Colin Renfrew Says...

...that all of those smashed statues on the Greek island of Keros were probably disposed of there in sacred ceremonies (they were buried, after all) at the end of their useful lives as votive objects.

Colin Renfrew is one of my heroes :)

From Cambridge-news.co.uk
Monday 13 June 2011
Smashing discovery
Cambridge University scientists have discovered that the ancient Greeks smashed valuable pottery in bizarre ceremonies 4,500 years ago.

Archaeologists embarked on a huge dig on the uninhabited Greek island of Keros in 2006 and discovered hundreds of pieces of ornate statues.

The Cambridge University team has now proved that the smashing of these marble pottery and statues was part of a bizarre religious ritual.

They believe that statues and pottery used for spiritual services were taken to Keros and broken, then buried in shallow pits.

Colin Renfrew, professor of Archaeology at Cambridge University, has spent hundreds of hours cataloguing the “remarkable” finds.

He said: “We believe that the breaking of the statues and other goods was a ritual and that Keros was chosen as a sanctuary to preserve the effects.

“They had a use-life, probably being painted and repainted from year to year.

“We believe the convention was that when a figure had reached the end of its use-life, it could not simply be thrown away or used conventionally, it needed to be desanctified in an elaborate process.

“Strangely, there seems to have been some obligation to bring a piece of the broken figure and deposit it on what must have been the sacred island of Keros, possibly staying a few days on Dhaskalio while the ceremony was completed.

“This is a remarkable find. The marble statues are very beautiful and have much value. We have never heard of a ritual like this before.”

The beautiful figurines, with their folded arms, sloping feet and featureless faces, have been found previously in Cycladic Bronze Age graves.

More information in this very informative article from guardian.co.uk:

Broken idols of Keros: British archaeologists explain Greek mystery
Cambridge scientists dig up evidence of beautiful marble figurines broken then buried by Greeks 4,500 years ago
Mark Brown, arts corresponden
The Guardian
Friday 10 June 2011

Archaic Greek Statues Recovered from Looters

From ArtDaily.org
May 19, 2010
By: Nicholas Paphitis, Associated Press Writer

ATHENS (AP).- Police in southern Greece have seized a rare twin pair of 2,500-year-old marble statues and arrested two farmers who allegedly planned to sell them abroad for €10 million ($12.43 million), authorities said Tuesday.

Police said two Greeks aged 42 and 48 were arrested in the Peloponnese area late Friday as they were loading the illegally excavated figures of young men into a truck. Authorities are seeking a third man suspected of belonging to a smuggling gang that planned to spirit the 6th century B.C. works out of the country.

"This is a very important find, of fabulous value, and (both statues) were ready to be taken out of Greece," Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanos said.

Archaeologists said Tuesday the statues are "outstanding works of art" and may have come from a temple or cemetery in a lost ancient city in the Peloponnese region in southern Greece. Both are in excellent condition, but lack sections of their lower legs and were gashed by a plow or digging machinery.

They stand 1.82 meters (5 feet 9 inches) and 1.78 meters (5 feet 8 inches) high, and were probably carved by the same sculptor out of thick-grained island marble between 550-520 B.C, at the height of the archaic period of sculpture.

"They are exactly the same, with a slight variation in hairstyle and a small difference in height," said Nikos Kaltsas, director of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens where the finds were temporarily housed for conservation and study. "The artist may have wanted to produce two similar figures that would form part of a group."

The statues are of the stiff, highly formalized Kouros type widespread in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. which portrayed gods, heroes or aristocrats and were painted in bright colors. From the 5th century on, Greek sculpture became more fluid and lifelike, culminating in the naturalism of the Hellenistic era.

Rest of article.

