbon dates, and traits of continuity and change in the lithic industries, highlights a regional pattern. At some sites, occupation extended into the Holocene, but there is little or no contrast to the preceding, late Upper Palaeolithic technological traditions. A working hypothesis to account for the geographic, temporal and cultural diversity of early Holocene sites and finds in Greece is thus spelled out. It is proposed that the Greek Mesolithic record is the manifestation of a mosaic of human groups, of different origins and cultural traditions, subsisting on a variety of resources and living in different regions, at different times and seasons of the early Holocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details the sourcing by neutron activation analysis of 60 obsidian artifacts from Quartier Mu, an important Middle Bronze Age complex at Malia, central Crete. Four sources are represented--three Aegean (Sta Nychia and Dhemenegaki on Melos, plus Giali), and one central Anatolian (East Göllü Dağ), an unusually wide array in an Aegean Bronze Age context, and one that reflects the community's varied craft-working activities and overseas contacts. The raw materials enjoyed different uses, with clear evidence for the differential consumption of Melian obsidians. Furthermore, the East Göllü Dağ material attests connections with the kingdoms of central Anatolia at a crucial period of Crete's own (pre)history, the time of the first 'Minoan palaces'. It is suggested that the movement of this obsidian was embedded within diplomatic contacts and/or the metals trade: tin coming from the east, with Aegean silver channeled to the central Anatolian kārū and their Assyrian sponsors beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the ways in which regional differences in material culture are constituted and maintained, using the example of Neolithic anthropomorphic figures from northern Greece. The aim of the paper is to offer an alternative approach to the still dominant discourse that attributes variation to some sort of ethnic identity, by redirecting emphasis onto the active rehearsal of localities through the use of material culture. In this vein, some examples are offered that pertain to the production and use of figures with different traits in adjacent areas of northern Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bodily dismemberment -- particularly decapitation -- appears in the iconography and mortuary practices of many ancient societies. A powerful and complex cultural statement, decapitation has been explored in some depth by archaeologists working in the prehistoric Levant and contiguous regions of the Near East. Very little research, however, has focused on the notion of headlessness and decapitation throughout the rest of the prehistoric Mediterranean. Some limited examples appear in the artistic traditions and burial practices of Anatolia and Greece; Anatolian wall paintings depict headless individuals, Neolithic burials in both regions produce skulls placed in specially designated locations, and select figurines appear to be designed with detachable heads. This paper gathers together some of the disparate information on headless bodies and bodiless heads from Anatolia and Greece, and offers preliminary conclusions on the range of their possible functions and meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we report the results of a study utilizing wavelength-dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis and petrographic analysis of Mycenaean pottery from 11 sites in Thessaly. The primary purpose of this analysis is to answer a number of questions concerning the production and distribution of pottery there during the Late Bronze Age, including the relative quantity of local ceramic production, the number of workshops producing Mycenaean pottery and patterns of ceramic distribution. We identify and characterize four compositional groups, discuss evidence of imported pottery, suggest several probable and possible workshop locations, discuss patterns of distribution and offer some tentative conclusions concerning economic processes at the periphery of the Mycenaean world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the politics of archaeological practice of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA), a major institutional force that has shaped the discipline of Classical archaeology through its educational programs and its sponsorship of archaeological excavations. The current attitudes of ASCSA towards archaeology reflect a long-standing commitment to the tenets of western Hellenism and to the nationalist discourse of the modern Greek state. Here the focus is on events surrounding an archaeological expedition dispatched in 1922 by ASCSA and Harvard University to investigate the ancient Greek city of Colophon in Anatolia. I argue that such critical histories of archae-ological practice are useful in that they can clarify the past sociopolitical conditions in which current archaeological policies took shape and, in so doing, may challenge the assumption that these are the most appropriate avenues for an institution like ASCSA to follow in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 20 years, the classical farmstead has become an essential categorical term in the literature of Greek survey archaeology. This paper traces the development of the category 'farmstead' out of the conceptual paradigm of settlement archaeology. It is argued that the tendency to categorize classical-period artifact clusters as 'farmsteads', without understanding the role of cultural processes in forming the archaeological record, creates a false dichotomy between 'site' and 'off-site' scatter. This paper applies a model of cultural formation processes developed in household archaeology in the Americas to the formation of domestic artifact assemblages in classical Greece. It presents a variety of literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence from 5th- and 4th-century Athens to delineate the cultural formation processes operative in both town and country in that society. This paper argues that classical farmsteads and landscapes represent accumulated debris generated by repeated behaviors of habitation, discard, recycling, and