Christina Stefanou

Fifth Year

Christina received a B.A. in History and Archaeology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She is studying the material and textual culture of the Mediterranean, with a focus on the Aegean. She has participated in excavations and field projects in Northern Italy (Riparo Tagliente) and Greece (Ierapetra on Crete, Raphena and Marathon in Attika, Rodafnidia on Lesbos, and Popovo in Thesprotia), which cover a chronological spam from the Palaeolithic period to the Roman era. As part of her internship in the Ephorate of Speleology in Athens, she has studied part of the pottery and lithic technology recovered from the Theopetra cave, the Koutroulou Magoula, and the Kalamakia cave. She has also worked at the Conservatory Laboratory of UoA and in the Archaeological Museum of Chios for the Ephorate of Antiquities of Chios.

While gaining experience in the various fields of archaeological research, she developed an interest in the cultural interactions and the socioeconomic processes between the Aegean populations and non-European societies. At ISAW, she intends to focus on phenomena that reflect the entanglement of different cultures and that are traceable through the archaeological and textual evidence; her aim is to evaluate the imprint of those phenomena in the cognitive and other aspects of ancient societies. She is particularly interested in the so-called “Orientalization” on Crete, especially towards the transition in the late seventh century BCE and the manifestation of the relations with the Near East, Anatolia and North Africa during and after the emergence of the Archaic polis.