The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

Tourists and Photos in Hesperia

Last week, I pulled down a box full of slides that I had taken between 1997 and 2003. I was looking for photographs of Lakka Skoutara in 2001 and 2002 (and found them, for all you who doubt my filing system), but I also found my pictures of my first trip to Greece and my two years as an associate member at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. I looked through box after box of them with a combination of nostalgia and amazement as I realized the completely clinical character of my pictures. My photos focused almost totally on ancient and Byzantine monuments with almost no shots of my friends, traveling companions, or the physical surroundings. As I thought about this more, I remembered how expensive slide film and processing was (particularly for a graduate student) and how important I thought it was to produce a teaching collection of images (in the days before Google Image), and this helped me relax a bit.

It was pleasant surprise to see an article in the most recent volume of Hesperia that looked at the 19th century equivalent of my touristic perambulations and their photographic record. D. Harlan's "Travels, Pictures, and a Victorian Gentleman in Greece" continues Hesperia's recent interest in articles on early travelers and tourists to the Mediterranean and the role that they played in shaping our archaeological expectations and perceptions of Modern Greece. Harlan's article focused on the slides of T.R.R. Stebbing who traveled to Greece and Turkey at the end of the 19th century. He took a series of glass-plate lantern-slides of famous monuments and well-known scenes, like the harbor at Smyrna. These slides came eventually to reside in the archives of the Institute of Archaeology of Oxford and some of them may have contributed to a published series of educational slides distributed by Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. These slides, then, provide insights into not only the itinerary and values of a late 19th century tourist in the Eastern Mediterranean, but also the development of well-known educational collections that circulated on lantern slides widely in the the UK and the US.

The University of North Dakota has a small collection of these slides distributed by The Keystone View Company -- one of the standard American firms distributing such lantern slides. Orin G. Libby, the long-time chair of the Department of History lobbied continuously for new and updated Lantern slide projectors. At the same time, Webster Merrifield the president of the University of North Dakota and, more or less, a contemporary of Stebbing traveled regularly to Europe and the Mediterranean. While there is no record of him taking slides photographs, Merrifield's Classical training would have made it a likely possibility. After all, we know that he returned with a small number of objects purchased from across the Eastern Mediterranean and destined for a small (and now mostly lost) collection of University antiquities.

As Harlan argues, these slides served to link the tourist itineraries of the early guide books, like Murray's, Cook's, and Baedeker's, to classroom instruction in the US. There is a direct parallel between these early tourist itineraries and the modern day itinerary of the American School of Classical Studies which, in turn, continues to reproduce and reinforce a standardized view of Greece as captured by the camera's eye. (Check out this collection of images and compare them, broadly speaking, to the Stebbing's pictures) The persistence of such structured engagements with both Ancient and Modern Greece is nothing short of remarkable. The distribution of such "tourist" photos (that is photos linked directly to a tourists itinerary) serve to condition particular engagements with the Greek landscape that, in turn, shape the itineraries of future tourists. One goes to Greece, according to this kind of structured engagement, less to see the country, per se, and more to reproduce images, vistas, and scenes burned into your memory through the wide distribution and use of images. This likely accounts for the slow rate of change in tourist itineraries (and the itinerary of the American School and other study tours to Greece) and the persistent (if slowly dissipating) view of Greece as a place of history rather than a dynamic society with its own character, problems, and potentials.

More on this exciting fascicule of Hesperia later in the week!

Modern Greek Studies Association in Vancouver

I attended the Modern Greek Studies Association conference in Vancouver, B.C. over the last few days. It was a great show. Our panel on the archaeology of modern Greece was sparsely attended, but the discussion was vigorous and the feedback good. It was great to reconnect with Effie Athanassopoulos, Amelia Brown, and Kostis Kourelis. It was also fun to meet Matthew Milliner, blogger at millinerd.com. and northamericanchurches which I have now happily added to my delicious blogroll and will link to regularly. (His Wordless Wednesday feature is the kind of alliterative brilliance that I can truly appreciate).

