Cretan and Corinthian clay vessels from the cemetery of Lyktos Alonas (7th century BCE). Photograph by Georgios Tsolakis. © Lyktos Archaeological Project.
Lyktos: The Archaeology of an Archaic Greek City in Crete
Antonis Kotsonas
ISAW
This lecture will take place in person at ISAW.
Registration is required at THIS LINK.
Since 2021, a team from ISAW/NYU has been involved in archaeological fieldwork at the Greek and Roman city Lyktos in central Crete, Greece. Celebrated by Homer, considered as the birthplace of god Zeus by Hesiod, and identified as the cradle of the Spartan constitution by Aristotle, Lyktos boasts an unusually rich literary and epigraphic record. Notwithstanding the reputation of the ancient city, and the interest of many renowned archaeologists in excavating it, Lyktos attracted only small-scale fieldwork until recently. The lecture reports on the recent discovery of a possible sanctuary at the acropolis of Lyktos, and the excavation of a burial site which shows usual funerary customs. The integrated research of settlement and burial areas with rich finds of especially the 7th to 5th centuries BCE generates exceptional insights into the archaeology and history of an Archaic Greek community.
Antonis Kotsonas is an Associate Professor of Mediterranean History and Archaeology at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. Previously he worked at other universities in the USA, the UK, Greece, and The Netherlands. Kotsonas holds a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh, an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge, and a B.A. from the University of Crete. He has published five books and numerous articles on the material culture and socio-economic history of ancient Greece and the Mediterranean from the Early Iron Age to the Classical period, while his broader research interests extend from the Late Bronze Age to the Roman period and encompass the reception of antiquity. He has conducted fieldwork and finds research across the Aegean and comparative studies in Italy and Cyprus. Kotsonas is President of the New York Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, and is co-directing the Lyktos Archaeological Project in Crete.
The lecture will be followed by a reception.
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