The Fred Winter Collection

Soluntum, house with 4x3 Doric peristyle court, partly re-erected (Professor Fred Winter, 1978)

Canadian Students, Alberta Bound! Books, Monographs and Journals Looking for a Loving New Home

One of the central goals of the Institute is the promotion of research relating to Greek cultural heritage in its broadest sense. We do this in many ways, by the archaeological fieldwork projects that Canadian research teams mount each year in Greece, by the study permits granted to Institute members by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sport, by our Library in Athens, by our lecture programs and events in Athens during the academic year and through the CIG Portal to the Past.

In Canada one of the most important public outreach efforts of the Institute is the Biannual CIG Student Conference. These conferences are organized in conjunction with one or more Canadian universities. This year it will be held at the University of Alberta in Edmonton on Friday evening, January 27th and all day Saturday, January 28th (for the full program see: http://www.cig-icg.gr/content/canadian-institute-greece-biannual-student-conference). The central theme of the conference is “Regional Identities in the Greek World”. On Friday evening Prof. Craig Hardiman (University of Waterloo) will give the keynote address entitled “Micro-Regionalism, Macro-Regionalism and a Hellenistic Artistic Koine.” On Saturday nine students will present their papers. The lead organizer is Gino Canlas, a person well-known here in Athens and one of the graduate student representatives on the Board of Directors of the Institute.

If you are in or near Edmonton this weekend I urge you to attend the conference at the U of A. The paper topics are most interesting and the students represent the future of the study of ancient Greek culture in Canada. They deserve your enthusiastic support and encouragement!

The Third CIG Book Sale is Now Live!

From time to time the Library of the Institute amasses a quantity of duplicate books, monographs and journal issues, mostly the result of donations and the acquisition of newer editions. When the bookshelves in the Institute’s office are overflowing we put the lot up for sale to the highest bidders. This iteration of the Sale started earlier in the month and continues until the 31^st of March. We are currently selling over 200 books and monographs, plus 200 or so periodical volumes. The spreadsheet with the list of items for sale is accessible via: http://www.cig-icg.gr/sites/default/files/CIG-BookSale2017.xls. The process is simple: you connect to the link; peruse the contents of the list and email booksale@cig-icg.gr  to make a bid on those items you wish dearly to own. In early April Jonathan will notify the lucky new owners. You can then come to the Institute to pay for the books and take them away. If this, is not convenient we can send them to you after you pay online (+ postage and handling charges). Money talks! Every book can walk!

This is a win-win undertaking! You get the books, monographs or journal issues that you have always longed to have in your personal library at a reasonable cost and the Institute’s Library gets additional funds to purchase more reference works (in French, English and Greek) and books and monographs in the areas that we focus on such as Boeotian studies, archaeological theory and methods, bioarchaeology, archaeological science, Thessalian studies, etc. So don’t be left out! Make your bids now!!!

Cordially,
David Rupp
Director

The Fred Winter Collection

Cape Colonna, the standing column in five views, from inland anticlockwise around to a view past column back along the coast (Professor Fred Winter, 1978)

CSI: Ancient Athens

The daily life in ancient Athens is usually perceived, subconsciously at least, as a stress free, benign environment where one may well encounter a Perikles or a Sokrates while strolling casually through the Agora or visiting the Akropolis. Even the 3D virtual reality constructions of the city portray brightly painted buildings and safe, trash-free streets and alleys devoid of sinister characters. The look of a Disneyland spick and span and odorless before it opens for the day for the visitors is the impression most have of “Classical Athens”. But this is not what the past, let alone the present, was/is like, in fact, eh!

Violent crime and homicides are not a problem limited to the modern world alone, and the ancient city of Athens experienced similar events throughout antiquity. A recent study of all the human skeletons found in wells excavated by the American Excavations in the Athenian Agora has found that many of these individuals died violently. Some of the dead, including women and children, appear to be associated with the sack of Athens by the Herulians, a Gothic tribe who invaded Greece in 267 CE. Other skeletons, found in wells ranging in date from the Neolithic to late antiquity, appear to be victims of individual attacks. These skeletons exhibit multiple indications of trauma, and appear to be murder victims hidden in the depths of wells, presumably conveniently located near the scene of the crime.