Here's a link to our paper. My understanding is that Kostis Kourelis has recorded the session and I hope to make these links to our papers as MP3s available soon. As a preview, the papers captured the variety of methods employed to come to grips with modern Greece with an archaeologist's tools. These methods ranged from diligent work in paper archives to field work rooted in the best practices of processualism to post-processual practices that sought to reconcile the varieties of relationships and experiences recoverable within the modern landscape. What was perhaps striking is that none of our methods were particular to the Greek national experience. This is perhaps good in that it avoids reifying age old arguments for Greek exceptionalism (rooted in the archaeological practices derived in large part from the study of ancient Greece), but it was a bit disappointing as well in that the unique history of Greek archaeology and its institutions must contribute more than just a particularly well-curated body of knowledge, but also distinctive ways of understanding the landscape, the place, and the people.   

Vancouver was a great city. The trip to the University of British Columbia's Museum of Anthropology was a particular highlight. Much like our panel and the project of archaeology more generally, this dramatic building sought to wrap the material culture of the first nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest in a modern setting. The interplay between the elaborately carved, yet functional house posts and totem polls and the austere economy of the poured concrete building made obvious the act of translation performed at the museum. The artifacts of the various local tribes found themselves recontextualized within the museum of the colonizer. The relationship between the vertical lines of the museum and the dimensions and functions of the architectural fragments and objects housed within it proved that some cross-cultural understanding is possible, and while it would be neither precise nor value free, it could at least be dramatic and emotionally evocative.

  

The scenery around Vancouver was simply ridiculous. The rain, the coastline, the diversity of the city's neighborhoods, and the company made the entire experience memorable (and how often can we say that about an academic conference?).

Friday Varia and Quick Hits

Some quick hits on a sunny and cold Friday morning:

• The famous smiley water tower in Grand Forks met its end this week. The local water tower painted with a smile and wink in 1977 was dismantled despite the controversy surrounding its importance to the local community.
• I've begun to experiment with Omeka and hope to have some kind of exhibit of material from the Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Project available by early next year.
• I've also started blogging with ecto. So far, so good.
• Finally, Ryan Stander and I received an invitation from Kickstarter and hope to have something up and ready to go by the end of the month.
• If you haven't read Teaching Thursday, you should.
• Via, Objects-Buildings-Situations, the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens has opened its reinstalled Post-Byzantine collection.
• It's fantastic to see the new home of the Digital and New Media Working Group coming together. Photos soon.

More soon, but in the meantime, have a good weekend!

More on the Post-Classical Parthenon

If you want more traffic to your archaeology blog, just post with the words Acropolis, Parthenon, or Athens in the title!  I posted a couple of weeks ago on what I termed the "destructive power" of the Athenian Acropolis and declared it to be one of the most unapologetically modern of all ancient monuments.

This past week, while frantically preparing for classes, I used my down time to read A. Kaldellis new little book on the Christian Parthenon.  As per my usual practice, I am not going to review this book.  And in the interest of full disclosure, he allowed me to read an early draft of his manuscript.  The book is an exciting one.  Kaldellis combs the difficult and dispersed Byzantine sources for the Parthenon and argues (among other things) that the Parthenon was more important as a church than it ever was as an ancient temple.  Dedicated to the Mother of God, the temple was the Cathedral of Athens, an important pilgrimage site, and the location of a persistent miracle involving some kind of mysterious light.

I'll make three short observations about this book and how his thinking about Byzantine views of antiquity is so enriching:

1. He is subtle in his argument, but he suggests that some of the Parthenon's modern fame is rooted in its Byzantine renown. While the lines of transmission can not be precisely defined, the long Frankish occupation of Athens and some continuity of practice between the Frankish and Byzantine period would have exposed the Crusaders to the temple's reputation as a church.  The Western suppression of the Byzantine period at the Parthenon, then, not only physically eliminated and historically vilified the Byzantine contributions to the building itself, but overwrote the Byzantine source for the temple's architectural and historical significance.  After all, how could the "Oriental" Byzantine have appreciated the Classical glory of the Parthenon?  This argument adds sting to Kaldellis observations "the Byzantines had done far less damage to the monument than had Elgin and the Venetians" (p. 4). 

