Friday, September 27, 2013

International Educational Opportunities and Visitors to CIG from York University


Ambassador Peck and the Canadian Embassy have been celebrating for the past year the 70th anniversary of the establishment in 1942 of formal diplomatic relations between Canada and Greece. The lecture tour that I am now doing in Ontario and Quebec is a part of these events. On Monday, September 16, the Embassy organized at the Divani Caravel Hotel the Canada-Greece/Cyprus University Partnership Forum. This all-day event was designed to bring together representatives from Canadian universities and their counterparts from Greece and Cyprus so that they could develop contacts and partnerships to benefit their students’ educational aspirations and their faculties’ research interests. I was present as a “Special Observer”. This well-attended program provided me with insights into the possibilities for such linkages and to meet individuals who might be interested in the mission and activities of the Institute.

Visitors from York University
One of the individuals whom I met in person at the Forum and with whom I had been in contact with previously was Mr. Wade Hall, the Assistant Vice-President, Development of the York University Foundation. He in turn introduced me to Dr. Martin Singer, Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies at York University and to Dr. Marilyn Lambert-Drache, Associate Vice-President International also at York. Dr. Lambert-Drache’s office administers the undergraduate internship program that sends a student to CIG each spring/summer to serve as an intern. The next day we had breakfast together to discuss how York and the Institute could work more closely together to support the goals of each institution. We were joined by Mr. Steve Mirkopoulos from Toronto who is a member of the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Heritage Foundation in Canada.

 
The discussions were wide ranging and highlighted the possibilities for synergies between CIG’s work and York’s educational programs. On Friday Dr. Lambert-Drache and Mr. Hall visited the Institute, met Jonathan, Myles and Sophie, and were shown our facilities.

We are optimistic that York will soon re-join CIG as a Category A Institutional Member and that York will send us an additional undergraduate intern during the academic year. As York faculty members from time to time run educational programs in Greece we look forward to assisting them in these endeavors.

Next week I will write about the lecture tour in Ontario and Quebec that I am presently doing. If it is Friday, it is Montreal!

Cordially,
David Rupp
Director

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

The Fred Winter Collection

Pergamon, sanctuary of Athena, view W along outer aisle of N Stoa. (Professor Fred Winter 1966)

Friday, September 20, 2013

A New Undergraduate Intern and the CIG on Tour in Canada


The Institute is fortunate to have for most terms of each academic year an undergraduate intern from a Canadian university. These individuals assist us in realizing our goals for the ongoing development of CIG. At the moment we are focused on the cataloguing the new acquisitions of the Library and in preparing for the public launch of the CIG Portal to the Past on October 30th.

A week ago Sophie Goldberg arrived from Canada as our undergraduate intern for three months this fall. She’s a third year major in Near Eastern and Classical Archaeology at Wilfrid Laurier University. She is no stranger to Greece as this summer she participated for six weeks in the WLU archaeological field school associated with the SUNY – Buffalo excavations at the Minoan settlement at Gournia in eastern Crete. This research is under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Sophie’s goal is to become a cultural heritage resource manager. As CIG is presently engaged in organizing and digitalizing its archives, her hands-on experience with us in digital heritage management practices and procedures will be useful for her future career.

You will be able to meet Sophie at the Institute’s fall events. Please welcome her warmly into the Athenian archaeological community!

CIG Canadian Lecture Tour
It is ironic that the overwhelming focus of CIG’s visible activities is here in Greece but that the principal consumers of our potential services are mostly resident in Canada. Despite our broad presence in cyberspace many individuals there are mostly unaware of who we are, whom we serve and what we do. To help rectify this unnecessary lack of awareness I am going to Ontario and to Montreal on the 23rd for ten days to give seven lectures. My lecture is entitled, “Canadians Take the Field Throughout Greece. Over Three Decades of Archaeological Discoveries by the Canadian Institute in Greece”. I will highlight what is CIG, what we do and what we have accomplished in the course of 33 years of archaeological fieldwork. This tour is part of Canadian Ambassador Robert Peck’s program of celebrating 70 years of Canadian / Greek diplomatic relations. Air Transat generously donated my roundtrip ticket.

On the 24th of September I will speak at the University of Toronto followed by giving the lecture on the 25th at McMaster University. On the 26th the Ottawa Friends’ Association of CIG, the local AIA society and the Parnassos Hellenic Society will host me at the University of Ottawa. Belle Quebec and Montreal are my next destinations for the lecture at McGill University on the 27th. Then I am on to the Niagara Peninsula Society of the AIA and Brock University on the 29th. A stop in Peterborough to give the lecture to the Trent University Archaeological Society has just been added for the 30th. I close in Waterloo on October 1st giving the lecture there. It is sponsored jointly by the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University.

So, for all of you who read this blog regularly from a location in southern Ontario or in Montreal, please come to my lecture at a location nearest you. Our website (www.cig-icg.gr) has more details for each lecture. I would like to meet you in person!

Cordially,
David Rupp
Director

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

The Fred Winter Collection

Pergamon, sanctuary of Athena, view NE-SW, (N stoa, round base and remains of temple). (Professor Fred Winter 1966)

Monday, September 16, 2013

The Institute is Back! And Welcome to Our New Fellow


As of Tuesday, September 3rd the Institute has been operating at full tilt for the past two weeks after an interesting and restful recess for all involved. I would like to inform you that the Library will resume its extended hours beginning the week of September 23rd. That is, one can use the resources of our Library from 09:00 to 13:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays it will be open until 18:00. We have new books and monographs in our areas of specialization that will start to be shelved shortly. We look forward to assisting you in your research! 



