(p. 478a) The situation in Greece is less developed than in Northwest Europe or America, not only as we have already seen in the fields of Medieval and post-Medieval archaeology, but also in that of the Modern Age
Another factor hindering greater interest in post-Medieval archaeology in Greece is a set of negative views of Greece during this era. First the period under Ottoman rule is seen as an unrelenting era of oppression and limited Greek achievement, while the relative poverty and difficulties of large areas of the independent state of Greece in the nineteenth and even well into the twentieth century, or at least its perceived "backwardness" in comparison to the American lifestyle, make this period best forgotten. Symptomatic of the desire to elide the millennia between Modern Greece and its glorious Classical predecessor is the attempt by a Greek restauranteur to launch a national chain of restaurants (Archaion Gefsis, or Ancient Tastes), only serving food based on Classical Greek recipes. Particular targets of this plan were the popular Greek dishes associated with the spread of Oriental recipes during Ottoman rule (Smith 1999).
(p. 478b) A research initiative for industrial archaeology within the Ministry of Culture and the recent Antiquities Law protecting monuments and finds up to 100 years ago, point to promising developments
A recent volume on the material culture of twentieth-century Greek emigrants to the United States and Australia is also a very promising and innovative development (Kourelis 2008).
(p. 478c) Folklore museums or Modern Greek history and heritage organizations are of immense value for an archaeological approach to the last few hundred years
In Athens the excellent collections of the Benaki and Greek Folk Art Museums immediately spring to mind. The ideal way to promote greater interest in the post-Medieval archaeology of Greece would be through schools' projects, which could begin with the history of local communities from the period of living memory and work backwards. Pioneer work in Achaea has been achieved by Kostas Papagiannopoulos and Eleni Simoni with a village-based retrospective education for children (cf. Papagiannopoulos 2004) covering all periods of the past. Excellent work is also going on with local children for other periods (cf. Kotsakis 2007)
(p. 479a) The survival capsule for the Ottoman Empire created by Ataturk in the form of a created rather than rediscovered Turkish nationalism
For Ataturk this meant literally turning the state's back on the old cosmopolitan, multinational Istanbul and starting again in Ankara, a dusty provincial small town of a mere 20,000 people at this time (for a stimulating study for archaeologists of how this was made manifest in Ankara in architectural ideology see Kezer 1996).
(p. 479b) Travelers of the Early Modern period are frequently struck by poverty and underdevelopment
See also Tselikas 1990; Green 1994, 1996.
(p. 480a) Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century population was depressed and land use limited, while health, education, and living conditions for the bulk of the population remained poor
Within the early nineteenth-century Greek state economic conditions were very difficult, but it is necessary to recall that other parts of Greece remained within a seriously decayed Ottoman Empire for much longer. Thus in Thessaly in the late nineteenth century giftlik life continue to oppress the peasantry (Lawless 1977).
(p. 480b) During the latter nineteenth century Greece saw a slow expansion in the scale and spread of local industrial processing of its agricultural cash crops such as cotton, silk, tobacco, and currants
Boosting peasant self-sufficiency and their potential for small-scale marketing of cash crops were the successive arrivals from the seventeenth century onward of other exotic crops such as maize, tomatoes, and potatoes.
(p. 481a) Ceramic production within Greece concentrated on traditional storage jars and well-made but earthenware fabric, glazed wares for heavier-duty household use
In an important study Kalentzidou (2000) has moved beyond the often rather ahistorical ethnoarchaeological study of Early Modern ceramic production in her analysis of the development of Evros pottery production and consumption patterns in the twentieth century AD. She uses social and economic factors to account for the shift from the 1920s onward from decorated to undecorated ware in the region.
(p. 481b) Rapidly we see the adoption of modern styles of individual eating as required by the ceramic sets being supplied
A parallel process was taking place at the Sultan's table in Istanbul from the nineteenth century, with vast dinner services being made to order from the West. Comparisons can be made with the results of excavations in the slum areas of Australian cities, where poor-quality finds are replaced in the mid to late nineteenth century by relatively inexpensive global consumer products from major factories. A matching ceramic dinner service was seen as a mark of respectability (Tim Murray, pers. comm.)