2. He problematizes the Byzantine relationship to the past in a far more complex way than previous scholarship.  In doing so, he offers the suggestion that spread and importance of the cult of the Panagia Atheniotissa represented a sublimated knowledge of the city's glorious Classical past as embodied in the Parthenon which could not be expressed within the rhetorical and intellectual structures of Christian Byzantine rhetoric or, perhaps, even Byzantine society more broadly (p. 175).  This Freudian reading of the deep conflict between the pagan Classical past and the Byzantine present explain the emergence of the Parthenon as an important site by representing it as the manifestation of suppressed desire.  In other words, the Parthenon and the Classical past of Greece continued to function in societies unconscious (especially among the Byzantine intellectual elite).  It's a small leap to understand the historical and archaeological character of Greek dream life in the same way (for more on that see here and here).  The suppressed wish for a glorious Classical past (especially during challenging times faced by bishops like Michael Choniates) finds expression through the exaltation of the Byzantine temple.

3. For a while, I was looking serious at Byzantine saints lives from Greece and I was told, perhaps flippantly, by a senior archaeologist that he thought these texts had little value and were, more or less, all the same. While this did not cause me to give up on them entirely, it probably discouraged me from thinking that there would be much potential in attempting to bring together Byzantine hagiography (or Byzantine texts more broadly) and the systematic archaeology of the Byzantine period.  Kaldellis's work is a great model for any efforts in that directions and suggests that the integration of Byzantine texts and monuments is not only possible for Greece, but can be profitable.

Oh, one last thing in this non-review. Kaldellis prose is great.  He manages to combine analytical precision with an casual and readable diction.  A few of my colleagues can pull this off.  I can't.  I'm jealous.

The Destructive Power of the Athenian Acropolis

The Athenian Acropolis preserves an amazing collection monuments.  Perhaps because of the prominence of these monuments, it never fails to attract attention and controversy.  In fact, as much as the Acropolis and its crown jewel the Parthenon has inspired, the idea of the Acropolis has also shown an amazing power to disrupt, destroy, and disorient.  The most recent example of this (via Kostis Kourelis) is the short film directed by Constantin Costa-Gavras designed to be shown at the new Acropolis museum.  Apparently, the church became upset by a scene that showed priests destroying part of the sculpture of the Parthenon frieze.  According to AP:

The animated segment showed figures clad in black climbing up ladders and destroying part of the Parthenon frieze; the scene referred to well-documented episodes of destruction that took place in the early Byzantine period (5th-8th centuries A.D.), when Christians often demolished monuments and temples belonging to the old pagan era. Many parts from those temples were used to build churches. The Parthenon itself suffered some damage but was spared a worse fate by being converted into a church.

"The priests used to destroy ancient temples. Now they want to remove scenes from a film," Costa-Gavras told Greece's Mega TV channel. "This is the kind (of censorship) that used to happen in the former Soviet Union."

This entire episode is fascinating and another testimony to the power of the Acropolis and the Parthenon to destroy.  History first.  The "well-documented episodes of the destruction that took place in the early Byzantine period" is wrong.  There are almost no well-documented incidents of anything during the Early Byzantine period.  In fact, the closing of the Parthenon as a temple and its consecration as a church remain a hotly debated issue with no particular chance of any resolution any time soon.  Alison Frantz in her still seminal and elegant article from 1965 puts it best (A. Frantz, "From Paganism to Christianity in the Temples of Athens," DOP 19 (1965), 185-205):

"The zeal with which the classically-oriented archaeologists of the nineteenth century stripped away from Athenian temples all possible reminders of their post-classical history has rendered unduly complicated the task of dating their conversion. The nature of the required alterations made it impossible to eradicate completely all traces and these, supplemented by descriptions and drawings by the early travelers, have sometimes made it possible to reconstruct the general appearance of both exterior and interior. But the systematic removal, without recording, of wall masonry and, in many cases, even of foundations, destroyed at the same time almost all chronological evidence..." (p. 201)

In fact, the lack of good chronology for the conversion of the temples of Athens to church means that there is no way of knowing who and when the Parthenon marbles were damaged. 

