Aegis: Essays in Mediterranean Archaeology: Essays in Mediterranean Archaeology: Presented to Matti Egon by the scholars of the Greek Archaeological Committee UK

The honorand of this volume, Matti Egon, has been a great benefactor to museums, schools, universities and hospitals in the UK and also in Greece: all areas that her background and life’s interests have made dear to her. One of these is the Greek Archaeological Committee UK, that she helped found in 1992: an organization dedicated to informing academe and the public in Britain of archaeological work carried out in Greece, and of enabling the ‘brightest minds’ of Greece and Cyprus to pursue post-graduate research at British institutions, to the mutual enrichment of both. Some fifty-five graduates have so benefited. This volume offers essays by a good half of those so assisted: roughly split between the sexes, they range between post-graduates still completing their studies in the UK, up to those with doctorates, almost half the group, now successfully in employment at Universities and similar Institutions in the UK, Greece, Cyprus and the USA, with rather fewer working in Museums, within the Greek Ephorates and even at a Foreign School in Athens. The hugely varied topics they offer cover the entire range of prehistory and history down to the modern day on Greek and Cypriot soil. Neolithic animal butchery rubs shoulders with regional assessments of the end of the Mycenaean era, investigations into Hellenistic sculptors and lamps, life in Byzantine monasteries and the politics behind modern exhibitions; the Phoenicians and even an Islamic general make cameo appearances. This startling range of subjects accurately reflects the depth of scholarship Matti Egon has nurtured into being; the affection and gratitude expressed by the graduates equally mirrors the deep appreciation they acknowledge for the opportunities so given.

Table of Contents

Foreword

The value of digital recordings and reconstructions for the understanding of three-dimensional archaeological features (Constantinos Papadopoulos)

The contribution of systematic zooarchaeological analysis in understanding the complexity of prehistoric societies: The example of late Neolithic Toumba Kremastis-Koiladas in northern Greece (Vasiliki Tzevelekidi)

The Heraion of Samos under the microscope: A preliminary technological and provenance assessment of the Early Bronze Age II late to III (c. 2500–2000 BC) pottery (Sergios Menelaou)

Time past and time present: the emergence of the Minoan palaces as a transformation of temporality (Giorgos Vavouranakis)

Palaepaphos during the Late Bronze Age: characterizing the urban landscape of a late Cypriot polity (Artemis Georgiou)

‘What would the world be to us if the children were no more?’: the archaeology of children and death in LH IIIC Greece (Chrysanthi Gallou-Minopetrou)

The Late Helladic IIIC period in coastal Thessaly (Eleni Karouzou)

The Bronze Age on Karpathos and Kythera (Mercourios Georgiadis)

East Phokis revisited: its development in the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age in the light of the latest finds (Antonia Livieratou)

Early Iron Age Greece, ancient Pherae and the archaeometallurgy of copper (Vana Orfanou)

Representations of western Phoenician eschatology: funerary art, ritual and the belief in an after-life (Eleftheria Pappa)

Piraeus: beyond ‘known unknowns’ (Florentia Fragkopoulou)

The casting technique of the bronze Antikythera ephebe (Kosmas Dafas)

A brief, phenomenological reading of the Arkteia (Chryssanthi Papadopoulou)

Cylindrical altars and post-funerary ritual in the south-eastern Aegean during the Hellenistic period: 3rd to 2nd centuries BC (Vasiliki Brouma)

Lamps, symbolism and ritual in Hellenistic Greece (Nikolas Dimakis)

In search of the garden-peristyle in Hellenistic palaces: a reappraisal of the evidence (Maria Kopsacheili)

Damophon in Olympia: some remarks on his date (Eleni Poimenidou)

Entering the monastic cell in the Byzantine world: archaeology and texts (Giorgos Makris)

Discovering the Byzantine countryside: the evidence from archaeological field survey in the P