On Wednesday, January 25th at 19:30 in the Library of the Canadian Institute in Greece Dr. Maria Liston (Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Waterloo), will give a lecture entitled, “Murder in the Agora: Violent Death and Illicit Burial in Ancient Athens”. Acting as a forensic physical anthropologist for “CIS Ancient Athens” Prof. Liston will examine the evidence for these ancient “cold case” crimes in ancient Athens. You will learn that the city of Perikles was not the wholesome fantasy park of popular literature.

The lecture is part of the winter/spring program for the Athens Association of Friends of CIG. After the lecture we will cut our Vasiliopita for good health and happiness in 2017. Who will find the golden flouri in her piece and receive the good luck gouri????

Cordially,
David Rupp
Director

The Fred Winter Collection

Taranto Museum, Apulian krater with 3x3 Doric naiskos housin shield, helmet and armed figure (Professor Fred Winter, 1978)

Let's Welcome Holly! A Lecture in Ottawa; Some Shady Activities in Crete

The winter of 2017 is in full force here in Athens. Our new undergraduate intern, Holly Patrick, was greeted with southern Ontario style winter weather instead of the much benigner “winters” we have had here for the past few years. Holly is a third year undergraduate at the University of Waterloo, majoring in Classical Studies and minoring in History and Religious Studies. A native of Chatham, Ontario, she visited Greece two years ago as part of a three week study tour organized by Prof. Craig Hardiman of the University of Waterloo. This experience and her studies have inspired Holly to become a high school teacher of Latin, History and Religion. Her three months here will enable her to see again and in depth the many museums and archaeological sites of Greece.

While at the Institute Holly will assist in the cataloguing of the new acquisitions to our Library as well as cataloging and scanning the Institute’s files relating to the many colloquia which we have organized since 1991. You will have an opportunity to meet and to welcome Holly to our archaeological community at Prof. Maria Liston’s lecture to the Athens Association of Friends of CIG on Wednesday, January 25^th.

The Antikythera Mechanism in Ottawa

The very active Ottawa Friends’ Association of the Institute has scheduled a lecture for Sunday, January 22^nd at 14:00 at the Hellenic Community Centre in Ottawa. The title of the lecture is, “The Antikythera Mechanism: An Ancient Astronomical Computer”. The lecturer, Prof. Daryn Lahoux (Queen’s University, Kingston, ON), is a noted authority on ancient astronomy and calendars. He will explore the discovery of the mechanism from the Roman shipwreck excavated at the beginning of the 20^th century off the tiny island of Antikythera, what functions the mechanism had and how it worked.

So if you are in the area of Canada’s capital that weekend, here’s an excellent opportunity to learn about this fascinating device from the past and to meet other individuals with an abiding interest in Greek heritage.

Some Shady Activities in Crete

During his long career in the Archaeological Service on Crete, Nikolaos Platon often had to deal with serious cases of illegal excavations, an activity that at that time, as unfortunately still today, was a serious problem for the island of Crete. Several of these cases led this never-tiring archaeologist to the discovery and to the systematic investigation of archaeological sites which today are considered as key-sites for the understanding of the ancient history of the island.

Using archival material, and also his personal memories as they are preserved in the narratives of his father, enriched with many anecdotal details, Professor Lefteris Platon (University of Athens) will try to bring back to life not only the facts but also the general atmosphere of archaeological research in Crete, the “Big Island”, in the period between 1935 and 1961. Prof. Platon in his lecture, «Αδημοσίευτα τεκμήρια από το αρχείο του Ν. Πλάτωνος σχετικά με τρεις υποθέσεις αρχαιοκαπηλίας, που οδήγησαν σε σπουδαίες αρχαιολογικές ανακαλύψεις στη Μεγαλόνησο», will start with the adventurous discovery and investigation of the cave at Arkalochori, then go on to ancient Lisos, and will finish with the case of the cave of ancient Inatos (Tsoutsouros), which received recently unfortunate and unjust publicity in TV and the social media.

The lecture, on Monday, January 16^th at 19:00 in the Library of the Canadian Institute in Greece, is part of the 2016/2017 Lecture Program of the ΣΥΛΛΟΓΟΣ ΦΙΛΩΝ ΤΟΥ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΚΟΥ ΑΡΧΕΙΟΥ ΤΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΛΟΓΙΚΗΣ ΥΠΗΡΕΣΙΑΣ. The public is welcome to learn about “the rest of the story”.