The issue with the film and the marbles and the Parthenon and the Acropolis is not just about some quibbling over the date of its conversion and the changes wrought by its conversion to a Christian church.  (There have been some good, recent work on the Parthenon during the Byzantine Period).  The real issue that I want to focus some attention on here is how amazingly destructive the idea of the Parthenon has become.  The prominent rock that is the Acropolis has long stood as a place where the various rulers of Athens sought to project their identity onto the city and, more recently, the modern nation.  At the same time that the rock with its temples has represented the commanding voice in Athens, it has also worked to negate competing visions of the city and the nation.  The Conta-Gavras film is a typical example of this.  His work, like many intellectuals of modern Europe, has always contained an anti-clerical strain, so it is unsurprising that he would project his left-leaning ideals onto the Parthenon.  At the same time, the Parthenon is a place where identity is tightly controlled by the Greek state which, particularly when governed by a center-right party, closely tied (if not properly inseparable) from the Greek Church. 

From the 19th century on, efforts have been made to purify the history of the Parthenon through the systematic destruction of its post-Classical phases (see the work of Y. Hamilakis); more recently, the construction of the new Acropolis museum in one of the most archaeological sensitive areas of Athens has caused its own kind of destruction without mentioning the high-profile controversy surrounding the need to destroy a nearby art-deco style building to ensure the museum's view of the "sacred rock".  It is a testimony to the power of the Acropolis that the recent episodes have captured the modernist roots of archaeology and broadcast them so globally.  A the Parthenon, perhaps more than anywhere else, destroying the past and collapsing it into an permanent present has become the key method for transcending it.

The most recent controversy over images of destruction in the Costa-Gavras film and the subsequent destruction of his artistic vision falls in line with the politics of nation building and identity formation that have swirled around the monument for its entire history.  It's also a nice reminder of how an inspirational monument can empower destruction as well as creation.

The End of One Thing and the Beginning of Something Else...

I leave the comfortable confines of the American School early tomorrow morning for the beginning of my field season in Cyprus.  It was an exciting year to be at the American School for many reasons.  First, I was able to focus heavily on my own research including my work on Cyprus on the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project, on Early Christian epigraphy, architecture, and decoration.  I was able to develop a small (but rapidly growing) project on "dream archaeology" and begin to conceptualize more formally how to approach editing the autobiography of a scholar as accomplished as Elwyn B. Robinson.  I was also able to form many new professional and personal relationships.  I learned more about the Archaic religion in Athens, the Peloponnesian agora, the Great Mother, Greek landscape and survey archaeology, Roman figurines and magical objects from the Athenian Agora, and the official and unofficial history of the American School. 

I also had front-row seats for some of the interesting changes taking place at the School.  The lecture series at Cotsen Hall was more extensive than I could remember or even imagine.  The regular program included a trip to Western Macedonia and lectures on GIS and Survey Archaeology.  There was a new website.  Women wearing uniforms with the words "Cleaning Team" on the back introduced a new policy where all members of the school community will be required to wear uniforms clearly marking their position in the community ("Regular Members Team", "Academic Team", "Management Team", and the very important "Board of Trustees Team").  This will certainly cut down on those awkward moments when you accidentally assume that a member of the Board of Trustees is the person responsible for cleaning your office!

The Blegen, Gennadius, and neighboring British School Libraries continue to amaze me.  If you think that you need a book that is not in one of these three excellent libraries, it is probably the first sign of a much deeper problem with your own research model.  I might be kidding, but it is hard to say.

