Katie Demakopoulou, a leading scholar of Mycenaean studies, passed away on March 9th. Born in 1937, she was a former member of the Greek Archaeological Service, Director Emerita of the National Archaeological Museum, and Director of the Greek-Swedish excavations at the Mycenaean acropolis of Midea.

Katie Demakopoulou studied archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where she also wrote her Ph.D. thesis. She was a student of V.R. d’A. Desborough and Hector Catling (University of Oxford). As a distinguished member of the Greek Archaeological Service, she served with great success in the Ephorates of Antiquities of Laconia, Arcadia, Boeotia, and Argolis & Corinthia, and she excavated and published many important sites, particularly at Kokla and Midea. She was a prolific scholar with a continuous flow of important publications including books, archaeological guides, exhibition volumes, book chapters, and journal articles. As Curator of the Prehistoric Collection and subsequently as Director of the Athens National Museum, she organized a series of major exhibitions in Greece and abroad, and she undertook the reorganization and re-exhibition of the Prehistoric Collection of the Museum. From 1983 to 2009 she was the director of the Greek-Swedish excavations at the Mycenaean acropolis of Midea.

Katie Demakopoulou has strong links with Laconia as a member of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Laconia & Arcadia (f. E’EPCA), where she also led pioneering research on the region’s Bronze Age, not least with her ground-breaking Ph.D. dissertation ‘The Mycenaean Sanctuary at the Amyklaion and the LH IIIC period in Laconia’ (1982), and her important publications on Epidavros Limira, Asopos, the early Amyklaion and the post palatial period in Laconia. Katie was closely associated with the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies, where she had given a lecture on the Mycenaean citadel at Midea on 13 March 2008.