Sharon Stocker and Jack Davis knew they were onto something special when 10 days into their University of Cincinnati excavations at Pylos, Greece, they found a thick layer of bronze.

The UC Classics researchers in 2015 uncovered the tomb of a Mycenaean leader they called the Griffin Warrior after the mythological creature emblazoned on a plaque in his grave. The tomb contained armor, weapons, jewelry and other artifacts dating back 3,500 years. Three years later, they found two additional tombs likewise containing Griffin Warrior artifacts that are helping researchers better understand ancient Greece and its people, politics, economies and society.

Now many of those Pylos, Greece artifacts are for the first time going on public display in North America as the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles this week unveils “The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior Princes of Ancient Greece.”

For Davis and Stocker, the exhibition represents the culmination of decades of scholarship and discovery. The UC researchers are responsible for some of archaeology’s most astonishing revelations of the past 50 years. Their work has made international news, gracing the covers of Smithsonian and Archaeology magazines and prestigious history programs on the BBC and Smithsonian channel.

“It’s very exciting. It’s wonderful it’s finally happening,” said Stocker, a senior research associate in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences. “So much work has gone into it.”

They will give a public lecture at the Getty discussing what they and their international collaborators have learned about this ancient civilization.

“I’m thrilled that the Getty museum is featuring artifacts found by the renowned faculty from UC’s Department of Classics,” UC President Neville Pinto said. “Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker’s contributions to Greek archaeology are truly astounding. Their discovery of the Pylos Griffin Warrior — and the groundbreaking scholarship that followed — has illuminated the grandeur and sophistication of an ancient civilization.”

Parallel beginnings

Both researchers were inspired to study archaeology in college. Stocker’s career began with a term abroad in Greece while attending Denison University.

“I was always interested in history. I took a course on ancient Greece and fell in love with it,” she said.

She visited ancient ruins and temples at Delphi, a world heritage site renowned as a sanctuary for the Greek god Apollo.

“It’s a mystical site. Something grabbed hold of me. You’re up in the mountains. On the day we visited, we were above this sea of clouds. It was something very powerful — a sacred place,” she said. “I never looked back.”

Likewise, Davis studied Latin in high school and enrolled in the Department of Classics at the University of Akron.

“I got instruction in archaeology, ancient history and languages,” he said. “But also Near Eastern archaeology and history.”

The couple first worked together in the 1980s when they traveled to Greece to conduct fieldwork in Nemea. At the time she was enrolled in UC’s graduate program, where she earned both master’s and doctoral degrees after completing postgraduate work at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

UC Classics has a robust tradition of combining the study of languages and history with archaeological fieldwork. The department offers students unrivaled opportunities to contribute to original research and scholarship.

Similarly, Davis visited Greece and Turkey for the first time while he was an undergraduate student. While at Akron he traveled to Israel where he explored Jerusalem and its many ancient historical sites along with archaeological sites in the West Bank.

But in the 1990s their focus turned to Pylos, the Greek city that had captivated another UC Classics professor generations earlier.

UC’s ties to ancient Greece

UC Classics Professor Carl Blegen had already made a name for himself in archaeology after discovering the ancient city of Troy while conducting excavations in Turkey in the 1930s.

In 1939, while working with Greek archaeologist Konstantinos Kourouniotis, they discovered an ancient palace from 1200 B.C.E. The elaborate complex featured a throne room, bathroom and servant quarters representing the best-preserved Mycenaean palace ever found.

Blegen named it after King Nestor, the mythical figure mentioned in Homer’s epic poems.

Excavations would have to wait until the conclusion of World War II and the Greek Civil War. But Blegen returned to Pylos in the 1950s and discovered more than 1,100 tablets in the language Linear B, which predates the Greek alphabet by about 500 years.

The palace was decorated with images of animals and mythological creatures, including the part-lion, part-eagle griffin. Blegen, like Davis, was honored with the Archaeological Institute of America’s gold medal, its highest honor. UC named its Classics library after him. He died in 1971.

Another UC Classics graduate, Emmett Bennett Jr., who helped decode Japanese messages during the war, was instrumental in deciphering Linear B. Last year, UC Classics accepted an archive of Bennett’s records and correspondence telling the story of that monumental collaborative effort.

