From Catalogues to Colossals: Unearthing History During My Greek Odyssey

This fall has been one of the most enriching experiences of my life. As an intern at the Canadian Institute in Greece (CIG), I’ve had the opportunity to immerse myself in the heart of Mediterranean history and culture, all while gaining hands-on experience that has deepened my passion for archaeology. My journey began with a flight to Athens, marking my first visit to Greece. Watching the sunrise from the plane as it glided over the Aegean Sea, I felt a mixture of excitement and awe. This was the start of an adventure that would shape my understanding of history, archaeology, and myself.

Settling into the CIG guest apartments, I quickly adapted to the rhythm of life in Athens. The view from my new home was breathtaking, with the Acropolis standing as a constant reminder of the rich past I had come to study. My mornings often began with walks through the vibrant streets, where I encountered local wildlife like cats and turtles, adding charm to my daily routine. At the institute, my work was both rewarding and eye-opening. From cataloguing books to assisting with day-to-day operations, I gained valuable insight into the behind-the-scenes efforts that support archaeological research. The institute’s library became a treasure trove of knowledge, where I delved deeper into topics I had studied at Laurier and would carry with me to Queen’s University.

Beyond my work, Greece itself became my classroom. Visiting the Acropolis, I marveled at the Parthenon’s enduring grandeur and imagined the lives of those who had once walked its marble steps. A trip to Delphi allowed me to stand where the ancient oracles once did, the sacred aura of the site complemented by the breathtaking view of the Parnassus mountains.

At Mycenae, I stepped through the famous Lion Gate and into a civilization I had only read about, feeling the weight of history in every stone. Epidaurus revealed the incredible ingenuity of ancient Greek engineering, with its theater’s acoustics leaving me in awe.

Cape Sounion provided the perfect end to a day with its stunning sunset over the Temple of Poseidon. A visit to Meteora was another unforgettable highlight. The towering rock formations, crowned with monasteries, felt like stepping into another world. Watching the sun set over the Thessalian plains, casting the monasteries in golden light, was a moment of peace and reflection that I will carry with me forever. Each site enriched my understanding of ancient Greece and its profound influence on the modern world. The connections between the archaeological remains and the history I had studied became clearer with every visit.

The experience wasn’t limited to history; it was also about people and culture. From conversations with fellow interns and archaeologists to evenings spent enjoying Greek cuisine and exploring Athens’ vibrant neighborhoods, I’ve come to appreciate the warmth and hospitality of the Greek people.As my time in Greece comes to a close, I’m incredibly grateful to the Canadian Institute in Greece for this opportunity. The knowledge I’ve gained, both academic and personal, will guide me as I continue my studies and pursue a career in archaeology. This summer was more than an internship—it was a journey through history, culture, and self-discovery. I look forward to the day I return to Greece, not just to revisit its ancient wonders but to continue learning and growing in the field I love.

Dante Campanella
Wilfrid Laurier University Intern, Fall 2024

John Fossey, 1943–2024

It is with great sadness that we report the passing of John Fossey, Professor Emeritus at McGill University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and one of the founding members of the Canadian Institute in Greece. He passed away on December 1st.

John taught at McGill for over 30 years and helped to establish its program in Classical Archaeology. He conducted excavations in Greece and was first Canadian archaeologist to work on Greek diaspora sites in the region of the Black Sea, including fieldwork in Bulgaria and Georgia. A prolific scholar, John authored nine books, among which was The History of the Greek Diaspora: From Antiquity to Modern Times, and over 100 journal articles. He inspired a generation of scholars throughout his career.

During meetings and discussions in the early 1970s, John was one of the key individuals who helped found the Canadian Institute in Greece (originally called the Canadian Archaeological Institute at Athens). Along with Bob Buck from the University of Alberta, John lobbied other archaeological organizations in Canada and the first report of a new institute being founded that would focus on Greece occurred at the November 1973 general meeting of the Canadian Society for Archaeology and Abroad (an organization for which John had also served as President). Approval of the new Institute as a legal entity in Canada occurred in 1974. Lobbying continued and John and his colleagues helped Canada establish a "foreign archaeological school" in Greece on February 12, 1976. John served as the first President of the Board of this new Institute and also its first Director, until 1979.

Part of John’s motivation for establishing a Canadian institute in Greece was the difficulties he and other Canadian researchers were having in obtaining fieldwork permits in the early 1970s. In 1972, John excavated at Lake Vouliagmeni on the Perachora peninsula under the aegis of the British School at Athens. The BSA did not offer a permit for this work to continue in 1973. Another of the founding members of the CIG, John Desmarais, reported that John was so incensed by this outcome, he vowed to create a Canadian institute.