This was a major story with lots of coverage:

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2010/05/19/greece-statues-recovered-looti/ng-smuggling.html
http://www.ana.gr/anaweb/user/showplain?maindoc=8730333&maindocimg=8730478&service=144
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2010/05/18/greek_police_seize_2_statues_from_2_farmers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/18/AR2010051801728./html
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hHCJhzzjaMqj_hEm55ClrPFKUCXAD9FPBD1O0
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100004_19/05/2010_117154
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126906852
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-eu-greece-archaeology-twins/tatues,0,1612376.story
http://ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100004_19/05/2010_117154

Fisherman Nets a 2200 Year Old Statue!

Greek fisherman nets 2,200-year-old bronze statue The Associated Press Published: Mon, Mar. 23, 2009 01:44PM Modified Mon, Mar. 23, 2009 03:30PM ATHENS, Greece -- A Greek fisherman must have been expecting a monster of a catch when he brought up his nets in the Aegean Sea last week. Instead, Greek authorities say his haul was a section of a 2,200-year-old bronze statue of a horseman. A Culture Ministry announcement said Monday the accidental find was made in waters between the eastern islands of Kos and Kalymnos. The fisherman handed over the corroded metal figure to authorities, who have started the cleaning process. AP Photo - In this handout photo provided by the Greek Ministry of Culture on Monday, March 23, 2009, the torso and raised right arm of a 2,200-year-old statue are seen after it was raised in a fisherman's nets. The ministry said the find, dating to the late 2nd century B.C. was part of an equestrian statue of an armed man wearing a breastplate and carrying a sheathed sword. It was accidentally found last week in the eastern Aegean Sea between the islands of Kos and Kalymnos. Dating to the late 2nd century B.C., the statue represented a male rider wearing ornate breast armor over a short tunic and armed with a sheathed sword. The trunk of the horseman and his raised right arm have survived.

Worshipping Women: Onassis Center

Love the title of this article! I'm sure I've blogged about this exhibit at the Onassis Center before; this provides fresh insight. Onassis Center Lets Teen Brides Bathe, Satyrs Romp in N.Y. Show Review by Cynthia Cotts Last Updated: January 6, 2009 00:01 EST Jan. 6 (Bloomberg) -- On a broken piece of pottery, two young girls dance around the altar of Artemis, holding hands and praying that she will ensure their fertility. The painted fragment, found in a well in Athens, is a glimpse of the world inhabited by the women of ancient Greece who, denied a role in political activities, flocked to religious rituals and elaborate ceremonies surrounding marriage and death. It’s part of “Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens,” a crisply conceived exhibition at the Onassis Cultural Center in midtown Manhattan that pulls together riches from the Vatican and the Louvre, as well as rarely shown pieces from regional museums in Greece. The stars of the show are the Greek goddesses -- the wise warrior Athena, the huntress Artemis and sex-symbol Aphrodite -- but they share the stage with mortal women who left stone carvings and bronze figurines in the deities’ sanctuaries and poured them daily libations. The show is organized into mini-shrines, matched with photos of the sanctuary grounds as they are preserved today. Its centerpiece is a strapping statue of Artemis, who inspired her prepubescent followers to be athletes and demanded that they be virgins. The statue is on loan from the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, which contributed many of the 155 pieces in the show. Married at 15 Ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy, was also known as a phallocracy, in which men dominated women. While young men were educated and given a vote, their sisters were traded for marriage at age 15 or earlier. The show aims to refute the stereotype that the women of yore ended up stuck at home, living lives of quiet desperation. The exhibition focuses on work from the 5th century B.C., a time when Greece produced political discourse, oral poetry and art -- but no written chronicles. The art from that period is exquisitely wrought, but shrouded in mystery. Each piece leaves the viewer to imagine: Who created it, in what workshop and to what end? Many of the works here tell a layered story: A volute-krater -- a vessel used to mix water and wine -- is illustrated with two ceremonies: a formal one with a woman preparing to make an offering to the gods; the other, a frolic of maenads and satyrs. Though the rituals often involved animal sacrifice, such violent scenes are rarely seen in Greek art, said Alan Shapiro, a classics professor at Johns Hopkins University, who co-curated the show with Nikolaos Kaltsas, director of Greece’s National Archaeological Museum. Nor do we see wedding nights, though the vases depict the moments leading up to that conventional plot point. Teenage girls were often married to undesirable men twice their age. But as the vase paintings show, when a girl was being handed off to a stranger, her family tried to distract her with sacred water baths and paintings that depicted Eros as a nubile young man. Sexy Pluto Loss of virginity wasn’t always traumatic. On a marble tablet, the goddess Persephone is shown twice: first, attending to her mother, Demeter; and then partying with Pluto, who carted her off to hell. With Demeter, the young deity looks shy and aggrieved; but next to sexy Pluto, she smirks knowingly, eyeing a spread of sweetmeats and cakes. Because the craftsmen left behind no documents, it is difficult to know whether the scenes they painted were the product of observed reality, or visually and emotionally heightened fantasy. The loutrophoros, a vessel used to carry sacred water, also appeared in death rituals. One such vase in the exhibit shows a woman caressing the head of a dead young man; around the curve, a team of men lowering his coffin into the grave. Greek women were skilled at lamenting and beating their breasts. But Shapiro points out a plus-side to funerals: They were a respectable place to chat up members of the opposite sex. “Worshiping Women” runs through May 9 at the Onassis Cultural Center, 645 Fifth Ave. Admission is free. Information: +1-212-486-4448; http://www.onassisusa.org/. (Cynthia Cotts is a reporter for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.) Image: Athena, from Tillya Tepe, 1st century CE. Notice the fringe of serpents that serve as the Goddess' "apron." The archaic symbolism still survived into the first century CE. This particular image reminds me of some ancient Egyptian images I have scene of the pre-dynastic Goddess Neith.