(p. 481c) Grottaglie or Corfu wares: originally produced in Apulia (Southeast Italy), then local production arose on Corfu and Kythera
Textual evidence confirms the establishment of Italian potters and their workshops at Corfu in the early twentieth century.
(p. 484a) "Urban" forms of housing appeared among the rising class of farmers of "middling status" in the Aegean countryside, and local professions. This meant not only two-story homes, but an increase in the number of internal family spaces
This multiplication and diversification of household spaces is seen in cross-cultural comparisons as a significant sign of more complex concepts of social life (Kent 1990).
(p. 484b) Also diffusing from towns into villages was the concept of a village square with a prominent church, coffee-houses, shops, and an administrative building: a small-scale imitation of a town center
A parallel development is noted in rural Turkey (Beeley 1970) and on Cyprus (Sant Cassia 1982).
(p. 486) In the Mount Pelion villages from the nineteenth century onward Neoclassicism is adopted in the grand family residences
Curiously, however, this cultural import arrived through commercial contacts with Pelion expatriates in Egypt.
(p. 487a) From the 1830s to 1870s many country districts were terrorized by bandits
Bandits represented a very real threat in the Greek countryside, even into the suburbs of Athens, till the end of the nineteenth century. Yet they also could feature in romantic visions of independent warriors resisting the encroachment of a centralized state, just as they had fought in the front line against the Turks in the War of Independence (Damianakos 1985).
(p. 487b) Land reforms remained urgent but neglected
Land owned by Turks was taken over by the Greek state with the intention of redistributing it to the peasantry, but this occurred extremely slowly and in a piecemeal way, with much only released in the 1870s-1880s (Dertilis 1992, Stedman 1996, Sigalos 2004). Travelers till then noted the neglect and desertion of the countryside. When the land was all finally disbursed, it was ruled that holdings should be limited and this at least stopped rich landowners from using their capital to create massive commercial estates. The advantage to the peasantry was immense but a nation of smallholders was also at a disadvantage when competing for overseas markets for its produce, a situation which led later in the twentieth century to the widespread setting-up of farmers' cooperatives. As wealth thus stayed in the commercial and financial sector, it aided clientelism, a central problem in Modern Greece, since loans and other forms of patronage were an alternative way for the rich to deploy their capital to bind peasant farmers, minor craftsmen, and tradespeople to themselves. The late twentieth-century role of national banks in trying to replace clientelism with agricultural loans is a striking phenomenon (Slaughter and Kasimis 1986). For a comparable story in rural Turkey see the excellent overview by Keydar (1983).
(p. 487c) All of this prevented a rapid recovery of the Greek countryside after the establishment of the Modern Greek state until the 1880s
The implications of these negative factors, falling between the potentially prosperous phases of the late eighteenth - and late nineteenth-century phases, are currently the focus of research into the material culture and built environment of villages which were occupied during this period.
(p. 488a) Poor living standards of the nineteenth-century peasantry: a small collection of household utensils
In 1830 Hughes described Albanian dwellings in Central Greece as inhabited by very poor people, whose entire stock of furniture was a few earthenware pitchers and an iron pot on a mud floor (cited in Stedman 1996).
(p. 488b) Travelers visiting Greece considered its surviving inhabitants a sadly fallen race
For a comparable story from travelers' and administrators' reports of the local population in nineteenth-century Cyprus see Demetriou (1997).
(p. 488c) Drainage of the extensive lowland marshes of Greece opened up land and reduced endemic wetland diseases
This process has accelerated since 1950. Marangou (2001) reports that some two-thirds of Greek wetlands have been drained since that time. Ironically growing opposition to the disappearance of natural wetlands has developed. The destruction of archaeological sites and monuments with little recording, the disappearance of plant and animal habitats, and its negative effects on employment and landscape character have led to widespread revaluation of this phenomenon. Remaining wetlands are being preserved, at least in part: some are being partially reconstituted, and museums and habitat centers have been created, while archaeological concerns are being met by greater monitoring and intervention to salvage sites and monuments threatened by wetland development.
