Faculty of Classics - University of Cambridge

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Dr Yannis Galanakis

Dr Yannis Galanakis is a University Lecturer in Greek Prehistory and Fellow at Sidney Sussex College.

Contact

Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DA


Email: ig298@cam.ac.uk

Research interests

The archaeology and art of Bronze and Early Iron Age Aegean.

Mortuary archaeology.

Museum studies, ethics, and archaeological practice.

Collecting and displaying the past and object biographies.

19th-century antiquities trafficking and archaeological legislation.

Integration of material, textual, historical and scientific-based research.

Current Projects

I am currently directing the publication of a number of Late Bronze Age tombs from Thessaly (Dranista), Messenia (Dara) and Crete (Maleme, Stylos, Knossos: Sellopoulo). I am also working on two monographs: the first is based on my doctoral research and is provisionally entitled Power of Death. Funerary Architecture and Practice in the Aegean, 1700-1000 BC. The second stems from my work at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where I was the Curator for the Aegean Collections and the Sir Arthur Evans Archive, and a Fellowship at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University. It focuses on Tomb Robbers, Art Dealers and the Trafficking of Antiquities: Greek Archaeology under the First Archaeological Law, 1834-1899. With the Herakleion Museum, Crete, I am involved in the final publication of the ‘Palm Fresco’ from the Throne Room at the Palace at Knossos and with Professor V. Aravantinos and Dr Y. Fappas on the publication of a recently discovered Mycenaean building at Thebes in central Greece.

Publications

1. Edited Books

2013 The Aegean World. A Companion Guide to the Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean Collections in the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, Oxford and Athens: Ashmolean Museum and Kapon Editions (to be published February 2013).

2011 [with A. Kottaridi and S. Walker] Heracles to Alexander the Great. Treasures from the Royal Capital of Macedon, Oxford: Ashmolean Museum.

2009 [with G. Deligiannakis] The Aegean and its Cultures. Proceedings of the First Oxford–Athens Graduate Workshop Organized in Oxford, 22-23 April 2005, BAR-IS 1975, Oxford: Archaeopress.

2007 [with I. Galanaki, H. Tomas and R. Laffineur] Between the Aegean and Baltic Seas: Prehistory across Borders (Aegaeum 27), Liège and Texas at Austin: Université de Liège.

2. In Press

‘Early prehistoric research on Amorgos and the beginnings of Cycladic archaeology’, American Journal of Archaeology 117:2.

‘From body to no-body? Fire ‘rituals’, fragmentation and the body in the Late Bronze Age Aegean’, in Mina, M., Triantaphyllou, S. and Papadatos, Y. (eds.), Embodied Identities in the Prehistoric Eastern Mediterranean: Convergence of Theory and Practice, Oxford: Oxbow.

‘Exhibiting the Minoan Past: Oxford to Knossos’, in Panagiotopoulos, D. (ed.), Minoan Archaeology. Challenges and Perspectives for the 21^st Century, Heidelberg.

[with D. Hicks] ‘Chapter 15. The Aegean and Cyprus’, in Hicks, D. and Stevenson, A. (eds.), World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum: A Characterization, Oxford.

[with Z. Kamash, L. Shipley and S. Skaltsa] ‘Chapter 16. Iron Age and Roman Italy’, in Hicks, D. and Stevenson, A. (eds.), World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum: A Characterization, Oxford.

3. Articles

2013 [with M. Nowak-Kemp] ‘Ancient Greek skulls in the Oxford University Museum, Part II: the Rhousopoulos-Rolleston correspondence’, Journal of the History of Collections: http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/01/10/jhc.fhq040 (to be published in vol. 25:1).

2013  [with M. Stamatopoulou] ‘A preliminary report on the archival material from the excavations of the tholos tomb at Ano Dranista (Ano Ktimeni) in Thessaly by A.S. Arvanitopoulos (1911)’, in Mazarakis-Ainian, A. (ed.), Proceedings of the 3^rd International Conference ‘The Archaeological Work in Thessaly and Central Greece, 2007-2009’, Volos, 229-244.

2013 21 entries by invitation in Wiley-Blackwell’s Encyclopaedia of Ancient History  edited by Bagnall, R.S., Brodersen, K., Champion, C.B., Erskine, A. and Huebner, S.R.: ‘Berbati’ (pp. 1088-1089), ‘Dendra’ (pp. 2034-2035), Dhimini (p. 2062), Gla (p. 2923), Iolkos (p. 3485), Korakou (pp. 3810-3811), Lerna (p. 4022), Menelaion (p. 4437), Midea (pp. 4494-4495), Mycenae (pp. 4647-4650), Mycenaean archaeology (pp. 4650-4653), Mycenaean society and culture (pp. 4653-4658), Nichoria (pp. 4779-4780), Perati (pp. 5146-5147), Phylakopi (p. 5310), Prosymna (p. 5592), Sesklo (p. 6174), Thebes [with I. Fappas] (pp. 6648-6651), Tsoungiza (p. 6882), Vapheio (pp. 6947-6948), Zygouries (p. 7188).

2012  [with S. Skaltsa] ‘Tomb robbers, art dealers and a dikast’s pinakion from an Athenian grave’, Hesperia 81:4, 619-653 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2972/hesperia.81.4.0619).

2012 ‘“University Professor–Antiquities Looter”: A 19^th-century Athens art dealer and the trafficking of antiquities in Greece under the first archaeological law. Part II’, The Anglo-Hellenic Review no. 46 (Autumn), 3-5.

2012 ‘“University Professor–Antiquities Looter”: A 19^th-century Athens art dealer and the trafficking of antiquities in Greece under the first archaeological law. Part I’, The Anglo-Hellenic Review no. 45 (Spring), 7-10.