I also was supported by a good group of colleagues in the new director, Jack Davis, who generously gave me time off to pursue my own research, in the Mellon Professor, John Oakley, who welcomed my onto his flawlessly organized trips and encouraged my regular contributions, and the two Whitehead Professors, Kirk Ormand and Barbara Barletta.  Chuck Jones at the Blegen consistently impressed me with just how much he understands about the digital media and Maria Georgopoulou at the Gennadius gave me a venue to pursue and present my research.  The staff at Loring Hall made the American School a welcoming place to call home and patiently saw to the slow improvement of my Greek.

The other people that I need to thank here are all those back at the University of North Dakota who allowed me to take advantage of this year away.  My colleagues in the Department of History kept me in the loop on things.  More importantly, however, my wife made my stay here possible with her patient support.

I leave for Cyprus tomorrow and the beginning of the PKAP season.  This will bring some exciting changes to this blog! So stay tuned even as I end one thing and begin something else...

Christian Spolia in Medieval Greece

The study of spolia in a Medieval context is certainly not new and it has received particular intensive attention in the last few years.  Most scholars, however, have focused on the use of Ancient spolia in a Medieval context and focused on monuments like the 9th-century Panayia at Skripou (see in particular A. Papalexandrou, The church of the Virgin of Skripou : architecture, sculpture and inscriptions in ninth-century Byzantium (Ph.D. Thesis, Princeton University, 1998)) or, here in Athens, the Little Metropolis.  One almost wonders whether this emphasis on the use of Classical stones represents a lingering apologia for Medieval period monuments -- an effort to prove that even the Byzantines recognized the importance of Classical Antiquity or reinforces the timeless aesthetic of Classical monuments or an abiding sense of continuity with the Classical past.

We know, however, that by far the largest class of spolia reused in Byzantine monuments did not date from antiquity, but rather the Early Christian period.  Columns, column capitals, marble chancel barriers, inscriptions, even mosaic decoration complemented obvious efforts to mark the place of earlier buildings in the landscape. 

Two relatively recent works highlight the significance of studying this Christian spolia in a Medieval context. L. Nixon's Making a Landscape Sacred: Outlying Churches and Icon Stands in Sphakia, Southwestern Crete. (Oxford 2006) (for more on this book see my: Sacred Landscapes in Crete and the Corinthia) focuses some attention on the reuse of Early Christian spolia in Venetian era buildings in Crete.  She argues:

"I suggest that what we have in Venetian Sphakia is the expression of a particular chronology of desire, made material and visible through the incorporation of earlier Christian elements, especially in the case of he churches built over basilicas, but also in the churches which include palaeo-Christian spolia. The desired chronology is one that links local Orthodox Christianity with an earlier authentic and original Christian presence, ruined but not destroyed (according to local tradition) by the Arabs. The placement of new churches over basilica sanctuaries shows a precise awareness of the older structures, and a desire to bind two points in time into one authoritative chronology." (p. 72)

Oddly, she over looks the work of John Xenos (for more on him see: To Crete with John Xenos) who many centuries earlier on Crete showed a similar sensitivity to reconfirming the Christian landscape of the island.  It can perhaps be added to her argument that this was not only building physical continuity with Early Christian remains on the island, but also in practice by re-performing deeds documented in the texts of their Byzantine predecessors. 

Another recent article shines valuable light on this matter as well.  B. Kiilerich, "Making Sense of the Spolia in the Little Metropolis," Arte Medievale 4 (2005), 95-114 not only offers a relatively radical re-dating of this building, but also notes the important role of Christian spolia in a building perhaps better known for its wide array of ancient stones.  The basis for redating the building to the 16th century is an inscription built into the church but recorded by Kyriakos of Ancona among stones said to be near the agora.  Kyriakos was unlikely to record an inscription built into a church without noting the church and its wide array of other spolia suggesting that the building was, in fact, not built until after his visit to Athens in 1436.  Kiilerich argues fairly convincingly for a date in the 1450s after the city had fallen to the Ottomans.