(p. 488d) The small farmers typical for twentieth-century Greece became for foreign archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists a supposed element of continuity to the admired Classical (or even Bronze Age) past
For other examples of direct links of an ethnoarchaeological character being made between Modern rural Greek society and antiquity, see Wace and Thompson (1914), Walcot (1970), Jameson et al. (1976), Bintliff (1977), Ruschenbusch (1984), Kardulias (2008).
(p. 488e) Urban change
See now Tsakopoulos (2009) for an overview of Early Modern Greek urban planning and Neoclassicism.
(p. 489) Athens: the Bavarian ruling class brought in foreign architects to ornament the city with appropriate public buildings
For the development of Athens and its replanning during the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries see Travlos (1993), Yerolympos (1996), Bastea (1999).
(p. 490a) In provincial towns with a few thousand inhabitants, the norm till the mid-twentieth century, life was very internalized, while such market centers were not strongly interconnected so as to create an integrated urban system for Greece
In the Central Greek province of Boeotia the two regional towns of Thebes and Livadheia had only some 5000 inhabitants each around 1900 (Sauerwein 1991). The city of Sparta, which dominated the central plain of Laconia, had 6000 inhabitants in the early twentieth century, but now has 18,000 (Zavvou et al. 2006).
The cosmopolitan society and international networking of the few Greek towns with a major commercial face were very different, most notably Thessaloniki with a dominance of non-Greek inhabitants, primarily Ladino Jews (Mazower 2004) that was horrifically reduced to a Greek population during the Nazi occupation. Significantly, the postwar Aristotelian University was built over the destroyed main Jewish cemetery of the city, erasing physical memories as well.
(p. 490b) The Lake Copais Company was poorly managed. The drained land was let out on shortterm contracts to the surrounding villagers. There were riots
The Company persuaded the Greek government to exempt it from the implications of the 1871 and 1924 land redistribution laws, which would have given local villagers permanent rights over the land they cultivated in the Copais. Their plots could still be reassigned on a yearly basis. Continuing disputes between farmers and the Company from the 1930s on finally prompted their expropriation by the state in 1953, when the 16 surrounding villages were awarded the Copais land (Dertilis 1992, Slaughter and Kasimis 1986).
(p. 490c) Life for the "colonial" managers and foreign staff of the Company had been rather luxurious
Thus the British archaeologists excavating in ancient Haliartos city at the beginning of the twentieth century were indebted to the Company for substantial support with equipment, as well as accommodation in the Copais Compound (including the intriguingly named "Bachelors' House") (Austin 1925-26, 1931-32). Much later the classicist Peter Levi, researching his Penguin edition of Pausanias' Travels, tells us in a footnote, that from his own observation: "A sympathetic English enclave at Haliartos survived until ten years ago, complete with visiting cards and afternoon tea" (Levi 1971: 358-9 n.128).
(p. 491a) The very distinctive formal dress of each Greek village opens up major insights
The history of such highly localized dress styles deserves more attention. In Italy, for example, an early "scientific" recording of local dress variations in the kingdom of Naples clearly demonstrated the long traditions they represented before the modern revival of folk customs (Congedo 2001). Vionis (2005) has incorporated dress codes and also embroidery into his study of changing material culture and society in the Medieval to post-Medieval Cyclades. We are reminded of the extraordinary breadth of interest shown by pioneer twentieth-century archaeologists such as Alan Wace (1914), with his catalog of Aegean embroideries.
(p. 491b) The construction of the Modern Greek nation, in which many ethnic or religious minorities have been absorbed into a culture centering on Greek Orthodox populations
See also Herzfeld (1982), Danforth (1993), and Sbonias (2004).
(p. 491c) The short kilt of the Greek National Guard is actually derived from Greek Albanian male dress
For more detailed discussion of this and other issues concerning the way that the traditional diversity of Greek society had to be rather uncomfortably accommodated into a concept of Greek cultural homogeneity deriving unbroken from Classical antiquity, see Sbonias (2004).