The New Neda and Franz Leipen Fellow
Even before the doors of the Institute reopened for the 2013/14 academic year our new Neda and Franz Leipen Fellow, Myles Chykerda, was waiting, eager to start the year. Myles is not an unknown quantity to the CIG environment. Besides digging for many years at Kastro Kallithea in Thessaly he also gave an excellent paper at last year’s Colloquium in the memory of Prof. Frederick E. Winter.

Myles joins the CIG team fresh from two years of residency as a Ph.D. student at UCLA, where he studies under the supervision of John K. Papadopoulos and Sarah P. Morris at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. A born and raised Albertan, he completed both a BA in Anthropology and Classics (2004) and MA in Humanities Computing and Classical Archaeology (2010) at the University of Alberta under the supervision of Prof. Margriet Haagsma. His field experience includes a summer working on a bison procurement site in Alberta, two seasons working on a Roman villa at Cortona in southern Italy, and eight years on the Greek-Canadian synergasia project at Kastro Kallithea where he has led survey teams, supervised trenches, and managed Total Station/GIS procedures and data collection.

Last year he completed all his required course work at Los Angeles. He will use his time in Greece this year in part to prepare for his upcoming qualifying exams and dissertation prospectus. Myles will assist me and Jonathan in preparing the CIG Portal to the Past for its public launch on October 30th.

While his MA work concerned Hellenistic defenses and the built environment of Achaia Phthiotis (Thessaly), for his PhD he plans to turn to broader questions about the organization and development of Thessalian political structure from the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods. A particular question is whether the relative importance of polis vs. league in Thessaly can be seen through an examination of the archaeological record at a landscape level. Myles anticipates spending quite a bit of time buried in the vaults and archives not only here in Athens but in the museums at Volos and Almyros gathering data. He also writes effectively as you will see in his guest blogs and in the lecture that he will give in the winter.

Welcome Myles!!!

Cordially,
David Rupp
Director

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

The Fred Winter Collection

Assos, walls rom smaller corbel to Main Gate from above. (Professor Fred Winter 1966)

Friday, September 6, 2013

CIG on Naxos and Closure for the Summer


View  of Stelida from West
Last month you were treated to the blogs of the three CIG projects that were in the field in June and July: Argilos, Ancient Eleon and Kastro Kallithea. In early August a fourth project was approved by the Ministry of Culture. This is the Stelida Naxos Archaeological Project (SNAP) directed by Professor Tristan ("Stringy") Carter (Department of Anthropology, McMaster University). It is in the field now conducting an intensive survey of the prominent hills at Stelida, to the southeast of Chora, on the northwestern tip of Naxos in the Cyclades. Both the 21st Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and a survey by a team from the French School at Athens in the 1960s had identified this area as one with abundant chipped stone debris of uncertain date, without associated ceramics. The taller, southern hill is a source of chert.

SNAP crew collecting chipped stone materials
Stringy, with a small team of co-researchers from Greece and the United States as well as dedicated students from McMaster, are scrambling over the steep, rocky slopes covered with dense scrub in many places to find evidence of chert procurement, primary reduction, and secondary modification for use. “Collection lines”, “grab samples”, and “hovering”, the jargon of survey archaeology, punctuated Stringy’s description of what they were doing in their survey zone. So far in their first of two field seasons they have evidence of exploitation of the lithic resources from at least the Middle Mesolithic period, ca 9th millennium BCE. There is some indication too of in situ tool use. At this time there was probably a broad coast plain with lagoons on the edges to the east and to the south of the promontory. This would have been an excellent location for seasonal camps to hunt the migrating game and to gather a variety of plant stuffs. I enjoyed the challenge of seeing them working on the top of the hill, seeing some of their finds in the museum and joining them (with my wife) for a tasty dinner and lively, wide ranging conversations at an excellent taverna on the waterfront. Stringy will supply us with a guest blog next month to provide more details for our readers.

Keros provides the backdrop to Michael and Evi's wedding
The endless summer has closure
Just as the summer started with a wedding on an island involving archaeologists (that of Stringy and Deanna Aubert on Crete) it is more than appropriate to close the summer with another such wedding. This took place on August 31st on Kouphonisi, where Evi Margaritis and Michael Boyd were united in wedlock before an enthusiastic group of family members from Greece and Scotland, as well as - guess what? - a large contingent of archaeologists. To complete the archaeological component (besides moi and my wife) our own Jonathan was there too (as his facebook page followers already know very well!) plus Stringy and Deanna. Evi and Michael met on Kouphonisi on one of Professor Colin Renfrew’s (University of Cambridge) and Greek colleagues’ field projects investigating the enigmatic Early Cycladic I-II remains on the island of Keros and the islet of Daskaleio to the south.

Colin Renfrew and David Rupp, among many others, on the dance floor
The ample food and drink, the musical group playing Greek standards and traditional island songs, the golden hits (and others) of rock & roll put up by the DJ, and the excellent Greek dancing (including Colin Renfrew as well!), plus Scottish gigs, made this indeed a most memorable evening that did not end early by any means. All first time visitors to the island were taken by the beautiful, sandy beaches, the views to the other islands, the high quality tavernes, the numerous opportunities for walking and the slow pace of life here. Few wanted to see the wedding reception end or to leave the island for the other world. Ti na sas po;;;

Two weddings, three excavations and a survey; the summer has ended!

Kalo Fthinoporo!
David Rupp
Director

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

The Fred Winter Collection

Assos, smaller corbel gate from inside, beside it long flight of steps up to alure. (Professor Fred Winter 1966)