Dr. Winfred van de Put, Director, will present the Activities of the Netherlands Institute in 2017.
Dr. Gert Jan van Wijngaarden, University of Amsterdam will address the topic “Landscape archaeology on Zakynthos: where is the polis?”
Reception will follow
Abstract
From 2005-2015, the Zakynthos Archaeology Project was carried out as one of the field work projects of the Netherlands Institute at Athens. Archaeological fieldwork at Zakynthos has finished and the results are now being studied and prepared for final publication.
Zakynthos has long been a kind of archaeological terra incognita: there are very few
monumental archaeological remains and research on the island has been very limited. The
scarcity of archaeology on the island is to a large extent due to the dynamics of the
landscape: earthquakes and tectonics have destroyed most existing remains. The research
conducted in the framework of the Zakynthos Archaeology Project has changed this picture drastically. A rich archaeological landscape, albeit very fragmented, is now becoming visible.
In this lecture, Dr. van Wijngaarden will give an overview of the results of the Zakynthos
Archaeology Project. Next, he will zoom in on the Early Iron Age and the Archaic period, to see how the archaeological remains compare to the mythical and literary texts about the
early history of the island.
Dr. G.J. van Wijngaarden (1964) is Associate Professor in Mediterranean Archaeology at
the University of Amsterdam. Before taking up this post, he was director of the Netherlands Institute at Athens from 2001-2007. He graduated in 1999 on a dissertation concerning Mycenaean pottery in the Levant Cyprus and Italy.