Events Calendar – British School at Athens
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Frederic Edwin Church, The Parthenon (1871). New York, Metropolitan Museum
Upper House Seminar
Professor Dimitris Plantzos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), “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.
To attend in person please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1041865366357?aff=oddtdtcreator
To attend online via webinar, please register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZMo-YoSxTHCtqiNH7MBtAQ
When: 2 December @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm EET
Where: British School at Athens, Upper House – Athens – 52 Souedias Street