abandonment. The typical 'farmsteads' recognized in intensive survey represent only a narrow range of the signatures of habitation for the classical period; low density scatters of pottery and tiles, in particular, represent a signature of habitation that archaeologists have rarely interpreted as evidence for habitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in earthquakes in Mediterranean archaeology has distinct disciplinary origins. Since the inception of archaeoseismology--earthquake archaeology--in the 1980s, approaches to earthquake factors have been characterized by reliance on ancient historical sources. However, although texts have supported the identification of earthquake disasters in material destruction, documentary records extend far beyond particular events and experiences of disaster; diverse cultural perceptions of earthquakes as expressed in ancient textual sources also offer an alternative interpretation for Mediterranean archaeology. This study reviews the materialgeological record of Helike in Greece--the victim of an infamous major earthquake in 373 bc--in order to assess the impact of seismic activity on the site from the third millennium bc to the fifth century ad. Evidence for such an impact includes archaeoseismic types of destruction, anti-seismic construction in architecture and stratigraphically associated soil micromorphological evidence of seismically triggered soft sediment deformation structures (SSDS). A reassessment of ancient accounts of the 373 bc event to explore Graeco-Roman cultural perceptions of earthquakes provides a new interpretive frame for the material-geological record of Helike. This alternative interpretation repositions earthquakes, traditionally perceived as 'natural' disasters implicated in 'collapse' and 'catastrophe', as social phenomena. The case of Helike demonstrates the value of documentary records for reframing the complex social and political dimensions of recurrent earthquakes and persistent geological hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past fifty years, intensive Mediterranean archaeological surveys have yielded abundant and diachronic archaeological data. Although field methods have been continually debated and refined, the interpretation of survey results has focused primarily on site numbers and site size, with particular interest in reconstructing settlement hierarchies and in tracking episodes of nucleation and dispersal across the landscape. Artifact assemblages are largely used to date sites, while less attention has been devoted to assemblage diversity and site function. This study demonstrates the potential of legacy survey data to frame and answer new research questions via an analysis of 250 small rural sites of the first millennium BC recovered by intensive surveys on Crete from the 1970s through the early 2000s. I show that diachronic patterns of rural settlement in Crete depart strongly from those observed in mainland Greece and also differ between regions. I also reveal pronounced variation in the assemblages present at small sites across the island within Cretan regions and periods. This suggests that we cannot simply interpret all small sites as homogeneous farmsteads. Finally, I discuss the challenges and potential of using diversity measures as an exploratory tool for analyzing legacy survey data. Methods outlined here could be productively applied in other Mediterranean regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings forward a particular architectural arrangement—the room with the central hearth—that becomes popular on the Greek mainland in Early Helladic II, in order to refocus analysis ofthe relationship between architecture and models of social organization proposed for this period. Shifting attention to the implications ofthe specific material configuration for the realization of particular forms of collective life, this room is revealed as a medium employed for the promotion of a new, historically specific theme of social integration centred around the consumption of collectively procured produce. It is argued that this insight may open up the way for subtler understandings of social organization and change in the Early Helladic period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While handwashing is attested in the Bronze Age cultures of the eastern Mediterranean and appears in both Linear B records and Homeric epics, the custom has not been discussed with regard to the material culture of Mycenaean Greece. On analogy with Egyptian handwashing equipment, we explore the possibility that a conical bowl made of bronze and copied in clay was introduced in Greece early in the Late Bronze Age for this specific use. We integrate epigraphic, iconographic and formal analyses to support this claim, but in order to interrogate the quotidian function of ceramic lekanes, we present the results of use-wear analysis performed on 130 examples. As use-wear develops from repeated use over a long time, it is a good indicator of normative behaviour, particularly when large datasets are amassed and contrasted with other shapes. While not conclusive, our results allow us to rule out a function as tableware for food consumption, and in combination with all other analyses support the interpretation of lekanes as handwashing basins. We then trace the development of this custom from its initial adoption by elite groups to its spread among new social classes and venues after the collapse of the palace system: at home, as part of communal feasting and sacrifice or as an element of funerary rites. The widespread distribution of handwashing equipment after 1200 bc closely mirrors the situation in our earliest surviving Greek Iron Age texts and joins a growing body of evidence pointing to strong continuity in social practices between the Postpalatial period and the early Iron Age in Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we present some results from the Mazi Archaeological Project (MAP), a diachronic regional survey in northwest Attica, Greece. We focus our discussion on the presence of the Middle Byzantine Monastery of Hosios Meletios and its relationship to local communities as well as to the surrounding natural and built environment. In doing so, we focus on