John continued to support the CIG throughout his life and made large donations of books to our library, most recently in 2020. The CIG owes a great debt to John for his tireless work in helping to establish a new foreign archaeological school in Athens and for working to ensure that fieldwork permits would be available to Canadian archaeologists working in Greece. Without him, we would not be here today.

We offer our utmost condolences to John’s children, Jean-Paul, Myrtis, and Pauline, and the rest of his family. And we offer our most sincere thanks to John for everything he did to help establish the CIG.

https://jjcardinal.ca/en/m-john-michael-fossey/#comment-16768

Welcome, Adam and Dante!

The new academic year has begun at the Institute, and we welcome the Institute’s 2024-2025 Alföldi-Rosenbaum Fellow, Adam Wiznura, and Wilfrid Laurier University intern, Dante Campanella.

Adam Wiznura is a PhD student in Ancient History at the University of Groningen, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Onno van Nijf and Dr. Christina Williamson. His PhD project is entitled “Connecting the Greeks: Regional Festival Networks in Hellenistic and Roman Thessaly”.

Festivals of all types, including athletic and religious festivals, contribute to a sense of belonging and identity at a local level and are a way of creating connectivity at a regional level. This research posits that festivals and festival networks played a large part in the creation of a Thessalian regional identity. Festivals in Thessaly, during the Hellenistic and early Roman Periods, are of importance as they represent not only connectivity between peoples in Thessaly, but because of the erratic and uncertain nature of the period in Thessaly (invasions, forced population movements, increased foreign contacts, and political and religious reforms), the festivals are a good chronological indicator of how beliefs and customs were ever changing but could also stay the same. His research seeks to understand the roles of festivals in identity-formation processes during the Hellenistic period in Thessaly. It also attempts to answer the question of how festivals served to connect communities within the region as well as the wider Greek world, and the role of festivals in establishing a cohesive sense of regional identity.

Thanks to the Elisabeth Alföldi-Rosenbaum Fellowship, Adam hopes to complete the writing of his dissertation and do supplementary research further analysing the athletic culture in Thessaly during the Roman period, to which his nine-month stay in Greece is instrumental. He will not only be able to have access to a wide variety of publications in the Canadian Institute in Greece and other foreign institutes but will also be able to interact with scholars who share common research interests. Additional research trips through Thessaly will also aid in the contextualisation of festivals within the region.

Dante Campanella recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Archaeology and Heritage Studies from Wilfrid Laurier University. Dante is now a graduate student at Queen’s University studying Classical Archaeology with a special interest in the Eastern Mediterranean.

During his undergrad Dante participated in field training in Madaba, Jordan where he gained a better understanding of archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean. Dante wishes to investigate further into the relationships between different peoples regarding trade and the economy in the classical period.

Exploring Greece will allow Dante to better understand the relationships between people and its impact on trade and the economy by looking at sites and artifacts which show this relationship.

Jonathan Tomlinson
Assistant Director

The Central Achaia Phthiotis Survey (CAPS): the 2024 season

The fifth field season of the Central Achaia Phthiotis Survey (CAPS) project ran from July 6th to August 11th 2024. We welcomed back staff and volunteers as well as new field schools students. Despite the soaring temperatures (up to 40°C!) we had a successful and fun season!

The CAPS 2024 team. We are unfortunately missing Sophia Karapanou in the picture.

The project, codirected by Dr. Margriet Haagsma (University of Alberta) and Sophia Karapanou (Ephorate of Antiquities in Larissa, Thessaly), is funded by Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Faculty of Arts of the University of Alberta. We have the pleasure of working with the support of the Canadian Institute in Greece (CIG), the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of Pharsala, and the town and people of Narthaki. We would like to thank all the many people involved in our project running so successfully. A special thanks to the mayor of Pharsala, Makis Eskioglou, who generously supported the addition of air conditioning units to the school where the students stay and visited us for dinner. We are fortunate to work with the village proedros, Thanasis Lelentzis, who is always available to help things run smoothly. Finally, we would like to thank Elias Papadopoulos and his family for their kindness and hospitality.

The CAPS project is interested in land use over time and seeks a diachronic understanding of the region: we ask how people's experience of the landscape has changed and how human actions have impacted the landscape. These research questions are addressed through a combination of intensive (broad, systematic survey over a large area)  and extensive (long range, targeted recording of sites of interest) survey methodologies. Since the beginning of the CAPS project in 2019, we have been able to collect a tremendous amount of data regarding the past of Achaia Phthiotis, documenting material from the Neolithic to Early Modern periods.

Beyond ancient changes to the landscape we are increasingly aware of modern anthropogenic impacts. The solar panel prjects that were in the planning stages last year are now more conspicuously under construction with much of our survey area being impacted. The situation is complex, with many stakeholders including local landowners, foreign energy companies, and the Greek ephorate. Fortunately, thanks to the work of the Ephorate based on the results of our previous years of survey, areas with high densities of archaeological material have been excluded from the construction.