New Treasures Uncovered at Grecian Burial Site

Greece unearths treasures at Alexander's birthplace Thu Sep 11, 2008 2:15pm EDT ATHENS (Reuters) - Archaeologists have unearthed gold jewellery, weapons and pottery at an ancient burial site near Pella in northern Greece, the birthplace of Alexander the Great, the culture ministry said on Thursday. The excavations at the vast cemetery uncovered 43 graves dating from 650-279 BC which shed light on the early development of the Macedonian kingdom, which had an empire that stretched as far as India under Alexander's conquests. Among the most interesting discoveries were the graves of 20 warriors dating to the late Archaic period, between 580 and 460 BC, the ministry said in a statement. Some were buried in bronze helmets alongside iron swords and knives. Their eyes, mouths and chests were covered in gold foil richly decorated with drawings of lions and other animals symbolizing royal power. "The discovery is rich in historical importance, shedding light on Macedonian culture during the Archaic period," Pavlos Chrysostomou, who headed the eight-year project that investigated a total of 900 graves, told Reuters. Pavlas said the graves confirmed evidence of an ancient Macedonian society organized along militaristic lines and with overseas trade as early as the second half of the seventh century BC. Among the excavated graves, the team also found 11 women from the Archaic period, with gold and bronze necklaces, earrings and broaches. Nine of the graves dated to the late classical or early Hellenistic period, around the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. [This is a bit confusing; the photo above seems to describe this archaic period jewelry. Did 11 graves date to the archaic period? Or were there a total of 11 graves, 9 of which date to the late classical or early Hellenistic period? There's about 500 years difference!] Alexander, whose father Philip II unified the city states of mainland Greece, conquered most of the world known to the ancient Greeks before dying at the age of 32 in Babylon. Educated by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, Alexander was never defeated in battle. Reporting by Daniel Flynn and Renee Maltezou; editing by Elizabeth Piper)