three main strategies employed by the monastery: (1) large-scale building projects, (2) the redirection of movement in the area and (3) the exploitation of the natural environment and its economic resources. We also pay attention to the establishment of the paralavria (monastic dependencies) as a fundamental mechanism employed by the monastery to map its presence and influence and connect it to other sites of economic and religious importance in the region. We argue that the spatial, material and symbolic connections between the paralavria, the main monastery and key natural features in the area created a visually, spiritually and economically coherent and distinct monastic landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of maritime network models has been a major focus of archaeological investigations of the Early Bronze Age in the Cyclades (Greece). While archaeologists acknowledge the importance of environmental variables for ancient seafaring, they have tended to treat the sea surface as an undifferentiated space onto which network models are imposed. The present study of Early Cycladic maritime connectivity incorporates the Aegean Sea as a varied and varying surface affected by seasonal and temporal changes. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, I create a cost-surface model of the ancient seascape that incorporates environmental, archaeological, and technological variables. The application of a cost-surface model enables the consideration of Early Cycladic settlements not merely as points in space but as embedded within a contiguous surface of land and sea. This study highlights the complex and variable conditions facing Bronze Age seafarers. The results of the study challenge the conceptualization of the Cyclades as a unified island group; while the central Cyclades exhibit high connectivity at the local scale, islands on the edges of the cluster may have relied on less-frequent travel at the regional scale, which nevertheless persisted throughout the Early Cycladic period. Variations in wind patterns due to seasonality and directionality indicate that most journeys would require an overnight stay at the destination, suggesting the importance of maintaining intercommunity ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reciprocity has seen much less attention by Aegean archaeologists than other economic concepts such as redistribution, largely because of an assumption that reciprocity is characteristic of 'egalitarian' or less developed societies, as well as a related interest in political economies of more complex (palatial) societies, which are assumed to be characterized by redistribution. In Aegean archaeology, consideration of reciprocity is usually limited to gift exchange, either royal in the context of Late Bronze Age interactions with other societies in the eastern Mediterranean, or among elites in a Homeric model. Yet reciprocity has great potential to help us understand better the political economies and social organization of the Late Bronze Age Aegean. Reciprocity encompasses the social dynamics of any exchange between individuals and how these social relationships form the structure of social organization. Of particular interest here is how the standard categories of reciprocity--that is generalized (gift exchange), balanced (trade or immediate discharge of debt), and negative (one-sided benefit)--are manipulated through strategies such as competitive generosity and asymmetrical exchanges, leading to indebtedness of one exchange partner to the other; this can be institutionalized into hierarchical social structures. Feasting is one important category of exchange that can result in asymmetrical relationships and social inequality, and the Mycenaean evidence allows us to examine feasting in detail. Recent work in Linear B texts has suggested that palatial elites manipulated reciprocity through feasting as a strategy for maintaining social and political power. Likewise, elites utilized gifts of prestige items within their own polities to forge alliances and maintain social power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans evolved in Africa and colonized Eurasia in successive adaptive radiations, establishing themselves in Europe ca. one million years ago. It is assumed that these dispersals were by land through southwest Asia, or secondarily across the Strait of Gibraltar, because early hominins lacked the cognitive faculties and technical skills needed to cross the open Mediterranean. Such crossings are thought to have occurred only at the end of the Pleistocene, after ca. 11,000 years ago. This reasoning is challenged by the presence of early Palaeolithic artifacts on the Greek islands, suggesting that hominins made sea-crossings more than 130,000 years ago, and indicating that the Mediterranean—and by implication other seas—were at times open roads rather than barriers to hominin dispersals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although aspects of Arthur Evans's vision of Minoan society have undergone modification during the course ofthe 20th century, his basic interpretation of the monumental building complex with courts at Knossos as a Palace-Temple, or the residence of both a political and religious authority, remains the dominant paradigm in Minoan archaeology. When set within the context of other contemporary Bronze Age societies in the eastern Mediterranean, however, Evans's model of a priest-king who resided in a Palace-Temple is actually highly unusual and anomalous. Indeed, it will be argued that the Palace-Temple model was invented by Evans as a distinctive, formative and intermediate stage between the Oriental Temple, which was the model then current in the Near East at the time of his writing, and what might be termed European kingship. The perception that Cretan culture and society was essentially European (and thus different from the East) formed a cornerstone of Evans's vision and its enduring popularity goes some way to explaining why the intellectual and empirical origins of Evans's Palace-Temple model have not previously been critically reassessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to build a structural mode/for the development of the Cretan polis through an analysis of