More interesting for a discussion of spolia, however, is her idea that the church sought to integrate both pagan and Christian spolia into a monument as a mark of a distinct Byzantine and Greek identity.  Her final paragraph summarizes this nicely:

"The most prevalent sign on the spoIia is the cross. It is presented more than fifty times on the exterior of the church, and on the northern wall, inscribes itself upon a particular large number of ancient and medieval reliefs. In this context the many crosses - some of which were probably inserted into the ancient images long before the stones were reused in the church - were hardIy due to superstitious minds fearing pagan imagery; rather, they were aimed at the Ottomans as a visual manifestation of religious identity, The Little Metropolis was a monument to Athens and the Orthodox faith in the form of a church that displayed tangible physical evidence of Athens' Byzantine and antique culture. The spolia with the dominant sign of the cross were markers of identity, visual reminders of Christianity, the auctoritas of which was rooted in antiquity." (p. 111)

Both Nixon and Kiilerich demonstrate a willingness to see spolia in a Medieval context as capable of evoking an Early Christian past as much as what scholars would see as an ancient one.  Kiilerich in particular is even willing to see pagan spolia in a Medieval context noting that some of the material used in the Little Metropolis may have had crosses already inscribed in it from previous reuse.  Thus, some ancient spolia might not necessarily function to evoke a Classical past that at times seems to be of more interest to contemporary archaeologists and historian than to Medieval Greeks who reused the stones. 

Big Week at the Gennadius

Quick Saturday blog post just because there is so much activity at the Gennadius Library this week.  If you can't find something here that interests you, you just aren't interested in Greece!

On Monday, May 5, Sinan Kuneralp will lecture on "From Baghdad to Berlin: the itinerary of Yanko Bey Aristarchi, a 19th - century Ottoman diplomat of Greek origin". The lecture will be held at 7:00 pm in Cotsen Hall. The lecture will be in English - a summary in Greek will be available.

On Tuesday, May 6, Professor Cyril Mango will deliver the 27th annual Walton lecture at 7:00pm in Cotsen Hall. The topic of his lecture is "Imagining
Constantinople" (in English).

On Wednesday, May 7, has been scheduled a symposium in honor of Prof. Mango's 80th birthday. Here's the program.

On Thursday, May 8: "Cavafy's Memory. 75 years from his death" events:  Tour of the Cavafy exhibition (Gennadius Library, 7:00 pm)

Book presentation of "C. P. CAVAFY - THE COLLECTED POEMS", a translation by Evangelos Sachperoglou under the aegis of the British School at Athens; followed by recitation of Cavafy's poems in English and Greek by British actress Claire Bloom and Greek actor Kostas Kastanas (Cotsen Hall, 8:00 pm).

Friday Varia and Quick Hits

A rather short and whimsical Friday Varia and Quick hits today:

• Tucked away in a further recess of the World Wide Net Web is John Wortley's A Repertoire of Byzantine "Beneficial Tales".  It's a massive compilation of summaries of the short beneficial tales that we so popular in Late Antique and Byzantine times.  It has various indices, bibliography, and a nice introduction to the genre.  It's all text file so that the summaries can be searched through your browser.
• Scott Moore at Ancient History Ramblings has posted a link to a Reuters story about the severe draught on Cyprus.  Water rationing is never good. 
• I received a flyer the other day about Midwest Medieval History Conference which will be held at Dennison University on October 3 and 4.  Of particular note: "Graduate students are encouraged to submit proposals, and those presenting will receive a $100 honorarium."  What a nice encouragement for graduate student participation!  If you need more encouragement, Dennison will be absolutely lovely that time of year.  Watching a Division III football game at Deeds Field-Piper Stadium is one of life simple pleasures.  In October the lowset stadium would just begin to be surrounded by fall colors.  Unfortunately the Big Red is away that weekend so you'd have to content yourself with the conference.  Alas.
• Rumor has it that there will be a little symposium on Byzantine Athens here at the American School next Wednesday, perhaps at the Gennadius Library, in honor of Cyril Mango's lecture, Imagining Constantinople, the day before.  Oddly there is no mention of it on the School's fancy-pants web page, so it might be a secret.
• Mary Beard has posted on 10 Excellent Blogs. 
• PhDiva is back.  It's a great blog.  Here's a simply brilliant post (among many): The Rules of The Blog; it includes one of my favorite rules:

"Feel free to email me – you’ll generally get a reply. But please do not confuse friendliness with romance or anything else – a few too many people have recently. I also have a habit of blocking addresses if men are either too rude or amorous."

