Although there has been great variety in the last 300 years of archaeology in Greece, some general themes are common to much of the period. The wealth of material has not always been beneficial, attracting treasure hunters and allowing academics to slide into mere description rather than the questioning and analysis of material. The balance between local and foreign participation has swung to and fro depending on the international relations of the time, but cooperation has always been to the benefit of all parties. Even the Cockerells and Schliemanns inspired important developments in the history of archaeology in Greece.

The most striking aspect of Greek archaeology is its unique double association with a national identity and an international culture. The antiquities of Greece do indeed lie at the heart of western culture, through the artistic and intellectual revolutions of classical Athens, their rebirth in the Renaissance, and the craze for neoclassicism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but they are also the inspiration and symbol of one of the proudest national identities in Europe. The history of archaeology in Greece reflects the tension between the two sides of this paradox, as locals and foreigners alike focus on a heritage that is both universal and uniquely Greek.

Michael Given

See also

Linear A/Linear B

References

Brown, A. 1983. Arthur Evans and the Palace of Minos. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum.

Clogg, R. 1986. A Short History of Modern Greece. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ferguson, A. C. S. 1986. “British Architects in Athens 1800–1850.” Architect July: 20–25.

Hamilakis, Y., and E. Yalouri. 1996. “Antiquities as Symbolic Capital in Modern Greek Society.” Antiquity 70: 117–129.

———. 1999. “Sacralising the Past: Cults of Archaeology in Modern Greece.” Archaeological Dialogues 6: 115–135, 154–210.

Kotsakis, K. 1998. “The Past Is Ours: Images of Greek Macedonia.” In Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics, and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, 44–67. Ed. L. Meskell. London: Routledge.

McNeal, R. A. 1991. “Archaeology and the Destruction of the Later Athenian Acropolis.” Antiquity 65: 49–63.

Morris, I. 1994. “Archaeologies of Greece.” In Classical Greece: Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeologies, 8–47. Ed. I. Morris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Perowne, S. 1974. The Archaeology of Greece and the Aegean. London: Hamlyn.

Snodgrass, A. M. 1987. An Archaeology of Greece: The Present State and Future Scope of a Discipline. Sather Classical Lectures, vol. 53. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Traill, D. 1995. Schliemann of Troy: Treasure and Deceit. London: John Murray.

Green, Roger Curtis

(1932– )

Born in New Jersey, from an early age Green was interested in archaeology, and first studied anthropology at the University of New Mexico. He moved to Harvard to study for his doctorate in 1955, and was deeply influenced by Professor gordon willey’s settlement pattern approach to archaeology. Green was also influenced by julian steward and Clyde Kluckhohn, but it was Douglas Oliver who steered him firmly away from the archaeology of the Southwest and Central America and toward the archaeology of the Pacific.

In 1958 Green took up a Fulbright Fellowship in New Zealand, based in the anthropology department at the University of Auckland. Here he worked with social anthropologist Ralph Piddington and British archaeologist jack golson. Green excavated a coastal midden at Tairua on the Coromandel Peninsula that was a landmark for its careful interpretation of all the material recovered, and for Green’s use of what Golson has characterized as the “ecological approach.”

Green then undertook major fieldwork projects in French Polynesia, Samoa, and the Solomon Islands based on settlement pattern study and ethno-historic approaches, which established him as a major figure in the relatively new field of Polynesian archaeology. From 1961 to 1967 Green taught at the University of Auckland and carried out a number of small excavations and surveys to provide training and opportunities for students. He served a term as president of the New Zealand Archaeological