Serendipitous discovery

In 2015, Davis and Stocker co-directed excavations in an abandoned olive grove in the vicinity of the palace. It was an alternate site they had chosen after they could not get permission for another location. But it was just a matter of days before they would realize how providential their choice would be.

“Suddenly, there was a thick layer of bronze and we knew we had something special at that point,” Davis told Smithsonian.

The tomb of the Griffin Warrior would reveal the deep connections between the Mycenaean and Minoan cultures.

Two years later while excavating a nearby site, they discovered princely tombs with more Greek Bronze Age artifacts offering a glimpse into the lives of the Mycenaean people. The two UC researchers spent the past 10 years recovering, documenting and conserving thousands of artifacts.

“The result was more than we could have imagined — discoveries that would rewrite the story of Mycenaean civilization,” Davis said.

In 2022, Davis and Stocker published a book titled “A Greek State in Formation“ examining Mycenaean civilization through the prism of their discoveries and scholarship. This year they will publish the exhibition companion book,  “The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Mycenaean Greece,” showcasing the exquisite craftsmanship and artistry behind the artifacts they discovered and their historical context.

‘Bronze Age masterpiece’

The Getty exhibition features 230 works of art and artifacts from Messenia. These include Linear B tablets, a sword hilt, pendants featuring images of the Egyptian goddess Hathor and objects depicting mythological creatures.

Arguably the exhibition’s most anticipated artwork is the combat agate, a one-inch sealstone that Archaeology magazine calls “a Bronze Age masterpiece.” It depicts mortal combat between two warriors, one wielding a spear and the other a sword while a fallen warrior lies dying on the ground at their feet.

Because the sword depicted in the sealstone closely resembles the sword hilt found in his grave, an episode of the Smithsonian television series “Secrets” argues that the hero depicted is the Griffin Warrior himself.

“There were clear parallels between the warrior in the image and the remains of the Griffin Warrior,” the show argued.

A subsequent analysis of ancient DNA confirmed the suspicions of Davis and Stocker that the Griffin Warrior was from the area he would come to rule.

“What’s exciting about the Griffin Warrior is he united several disparate functions in his personality,” Davis said. “He was a religious leader, a political leader and a military leader. And that expression of those separate identities is found in the choices of the objects that were buried with him.”

Davis said he and other researchers have learned quite a bit about the Mycenaean civilization.

“It was pretty resilient. We’re not even sure if all the people who were part of Mycenae spoke Greek. There was a long period of expansion and absorption of people into the kingdoms in its formative stages,” he said.

A period of droughts around 1180 B.C.E. contributed to their decline, Stocker said.

“Crops were starting to fail. People couldn’t afford to eat. There was a chain reaction and a lot of unrest,” she said. “It was more or less a perfect storm of conditions that conspired to collapse the Mycenaeans.”

Future of UC Classics

Now UC’s Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology, Davis was the longtime department head in Classics at UC. The department offers students amazing opportunities to pursue their interests in research and scholarship.

“Many Classics departments have little or no archaeology or little or no ancient history. They tend to be more like English departments focused on ancient languages,” Davis said.

Davis said there is more collaboration than ever across campus, with Classics faculty pooling their talents with experts in the research university’s other colleges on a myriad of fascinating projects.

“It’s really the variety of experiences in our department that we all respect that allows us to produce students who are very hirable,” he said. “All of our recent doctoral graduates have found jobs. And we’re very happy about that. I think that’s always been the success of the Cincinnati program.”

Since their discoveries, Davis and Stocker have received widespread acclaim. Archaeology magazine heralded the UC Classics’ project as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in Greece in the past 50 years. The president of Greece awarded each the Commander of the Order of the Phoenix medal.

In November, the couple will give a presentation on their work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. As the couple reflect on the many years of hard work and collaboration that led to the exhibition, they feel extremely fortunate.

“I’m doing something I love. I’m outside a lot. I work with beautiful objects,” Stocker said. “Our project is extremely interdisciplinary, so I work with geologists and conservators and people in materials science. It’s been a rewarding career choice for me.

“It’s been quite an adventure!” she said.

“And it’s not over yet,” Davis added.