This season the field survey teams, consisting of University of Alberta field school students, volunteers, and staff, focused closer to our home in the village of Narthaki, intensively surveying agricultural fields. One major area of interest was the vicinity of the modern village of Platanos. This small village has been a landmark for both the CAPS project and previous Kastro Kallithea Archaeological Project, passed by almost every morning on the way to the Kastro at Kallithea or to regions marked for survey. Beginning in 2023 and continuing this year, we began investigating the settlement near enough to begin uncovering both its recent and more distant past.

In the first week of 2024, we began seeing the first signs of late Ottoman pottery in the region, as well as ceramic water pipes. Both speak to the longstanding occupation of the site, but it was not until the second week of the project (and the first week with field school students!) that we began to appreciate the volume of material. Field school students were treated to many archaeologists' dreams: a long-term dumping site. From near the edge of Platanos, huge volumes of broken ceramic, dating from the modern back to at least the Ottoman period attested to the long and intense occupation of the settlement. These findings are somewhat unusual for our survey project, which normally collects highly dispersed material, rather than a site of occupation. The material we have recovered dates from c. 18th to 19th century CE, speaking to the early modern occupation of the region, and the likely presence of the Ottoman çiftlik Tzakerlı.

As we moved further from Platanos, we once again began to once again recover older material. Moving further from the modern settlement, we began to encounter fields with large concentrations of stones, out of context, but possibly hinting at early architecture. Fragmentary ceramics, from these areas point to the long standing occupation of this region, with pottery sherds ranging in date from the Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods recovered. Less frequently, we also caught a glimpse of even earlier periods, when stone tools and lithic debitage dating as far back as the Neolithic period were collected.

Undergraduate students Abraar, Erin, and Emme showing the archaeological material recovered from a single tract!

Along with our intensive survey, we were joined by Dr. Grigoris N. Tsokas (University of Thessaly) and his team who performed geophysical survey of two sites of interest: Kastraki and Platanos Magoula. The Platanos Magoula was discovered as part of the CAPS survey during the 2021 season. Professor Tsokas kindly invited the field school students to watch the work in the field and gave a lecture on the methods using case studies drawn from the 400 sites (!) he and his team have surveyed. The results of this analysis will inform future work in the region.

Field school students, volunteers, and staff at Dr. Grigoris N. Tsokas’ lecture on geophysical survey.

In addition to our director, Dr. Margriet Haagsma, and the undergraduate field school students, the team consisted of a graduate students and volunteers (Dustin Berndt-Setter, Kate Grabinsky, Anna Hijmans, Amilia Hildahl, Ava Laville, Matt Spinks, and Dana Stephens) who worked hard to make the field season a success. Ed Middleton (McMaster University) ran the intensive survey as field director with Ava Laville. Dr. Magie Aiken (Swedish Museum of Natural History) was responsible for the GIS of the survey. The apothiki was run by Adam Wiznura (University of Groningen) who taught students how to classify ceramic material. Dr. Gino Canlas (University of Western Ontario) supervised the study of the material from Kastraki, one of the archaeological sites we identified in the survey. We were joined by Dr. Sandra Garvie-Lok (University of Alberta) who worked with faunal material from the Kastro Kallithea project and was kind enough to teach a module on isotope analysis to the students.

Beyond our survey work, the field school students benefited from field trips to visit archaeological sites, museums, and other archaeological projects. If you are interested in more information on our project you can check out our website https://caps.artsrn.ualberta.ca/ or, if you’re interested in the pictures, you can find us on Instagram (@achaiaphthiotis) and Facebook (Central Achaia Phthiotis Survey).

Magie Aiken, Margriet Haagsma, Edward Middleton, CAPS

The Abdera Urban Plan Project (AUPP 2024): A Multidisciplinary approach to the study of urban identities

Abdera, Thrace (Kallintzi 2010)

The Abdera Urban Plan Project (AUPP) is a three-year SSHRC project (2023-2026) co-directed by Maria Chrysafi of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Xanthi and Maria Papaioannou, Department of Historical Studies, University of New Brunswick with generous support from the Canadian Institute in Greece, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the museum at Abdera, the local community and the Prefecture of Xanthi.  The AUPP began its first season this summer with a well-attended public lecture on June 15^th at the Abdera Museum by Maria Papaioannou entitled “Living in Roman Greece” that included a brief overview of the AUPP project. Following the lecture, enthusiastic attendees (students and non-students) came forward to volunteer for next summer’s excavations! The following Monday a geophysical survey of the site began under sunny and hot June skies accompanied by a cool breeze from the Aegean.