Needless to say, I have decided to implement the exact same policy.  Since I've started this blog, I have become irresistible.  I've recently had to block my wife's email address. 

All teasing aside, it is a very good blog even if you don't know what a Givenchy dress is.

A Special Friday Quick Hits and Varia

Today is an important Friday for two reasons.  It's Good Friday in the Orthodox Church and it's Anzac Day in Australia, New Zealand, and a few other South Pacific countries.  I'll write about Holy Week tomorrow and Anzac Day at the end of the blog.

First some quick hits:

• I've linked to Archaeolog before, but another interesting post: The Other Acropolis Project by Yannis Hamilakis.  It introduces his newest web project: The Other Acropolis, a photoblog which aims "to produce a range of alternative media interventions which will take the iconic site of the Athenian Acropolis as their centre, their point of departure, or their target (in all senses of the word)."  It's run by The Other Acropolis Collective which includes, among others, Fotis Ifantidis who runs the super-hip (in a William Gibson way) Visualizing Neolithic blog.
• Over the Classics Journal Online Forum there is a noteworthy article: Daniel N. Erickson, “Practical Ways of Saving a Classics Program: A Report From the Front”, 103.3 (2008) 301–6.  Dan Erickson is my erstwhile colleague in the Language Department at UND and has given his passion to developing the Classics program there.  This short article sketches out the main outlines of the history of his work and gives us room for optimism!
• Brandon Olson, Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project veteran and UND History alumnus, gives a short summary of his recent paper at the CAMWS Annual Meeting on the inscribed sling pellets from Vigla. 
• Amanda Flaata gave an interesting Tea Talk on Meter (the Mother of the Gods) in Phrygia and Greece.  Among other things she mentioned how sanctuaries of Meter in Greece often included references to her sacred topography in Asia Minor.  In particular the cult in Greece sometime employed the names of mountains near sacred sites elsewhere to create a kind of imaginary topography.
• A couple of interesting links to scholars bridging the gap between the academy and "the real world".
  • Ohio State's Origins eHistory Project with an interesting article and podcast "(Fore)Closing on the American Dream" by Lawrence Bowdish
  • The North Dakota Humanities Council's blog Prairie Polis features a cool essay "What Are Free Markets For? Or, what should we think about before we think about voting?" by UND Philosophy Professor, Jack Russell Weinstein.

Anzac Day commemorates the role of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps in the difficult and bloody Gallipoli Campaign of 1915.  The Australian War Memorial site has a nice web site explaining the ceremonies and commemorative aspects of the observance.  Cities and towns in Australia often hold ceremonies commemorating the exact moment of the Gallipoli landing (in Brisbane this was 04:28 (AEST); for photographs). Among the more interesting things is that the Gallipoli campaign forged a special relationship between Australia, New Zealand, and Turkey.  As early as 1934, Ataturk reassured Australians and New Zealanders with words now inscribed on the several monuments both at Gallipoli and elsewhere:

"Those heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours. You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears, your sons are now lying in our bosoms and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they become our sons as well."

Another important part of Anzac day are Anzac Biscuits.  According to the story, Anzac Biscuits use Golden Syrup rather than eggs as a bonding agent so that the sweet treats would survive the long journey from Australia to Europe.  My wife and mother-in-law sent me a tin and in a faint way, re-performed the actions of families during World War I who sent biscuits to their loved ones serving in Europe.  A very tasty way to be made to feel part of an Australian family!