Cordially,
David Rupp
Director

The Fred Winter Collection

Taranto Museum, Apulian vase fragment with 2x2 Ionic naiskos flanked by helmeted men (Professor Fred Winter, 1978)

CIG at the AIA Meeting in Toronto; Stelida-Naxos in the Canadian News

The 2017 meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) is being held in Toronto this year at the Sheraton Hotel from January 5th through 8th. This is THE annual gathering of Canadian and American archaeologists, art historians, cultural anthropologists and related specialists who do research on the ancient cultures that once occupied the Mediterranean region, the Near East and Europe. Every so often the meetings are held in a Canadian city.

This year in honor of the meetings being held in Toronto and the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Institute there is a complete session devoted to the current fieldwork of Canadian projects in Greece with permits from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sport under the aegis of the Institute. This session, 7B, on Sunday, January 8th from 08:00 – 11:00 in the Civic South of the Sheraton Centre Hotel, is entitled, “Regional Approaches to Identity and Meaning in Greek Landscapes: Current Work of the Canadian Institute in Greece”. In this Colloquium there is a paper on recent discoveries at ancient Argilos in Macedonia (J.Y. Perreault and Z. Bonias); on regional identity and ethnos of Achaia Phthiotis (M. Haagsma, M. Chykerda, S. Karapanou and L. Surtees); on the intensive survey in the western Argolid by WARP (D. Nakassis, S. Gallimore, W. Caraher and S. James); on reconstruction of early prehistoric activities and land/seascapes around Stelida on Naxos (T. Carter, D. Athanasoulis, D. Contreras, J. Holcomb, D. Mihailovic, K. Campeau, and J. Feathers); the Bronze Age and Archaic/Classical finds from ancient Eleon in eastern Boiotia (B. Burke, B. Burns and A. Charami). Of course, these excavations and surveys are each well documented in the CIG Portal to the Past.

Many other members of CIG are also giving papers at the AIA meeting. Former Fellows at CIG are very well represented: Martin Perron (Session 4A); Lana Radloff (Session 1G); Mark Hammond (Session 1I); Myles Chykerda (Session 7B); Laura Surtees (Session 7B); and Mathew Maher (with A. Mowat; Session 7C). Ancient Eleon is the focus of two more papers: B. Burke, B. Burns, A. Charami, O. Kyriaki, and N. Herrmann (Session 3J) and K. Jazwa (Session 7J). The excavations of SEEP on the Paximadi Peninsula are examined by E. Langridge-Noti, R. DeGraaf and P. Klingborg (Session 2I). Board members M. Papaioannou (with P. Dare and Y.-W. Ahn; Session 4I), J. Francis (Session 2A) and M.A. Sears (with C.J. Butera; Session 6H) are giving papers as well. Finally, loyal members M.H. Walbank (Session 5J) and T. van Damme (Session 4A) are also presenting. If I missed anyone on the program please let me know!

So if you are in Toronto or in the Golden Horseshoe this weekend and are members or friends of CIG, here’s an excellent opportunity for you to learn more about our diverse activities in Greece and the research of our members who are spread across Canada and even in the United States!

Stelida – Naxos in the Canadian Press

The media coverage in Canada of the research of archaeological field projects working in Greece under the aegis of the Institute is not as frequent or as widespread as it should be. A recent exception to this pattern is a lengthy article on the continuing Canadian Institute excavations at Stelida – Naxos in the Cycladic Islands of Greece in the Toronto Star from December 27th by Kate Allen, the Science and Technology reporter. (https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/12/27/neanderthals-in-a-boat-not-such-a-far-fetched-notion-after-all.html).

Professor Tristan Carter (Co-Director; Department of Anthropology, McMaster University) and Dr. Demetrios Athanasoulis (Director; Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sport) in the past two summers have made significant discoveries relating to the quarrying of chert and the production of chipped stone tools on this prominent hill dating from the Lower Palaeolithic through Upper Palaeolithic periods and into the following Mesolithic period. These revelations are challenging long-held ideas concerning the intellectual and the technological capacities of Archaic hominins and early humans. So check out the link and go to the CIG Portal to the Past for more information.

Kali Xronia!
David Rupp
Director

The Fred Winter Collection

Taranto Museum, panel from large mosaic with tiger and horse (Professor Fred Winter, 1978)