Dr Yannis Galanakis

• Aegean art and archaeology.
• Mortuary archaeology.
• Archaeological legislation.
• 19th-century trade in antiquities.
• Archival archaeology.

I am an archaeologist focusing on the Bronze Age Aegean with a particular interest in examining the role of burials and mortuary rituals in Minoan and Mycenaean societies through fieldwork and the study of past excavations. My work focuses on examining how and why the social dimensions of human life shape archaeological remains in funerary contexts and for this reason I am keen in integrating systematically skeletal and faunal remains with objects and geoarchaeological data to better understand site formation processes and how tombs were constructed, used and reused. A few years ago, I co-directed the excavation of a monumental Mycenaean chamber tomb at Prosilio near Orchomenos in central Greece, a collaborative project between the British School at Athens and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Boeotia/Hellenic Ministry of Culture & Sports. I am also responsible for the publication of a number of Late Bronze Age tombs from earlier excavations in Thessaly, Messenia and Crete.

The guiding thread of my work is a contextualized Aegean archaeology that transcends traditional categories and recognizes that the study and interpretation of the past are inseparable from the discipline’s history. For this reason, I regularly integrate archaeological and archival/historical data in my publications in order both to question and to understand better how knowledge is produced. While working as Curator for the Aegean collections and the Sir Arthur Evans Archive at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (2007-2012), I became interested in understanding the factors – aesthetic, economic and political – that shaped the collections that museums house today. I am currently working on various aspects of the antiquities trade from ca, 1850 to 1900, as a social, political and economic phenomenon.  

In celebration of the centenary from the start of the work of the British School at Athens (BSA) at Mycenae, led by Alan Wace, we have recently digitized the records relating to the excavations from 1920 to 1957 in collaboration with the University Library in Cambridge and the BSA (Mycenae Archive).

I supervise research students in all areas of Aegean art & archaeology and in the history of archaeology, particularly the 19th century, with a special interest in archaeological legislation, the antiquities trade and archives. I am always keen to expand my research and learn from the work of others. If you are interested in undertaking postgraduate research, please feel free to contact me to discuss your ideas.