The island of Thasos in the blue background. View from the archaeological site of Abdera

For those not familiar with the site, Abdera is located along the Thracian coastal in the prefecture of Xanthi, just 5km south of the modern village of Abdera that features a majestic view of the island of Thasos against a clear blue sky.  The city was first founded in the 7^th and 6^th centuries BC by colonist from Asia Minor, and subsequently became a very wealthy and powerful city state as evidenced by its coins found in far away places such as Egypt and Mesopotamia; the poet Pindar praises the city for its ‘plentiful vines and bountiful fruits.’  For those however who favour the mythical foundation story, it was Heracles apparently who founded the city naming it after his companion Abderos who unfortunately met a grewsome death, devoured by the famous man-eating horses of the Thracian king, Diomedes.  In historical times Abdera was the home of many famous Greek poets and philosophers, among them Demokritos the father of the atom theory. The physician Hippocrates is also known to have spent some time there apparently invited by the citizens of Abdera to cure the ailing Demokritos.

Abdera, aerial view of Insula of Houses with the Roman period  peristyle house to the north (viewer’s left)

The site was first excavated in the 1950s by the newly appointed Director of Antiquities of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, Demetrios Lazarides, who discovered the remains of fragmentary houses of a late classical-Hellenistic grid planned city. No complete housing block has ever been investigated and only one-well preserved Roman period peristyle house from the Insula of Houses was revealed in its entirety (albeit missing almost entirely its north wall). The boundary roads to the east, west and south of this insula were discovered in subsequent investigations conducted between 1996 and 2019 by the Archaeological Service of Xanthi, but the north road has not been identified. Previous studies on this housing block includes an architectural study of the Roman period peristyle house (figs. 3 and 4) by the AUPP co-director Maria Papaioannou and in 2016 with an Insight Grant from SSHRC, Maria and collaborator Peter Dare from Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering UNB conducted Terrestrial Laser Scanning to create a digital archive of the Insula of Houses and visualization theories. 

The results of these earlier investigations sparked an interest in the study of the built environment, the various architectural phases of the Insula of Houses from Hellenistic to Roman times and its impact on urban identities. This new data combined with past studies will contribute to our understanding of the various political, social and economic networks that helped shape the town-plan of Abdera. We hope to answer questions that help identify those responsible for the project, what group of people it meant to accommodate, and the types of housing that existed at different time periods. The outcomes may challenge the long-standing theories regarding the uniform layout of the town plan of Abdera based on the democratic notion of isonomia, as some researchers have postulated.

The AUPP office under the oak tree at the SW corner of the site. The survey team taking a lunch break. From left, Nikos Papadopoulos, Gianluca Cantoro, Angelo Plageras and Demitri Oikonomou

On June 17^th the FORTH Team from the Institute for Mediterranean Studies arrived and set up their office beneath a large oak tree at the northwest corner of the site.  Although there were some delays as the Wi-Fi was not cooperating, which made it difficult for Angelo and Demitri to establish a connection between the GPS and the magnetometer, the problem was soon resolved, and work began.  Next Ground Penetrating Radar was also applied followed by Electrical Resistivity conducted by Niko (Research Director of FORTH) in selective areas that required some additional clarification.  Digital documentation (TLS) of the site in areas not previously covered in the 2016 study was conducted by Gianluca, Archaeologist of the National Research Council of Italy and member of the FORTH team.

Nikos and Angelo conducting electrical resistivity; Maria Papaioannou “mowing the lawn -and lending a hand with the GPR; TLS by Gianluca; Dimitri and Angelo with the magnetometer

GPR revealed remains of a peristyle house (highlighted in a red rectangle) at the southwest corner of the Roman period peristyle house at the north end of the insula

Preliminary results from the geohpysical survey have revealed some exciting finds.  A complete plan of a large house, featuring remains of well-preserved stone walls, with rooms surrounding a central peristyle coutryard appeared just to the southwest corner of the excavated Roman peristyle house!   (Rectangular red area in figure 7). The dimensions appear to be similar to those of the Roman peristyle house which features a ground floor plan of approximately 500 m2. This was an unexpected find that made our day!  The final results will be submitted by the FORTH team in September. Based on the geophysical findngs we will select areas to conduct test trenches next summer. We hope to locate the road boardering the north side of the Insula of Houses and thus verify the exact dimensions of the insula, identify walls and plans of early Hellenistic period houses and confirm the existance of structures (domestic?) in the neighbouring insulae to the north, east and south.  We look forward to organizing our 2025 field project and excavating a site next season which promises to be full of surprises… we hope!

At the end of the day…Dimitri, Nikos, Angelo, Gianluca, Maria Ch. and Maria P.

Former Director of the Ephorate of Xanthi, Konstantina Kallintzi, and current Deputy Director Maria Chrysafi surveying from the north end of the housing block the cleared areas surrounding the Insula of Houses.

Maria Papaioannou, University of New Brunswick, co-director, AUPP