Professor Dimitris Plantzos, “Greeks, Macedonians, Thracians, and a few others: Inventing the Ancestors in Southeastern Europe
Professor Dimitris Plantzos, “Greeks, Macedonians, Thracians, and a few others: Inventing the Ancestors in Southeastern Europe
In this lecture, Dimitris Plantzos examines the complex interplay between archaeology and nationalist imagination in Southeastern Europe. Focusing on the construction of ancestral narratives, he explores how modern nations in the Balkans have appropriated antiquity to craft identities rooted in imagined continuities with ancient peoples. From Thracians in Bulgaria to Macedonians in North Macedonia and Illyrians in Albania, these historical reinventions serve as tools for national distinction, political leverage, and cultural legitimacy.
Plantzos critiques the “archaeopolitical” use of material heritage, which transforms archaeological findings into instruments of ideological storytelling. Through examples such as the monumental Seuthes III tomb in Bulgaria and the “antiquization” of Macedonian identity, he examines how archaeology has been mobilized to forge exceptionalist claims, often steeped in pseudohistory and crypto-colonial anxieties.
The lecture situates these phenomena within a broader framework of European modernity and its enduring fascination with classical antiquity. It addresses the challenges posed by the politicization of archaeology, emphasizing its role in shaping contemporary discourses of identity and memory in a geopolitically contested region.