the civic structure of Archaic Azoria. Azoria's civic structural network is compared to that ofthe early polis on mainland Greece. Insights gained from comparative modeling of elite-sponsored civic structure in these two regions are applied to Crete, allowing us to construct a more robust network of early 'polital' structure for that island. Results of this analysis indicate that Cretan elites constructed their positions within the Cretan polis through methods such as exclusion. They additionally show that the unique relationship between civic institutions and those of the Cretan inter-polital sanctuary highlights the role that the institutions within the andreion and within civic cult play in polis development, as well as elucidating the unique character of the family-community interface on Crete. Results of this analysis highlight important issues in the emergence of the Cretan polis, and suggest fruitful future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little was known until recently about regional patterns of early prehistoric occupation in Albania, making it difficult to situate the Albanian record within existing, general models of early prehistoric landuse. An intensive regional survey, the Mallakastra Regional Archaeological Project (MRAP), carried out in the Fier region of tralAlbania from 1998-2003, gathered widespread evidence for human occupation during the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, from the Myzeqe Plain to the Mallakastra hills. The Pleistocene and early Holocene landscape of Fier differed considerably from the present landscape, and at times the Adriatic shoreline was much farther inland than it is now. As a consequence, Palaeolithic and Mesolithic foragers were able to exploit coastal-wetland and estuarine environments that have been buried only recently by alluvial sediment as a result of river avulsion and soil erosion. The landscape studied by MRAP is only a fragment of the total landscape once exploited by early humans in this part of the Balkans, whose home range may have included much ofsouthwest Albania and parts of northwest Greece. Our reconstruction of early prehistoric landuse in central Albania, based on collection and mapping ofthe locations of 1593 lithic artifactsfrom a 35 sq km area, indicates patterns oflogisticalfo raging that span the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic and match those modeled in other Mediterranean countries, such as Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A management 'gap' exists at some Greek sites excavated by foreign institutions in the early 20th century without conservation provision or detailed records. Karfi, in the mountainous Lasithi region of Crete, is one of the best-known settlements of the Aegean Early Iron Age. A recent study there shows how integrated projects can help develop sites 'value for local communities and visitors, while also pushing forward research. Currently, visitor attention to local archaeological sites is concentrated on the highly-managed Psychro Cave, nearby, to an extent compromising its sustainability. In contrast, Karfi's low-key management has led to deterioration and obscuring of its remains, diminishing their research and educational potential, and serving to minimize local awareness and sense of ownership of the area's broader archaeological heritage. This has created a negative cycle, discouraging new initiatives in management at the site. At the same time, vocal dissatisfaction with a perceived lack of 'heritage', and its associated cultural and economic benefits, is growing in the local community. A commercial venture--an 'archaeological' theme park--has recently appeared in the region. In providing an accessible substitute for authentic archaeological remains, I show that this theme park helps to perpetuate the low profile of Karfi and other under-managed sites nearby. The case highlights issues of responsibility and structure in archaeological management and research in Greece: I suggest that a long-established disjunction between the sectors, alongside other social, historical and economic factors operating at regional and national level, has contributed to the situation exemplified in Lasithi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As early as the Early Neolithic a 'North-South divide' developed in Greece, resulting in a very dense pattern of settlement in Thessaly and, evidently, much more openly spaced villages in the south. Is this pattern real or merely a consequence of some archaeological bias? The results of intensive surveys are reviewed to suggest that the pattern does give a reliable picture,and one not seriously obscured by a 'hidden landscape' of missing sites. A key element in the occupation of southern Greece is the long-lived village site; Kouphovouno, Laconia, is used to illustrate one such settlement of the Middle Neolithic period. In the concluding section it is argued that the forces of population growth and ecological constraints do not entirely explain the southern Greek pattern, and territoriality is put forward as an important mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a response to an article about classical farms across Greek landscapes. Association of rural structures with low artifact densities; Issues raised with regard to low-density habitations; Basis for the interpretation of any low-density scatters.

Examines the rural landscape of the neopalatial Kythera Island in Greece from a geographic information systems perspective. Ways in which the landscape was structured; Patterns of settlement dispersal in the landscape; Subsistence strategies probably underpinning such a landscape.

For all-period intensive surveys in Greece, even those of very recent years, an abiding problem has been the difficulty of detecting prehistoric remains, whether at the level of nucleated sites or in the form of scatters across the landscape. The authors suggest explanations for the problems encountered in this regard, over the past 20 years, by the Boeotia Survey. They offer some first steps towards the solution of these problems, based on a reassessment of the actual results achieved, here and elsewhere, by intensive survey methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]