Description

This innovative, extensively illustrated study examines how classical antiquities and archaeology contributed significantly to the production of the modern Greek nation and its national imagination. It also shows how, in return, national imagination has created and shaped classical antiquities and archaeological practice from the nineteenth century to the present. Yannis Hamilakis covers a diverse range of topics, including the role of antiquities in the foundation of the Greek state in the nineteenth century, the Elgin marbles controversy, the role of archaeology under dictatorial regimes, the use of antiquities in the detention camps of the Greek civil war, and the discovery of the so-called tomb of Philip of Macedonia.

Features

• The first investigation of the production and use in Greece of the material, as opposed to the simply literary, classical past
• Explores a number of currently contested issues on the nature of national imagination, and the properties, agency, and power of materiality

Reviews

"[A] highly readable and important book."--Saro Wallace, The Classical Review

"Hamilakis gives a fascinating and sympathetic...account of Greek attitudes."--John Boardman, Common Knowledge

Product Details

360 pages; 51 in-text illus.; 5 1/2 X 8 1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-923038-9ISBN10: 0-19-923038-2

About the Author(s)