Greece (Other Keyword)
1-15 (15 Records)
During excavation, it is often safer to record areas separately and later identify associations between strata across a site. Such practice waits until detailed analyses can be conducted and avoids erroneously comparing material from separate depositions. However, the process can lead to more identified strata than are truly present. This project considered relative frequencies of pottery fabrics as a multivariate dataset to characterize and analyze site formation at the Lower Town site of...
Alepotrypa Cave and Regional Networks of Southern Greece (2016)
During the Final Neolithic (4500-3200 BCE) there appears to have been a major restructuring in the regional settlement networks of southern Greece. This included a general shift in activity from the north to the south with a significant increase in the number of of small, short lived sites in southern Greece, particularly in coastal locations. Trade and exchange also appears to have intensified, with exotic materials moved further and more frequently than in previous periods. Alepotrypa Cave,...
Collective Memory and the Mycenaeans: The Argolid, Messenia, and the Mani Compared (2016)
The concept of collective memory has received some attention in archaeology, but has not been systematically applied to processes of state formation and sociopolitical change. In this paper I model the evolution of collective memory systems in Greece from the Neolithic to Iron Age, with a focus on Mycenaean regions. The Argolid, Messenia, and the Mani – using The Diros Project’s excavations of a Mycenaean “ossuary” at Ksagounaki as a primary example – vary in terms of how collective memories...
Constructing Collapse: A Technological Analysis of Early-Middle Bronze Age Domestic Architecture in Mainland Greece and its Social Implications (2016)
In this paper, I present a technological analysis of stone-built, domestic architecture from the transition of the Early Bronze Age to Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2200-1800 BCE) in mainland Greece. Specifically, I analyze the degree of correspondence of 180 unique aspects of architectural construction and spatial organization between contemporary structures. Because domestic architecture was most likely built by the local inhabitants and used for their daily activities, the network of correspondence...
Curation of Human Skeletal Remains and Bioarchaeological Practice in Greek Context (2017)
Human skeletal remains constitute perhaps the most sensitive archaeological material, both biologically and socioculturally. Their recovery, preservation, curation, storage, and analysis are complex issues that need to be addressed within any given biocultural context. Given the country’s geography and the long history of human occupation, Greek field archaeology is intense and ongoing, as part of either rescue excavations or academic research projects. Graves, cemeteries, and human skeletal...
Difference in Archaeology Theory and Practice: the Case of Classical Greece (2015)
The dichotomy between the "dirt" and the "word" has loomed large in the study of the Greek past, in a manner not shared by many other regions. This is true, ironically, for both the historical and prehistoric period. The interplay between the material record with the textual and the iconographic records in Greece is rich and complex, and one that extends across a broad time range. Disjunctions across these different avenues of inquiry are numerous, and often ignored. But it is precisely in these...
The Diros Project: Multidisciplinary Investigations at Alepotrypa Cave and Ksagounaki Promontory, 2010-2015 (2016)
This paper summarizes the results of multidisplinary research conducted by The Diros Project in Diros Bay on the western Mani Peninsula of the southern Peloponnesos. The project centers around Aleptorypa Cave, a massive cave that was used for burials and other ritual and domestic activities throughout the entire Neolithic period (ca. 6,000-4,000 BC). Under the direction of Dr. Giorgos Papathanassopoulos (Honorary Ephor of Antiquities), The Diros Project was established by a team of international...
Ksagounaki, Diros: an Open Air Site of the Final Neolithic from the Viewpoint of Chipped Stone Tools. (2016)
The Final Neolithic Period (FN) in the Aegean and the Greek mainland is characterized by the proliferation of settlements and the occupation of defensible sites. The Ksagounaki site, located at the northern entrance of the Alepotrypa cave at the Mani peninsula, appears to be a representative example of such a transition. In the present study we try and locate changes occurring in the entire spectrum of prehistoric life of the denizens of the site during the FN, drawing information from the...
Local Identity in the Mani Peninsula in Classical Antiquity (2016)
This paper presents a new approach to studying ancient identity in the Mani peninsula, using a combination of archaeological and epigraphic evidence and existing theoretical paradigms. Mani can be classified as an 'ahistorical historical' region – one that is inhabited within the historical period but which does not itself produce emic written evidence. Regions like Mani are often left out of typical inquiries into ancient Greek identity, which are overwhelmingly divided between studies of a)...
Mediterranean Vistas, Local Experiences: An Historical Archaeology and Social History of Everyday Life on a Greek Island: Andros 16th-19th Centuries (2015)
This paper examines the historical archaeology of everyday life using the results of KASHAP. This multidisciplinary/indterdiciplinary project tracks the human and environmental histories of two Greek islands. One main theme is how being integrated as peripheries into major premodern empires, the Venetian Empire and the Ottoman Empires, shaped everyday life and how the transition to nation-state, which transformed the islands into a border zones, impacted society and economy. Focusing on the...
The Queen of Heaven in Iron Age Greece: Analyzing Religious Ideology and Symbolism on Multiple Scales (2015)
In this paper, I approach religion and ideology in the archaeological record through an analysis of iconographic symbols, one that centres on the dialectic between longstanding meanings of symbols as they are transmitted across space and time and the local social, political, and intellectual contexts in which they appear. I situate my analysis within recent models from cultural evolutionary psychology, which see religion, along with its attendant rituals and symbolisms, as an adaptive mechanism...
Return to Antikythera (2017)
In 1900, Greek sponge divers stumbled upon what was to become one of themost iconic and fabulous shipwrecks ever found in the Mediterranean close to the tiny Greek Island of Antikythera- the Antikythera shipwreck. Over the course of several perilous months of diving, despite numerous episodes of the bends and a fatality, the divers recovered a treasure of Classical bronze and marble statuary and the famous Antikythera Mechanism- the world's oldest known mechanical computer. Since 2013,...
Ritual and Tombs around the Decline and Collapse of the Pylian State (2017)
The palatial society of the Greek Late Bronze Age collapsed around 1200BC. There were signs of widespread mass destruction throughout Greece and several of the palaces and settlements were abandoned. Two of the largest palaces, however, Mycenae and Tiryns in the Argolid, showed evidence of rebuilding of houses in and around the palaces after the first major destruction fire. The century after the initial destruction of the palaces was a period of turmoil and filled with more devastating fires at...
Small Carnivore Use in the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic of Kephalari Cave (Peloponnese, Greece): Opportunistic or Optimal? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Pleistocene of southern Greece adheres to many predictions set forth by human behavioral ecology concerning the use of small game in the face of demographic growth, ecological change, and advancements in procurement technologies. In Peloponnese, an increase in small, fast game use...
Underwater Archaeological Parks in Greece: The Case Studies of Methoni Bay-Sapientza Island and the Northern Sporades – Moving From A Culture of Prohibition Towards a Culture of Engagement (2013)
The representation and management of Greece's underwater archaeological heritage has recently 'set sail' from policies of almost absolute prohibition towards the recent permission of recreational diving. When past law enforcement measures attempted to gain monitoring rights and control of underwater archaeological heritage, underwater archaeology suffered from both restrictions and a lacked of a wider community engagement which the public image of underwater archaeologists. Working within the...