(p. 491d) The policy within the new Greek state, frequently solicited by these communities themselves, to "ethnically cleanse" place-names denoting non-Greek settlers
In our own study province of Boeotia, Central Greece, where most rural settlements originate from fourteenth - to fifteenth-century Albanian colonization, this process was carried out on a very large scale. One of our villages, Leondarion, was originally named Zogra Kobili (the name of the founder clan's leader). Leondarion was an ancient place-name in this district and may not refer to an actual ancient site at all. Another, deserted, village had originally been called in Albanian Gjin Vendre (founded by clan leader John with the Great Belly), but was transformed into Greek Sta Dendra ("The Place with the Trees"). In this process villages could also acquire the names of ancient towns, when ironically another local settlement is likely to be the linear descendant of those cities' inhabitants. Such is the case of modern Koroneia village, which is actually a Medieval Albanian colony formerly called Kutumula, while the likely successor to the ancient and medieval settlement of Koroneia city is the modern village of Agios Georgios (Bintliff et al. 2009).
(p. 493a) Early Modern Greek burial traditions have been studied in a pioneer ethnoarchaeological study (Tzortzopoulou-Gregory 2008)
In a second study based on her PhD thesis, Tzortzopoulou-Gregory (2010) adds important additional information on Early Modern Greek cemeteries. Maintenance of the family grave plot, the commonest form of burial monument, is the responsibility of the immediate kin, for whom it represents a public obligation linked with their rights to family property. Surprisingly, there is no communal obligation to maintain decayed graves when no relatives survive in the neighborhood. In fact the average maintenance of graves is rarely longer than a generation, so that up to half of visible tombs are neglected. Frequently a grave plot is then taken over by an unrelated family, in which case the earlier monument is destroyed and replaced by a new one.
(p. 493b) A striking link between the purity of white nineteenth-century plaster casts and new marble statues and the contemporary enthusiasm for seeing Classical temples and sculpture as equally idealized in their lack of naturalistic colors
Even later, when the American School of Classical Studies in Athens restored the Stoa of Attalus as the centerpiece of the archaeological park of the Athenian Agora, its original enhancement in red and blue was omitted.
(p. 493c) This amputation of the intervening millennia between Classical and Modern Greece is a central aspect of the use of "symbolic capital" to homogenize the young nation around an inspiring image of its former greatness
Mouliou (1994) quotes Smith: "The link with the distinctive pre-modern past serves to dignify the nation as well as explain its mores and character. More important, it serves to 'remake the collective personality' of the nation in each generation." For a thorough and insightful analysis of nineteenth-century Greek attitudes to the past in the context of the rise of Greek archaeology, see the essay by Voutsaki (2003).
(p. 493d) The Athens Acropolis was "cleansed" not only of its Ottoman and Frankish, but also its Byzantine and Early Christian monuments
Hurwit comments wisely: "If, then, the Acropolis as it is today is an artificial, even imaginary composition - the rendering of a sanctuary that never was exactly as it is - it is still in a sense an authentic cultural artefact, an artistic arrangement that tells us less about the Classical sanctuary than it might at first appear but that certainly tells us a lot about a temperament that sought, rightly or wrongly, to restore the place as an ideological tool in the re-creation and promotion of a new nation" (1999: 302).
(p. 494a) Bastea on Thessaloniki: the rich multicultural world of the prewar city had effectively been erased from the collective memory of most of its inhabitants
Bastea (2003) powerfully deploys Pierre Nora's research into the mutability and yet critical role of memory in our comprehension of who and where we are. In the same important volume on Modern Greece's complex relationships with its own past (Brown and Hamilakis 2003), Malaby (2003) observes a process known as "historical constructivism" in the Cretan city of Khania, where entrepreneurs are setting up pseudo-historical cafes (stekia) in the previously neglected Old Town (inside the largely surviving Venetian city walls), such as a "traditional coffee-house" and even a "synagogue cafe."
(p. 494b) Ethnographer Hamish Forbes (2009) explains how most inhabitants in traditional Greek rural farming villages still possess a limited historical perspective
This research is mostly available in full detail in his monograph Meaning and Identity in a Greek Landscape (2007).
World History