2012 [with M. Nowak-Kemp] ‘Ancient Greek skulls in the Oxford University Museum, Part I: George Rolleston, Oxford, and the formation of the human skulls collection’, Journal of the History of Collections 24:1, 89–104.

2012 ‘Digitizing the Ashmolean’s Linear B tablets from Knossos’, The Ashmolean 64 (Summer), 9-11 (http://sirarthurevans.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/collection/linearb/).

2011 ‘An unpublished stirrup jar from Athens and the 1871-1872 private excavations in the outer Kerameikos’, Annual of the British School at Athens 106, 167–200.

2011 ‘Mnemonic landscapes and monuments of the past: tumuli, tholos tombs and landscape associations’, in Borgna, E. and Müller-Celka, S. (eds.), Ancestral Landscapes: Burial mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages (Central and Eastern Europe – Balkans – Adriatic – Aegean, 4^th-2^ndmillennium BC), Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée TMO vol. 58, Lyon, 219–229.

2011 ‘Late Bronze Age tholos tombs in West Crete: some architectural observations’, in Andreadaki-Vlasaki, M. (ed.), Proceedings of the 10^th International Conference of Cretan Studies, Section A2, Chania, 591–607.

2011 18 entries by invitation for the exhibition catalogue: Siebenmorgen, H. (ed.), Kykladen.Lebenswelten einer frühgriechischen Kultur, 3 December 2011 to 22 April  2012, Badischen Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, p. 259 (entry no. 37), pp. 272-275 (entries nos. 66a-k), p. 306 (entry no. 106), pp. 319-320 (entries nos. 118-120).

2010 ‘The Knossos Throne Room: shedding new light on an old problem’, The Ashmolean 59, 9-10.

2009 ‘What’s in a word? The manifold character of the term koiné and its uses in Aegean prehistory’, in Galanakis, Y. and Deligiannakis, G. (eds.), Aegean Cultures. Proceedings of the First Oxford-Athens Graduate Workshop, Oxford, 5–11.

2008 ‘Doing Business: two unpublished letters from Athanasios Rhousopoulos to Arthur Evans in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford’, in Kurtz, D. with Meyer, C., Saunders, D. Tsingarida, A. and Harris, N. (eds.), Essays in Classical Archaeology for Eleni Hatzivassiliou 1977-2007, The Beazley Archives Series vol. 4, Oxford, 297–309.

2007 ‘The construction of the Aegisthus tholos tomb at Mycenae and the “Helladic Heresy”’, Annual of the British School at Athens 102, 239–256.

2005 [with J. Bennet] ‘Parallels and Contrasts: early Mycenaean mortuary traditions in Messenia and Lakonia’, in Dakouri-Hild, A. and Sherratt, S. (eds.), Autochthon. Papers presented to O.T.P.K. Dickinson on the occasion of his retirement, Oxford, 144–155.

3. Online publications

2012 ‘The Sir Arthur Evans Archive’, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford: http://sirarthurevans.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/

2012 ‘On Her Majesty’s Service: C. L. W. Merlin and the Sourcing of Greek Antiquities for the British Museum’, E-Journal, Center for Hellenic Studies (Fall 2012 Research Colloquium): http://argos.chs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/eJournal.woa/wa/dist?dis=170

2012 ‘“Insignificant”, “superfluous”, and “useless”: legal antiquities for export?’, Center for Hellenic Studies Research Bulletin: http://wp.chs.harvard.edu/chs-fellows/2012/12/31/insignificant-superfluous-and-useles s-legal-antiquities-for-export/

2012 ‘To Serve and to Source: a consul at the service of the British Museum’, Center for Hellenic Studies Research Bulletin: http://wp.chs.harvard.edu/chs-fellows/2012/11/29/to-serve-and-to-source-a-trading-con sul-at-the-service-of-the-british-museum/

2012 ‘Of grave hunters and earth contractors: a look at the private archaeology of Greece’, Center for Hellenic Studies Research Bulletin: http://wp.chs.harvard.edu/chs-fellows/2012/11/15/of-grave-hunters-earth-contractors-a -look-at-the-private-archaeology-of-greece/

2012 ‘University Professor – Antiquities Looter ?’, Center for Hellenic Studies Research Bulletin: http://wp.chs.harvard.edu/chs-fellows/2012/10/31/university-professor-antiquities-loo ter/

2012 ‘Guns, Drugs, and the trafficking of antiquities: archaeology in 19^th-century Greece’, Center for Hellenic Studies Research Bulletin: http://wp.chs.harvard.edu/chs-fellows/2012/10/17/guns-drugs-and-the-trafficking-of-an tiquities-archaeology-in-19th-century-greece/

2012 ‘Sir Arthur Evans, the Ashmolean, and the display of Minoan Crete’, British Museum’s Knossos Day, London, 12 November 2011: www.bsa.ac.uk/pages/media_drill.php?cat_id=95&media_id=IT2012_11.mp4

2011 ‘Re-thinking Marathon: Two ‘Memorabilia’ from the Battle of Marathon at the Pitt-Rivers’, in Petch, A. (ed.), Rethinking Pitt-Rivers. Analyzing the activities of a nineteenth century collector, Oxford: web.prm.ox.ac.uk/rpr/index.php/object-biography-index/1-prmcollection/648-marathon-spea rheads

2010 ‘The new Aegean World Gallery in the redeveloped Ashmolean Museum’: www.aegeussociety.org/gr/index.php/excavations-and-research/galanakis-the-new-aegean -world-gallery-/

Previous positions held

2012–2013 Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University.

2007–2012 Curator for the Aegean Collections and the Sir Arthur Evans Archive, Ashmolean Museum.

2007–2010 Sackler Junior Research Fellow in Archaeology, Worcester College, University of Oxford.