Wreading Wednesday: Archaeology of Post-Medieval Greece

Over the weekend, I got a chance to read Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory’s very recent article on “Archaeology of the Post-medieval World in Greece: The Last Two Decades” in a festschrift for Tim Murray titled Archaeology, History, Philosophy and Heritage.

The article is a great place to start any consideration of the archaeology of contemporary Greece. Lita introduces the field by establishing its awkward relationship to Greek antiquities law and the development of a Greek national narrative in the 19th (and indeed, 20th) centuries. Much of the focus of these laws and policies centered on excavating and preserving those historical roots of Greek identity that connected Greece to Western Classical traditions. At the same time, the archaeology of the contemporary world, with its roots in the field of Historical Archaeology, introduced the need to critique the influence of nationalism and colonialism on both archaeology and daily life in the recent past. By extending these critiques to the contemporary world, it not only causes, but requires a break with priorities and narratives embedded within these critiques. As a result, the archaeology of modern Greece has emerged quite separately from traditional archaeological research in Greece.

It is hardly surprising then, that archaeology of contemporary Greece emerged from intensive pedestrian survey which was dominated by non-Greek archaeologists and introduced a wave of research priorities that challenged various narratives embedded within traditional Greek archaeology. The suburban and rural areas where intensive survey found footing supported perspectives continuity and change that complicated views Greece. It demonstrated that rural areas were dynamic and diverse and that practices and “traditions” could prove to be quite ephemeral and contingent. This undermined assumptions that rural Greece represented a repository of stable and traditional values, for example, that could ground the Greek nation in a persistent (if nevertheless complicated) identity.

Lita’s work contributed directly to this and I was fortunate enough to learn much of what I know about the archaeology of the contemporary world through her (and many of the other scholars cited in her article). Her pioneering study of Greek cemeteries demonstrated how urban-based nuclear families of the post-war period often cared for graves for only a single generation, but they commentated these graves monumentally. Early, complex agrarian families often cared for modest graves for multiple generations. Thus, cemeteries demonstrate how contemporary Greek families mimicked traditional practices in unexpected and counterintuitive ways.

More broadly, studies of modern settlement, particularly short lived seasonal settlements, provided insights into the contingency and dynamism of countryside that challenged views of rural life in Greece as stable and persistent. Instead, archaeologists of contemporary Greece are developing a view of the countryside that is every bit as responsive and integrated into the broader world as urban life.

Finally, Lita’s work on the water works that flow through the village of Karavas on Kythera shows how archaeology of the contemporary world has embraced elements of environmental history in ways foreign to traditional Greek archaeology. The emphasis on water and the way that communities worked together to channel and distribute water traces the relationship between the archaeology of Greece and broader concerns among historical and contemporary archaeologists for control over resources. The parallel between Lita’s work on Kythera and Michael Given’s work on Cyprus reflects the growing interest in water as an object of archaeological concern as well, putting work in the Mediterranean in conversation with global trends in the discipline.

If you have a chance, check out Lita’s contribution to this volume as well as the other chapters which demonstrate Tim Murray’s range of influence in the field.