Gold Wreath Found in Puzzling Burial

Ancient gold treasure puzzles Greek archaeologistsBy NICHOLAS PAPHITIS – 22 hours ago ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A priceless gold wreath has been unearthed in an ancient city in northern Greece, buried with human bones in a large copper vase that workers initially took for a land mine. The University of Thessaloniki said in a statement Friday that the "astonishing" discovery was made during its excavations this week in the ruins of ancient Aigai. The city was the first capital of ancient Macedonia, where King Philip II — father of Alexander the Great — was assassinated. Gold wreaths are rare and were buried with ancient nobles or royalty. But the find is also highly unusual as the artifacts appear to have been removed from a grave during ancient times and, for reasons that are unclear, reburied in the city's marketplace near the theater where Philip was stabbed to death. "This happened quite soon after the original burial; it's not that a grave robber took it centuries later and hid it with the intention of coming back," excavator Chryssoula Saatsoglou-Paliadeli told The Associated Press. "It probably belonged to a high-ranking person." The "impressively large" copper vessel contained a cylindrical golden jar with a lid, with the gold wreath of oak leaves and the bones inside. "The young workman who saw it was astounded and shouted 'land mine!'" the university statement said. Saatsoglou-Paliadeli, a professor of archaeology at the university, said the find probably dates to the 4th century B.C., during which Philip and Alexander reigned. "Archaeologists must explain why such a group ... was found outside the extensive royal cemetery," the university statement said. "(They must also) work out why the bones of the unknown — but by no means insignificant — person were hidden in the city's most public and sacred area." During the 4th century B.C., burials outside organized cemeteries were very uncommon. In a royal cemetery at Vergina, just west of Aigai, Greek archaeologists discovered a wealth of gold and silver treasure in 1977. One of the opulent graves, which contained a large gold wreath of oak leaves, is generally accepted to have belonged to Philip II. The location of Alexander's tomb is one of the great mysteries of archaeology. The sprawling remains of a large building with banquet halls and ornate mosaics at Aigai — some 520 kilometers (320 miles) north of Athens — has been identified as Philip's palace. Aigai flourished in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C., attracting leading Greek artists such as the poet Euripides, who wrote his last tragedies there. The Macedonian capital was moved to Pella in the 4th century B.C., and Aigai was destroyed by the Romans in 168 B.C.

The International Tour of "The Greeks" Exhibit

I'm jealous! Don will get to see this, and I won't, boo hoo (well, unless I take a couple of days off and fly up...) Image: Greek toy horse, 5-7th Century CE, bone, from Egypt.

From artdaily.org
June 2, 2008
In its Only North American Stop, Exhibition Explores Incredible Legacy of The Greeks

QUEBEC.- The Greek world was at the origin, then at the heart, of social, cultural and political movements that touched Europe, Asia and Africa. Discover the richness of this great civilization through a collection of artifacts spanning 8,000 years of Greek history in a must-see exhibition opening May 30 at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

The Greeks offers a captivating insight into the land of Socrates and Euclid , the Parthenon and Mount Olympus . It also explores the survival and adaptation of the Greek world within the once-mighty Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. The exhibition is organized by the prestigious Benaki Museum in Athens and features 180 treasured objects dating from prehistoric to modern times.

“This exhibition illustrates the remarkable diversity and influence of Greek art, culture and society,” said Dr. Victor Rabinovitch , President and CEO of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation.

“Greece has often been at the crossroads of history and the Greek people have experienced the ebb and flow of history’s fortune for thousands of years. I am delighted the Benaki Museum has shared these remarkable treasures with a Canadian audience.”

Featured in The Greeks are sculptures and ceramics, jewellery and embroidered textiles, paintings, metalwork, religious icons, toys, figurines, lamps, wooden chests and more. The artifacts bear witness to the unparalleled sweep of Greek civilization, which continues to influence the world today.

The exhibition is organized chronologically and has four principal zones: Prehistory and Antiquity (7000 BCE – fourth century CE), the Byzantine Period (fourth century – fifteenth century), The Greeks in the Ottoman Empire (fifteenth century – eighteenth century) and Towards an Independent Greek State (nineteenth century).

Among the many notable objects are a Byzantine processional cross made from moulded, hammered, engraved and punched copper; an elegant chalice in gilded silver plate, crafted during Ottoman rule, and a magnificent oil painting of the English poet Lord Byron in Greek costume, an iconic image from the Greek struggle for independence. The Museum has specially selected 12 artifacts that will be displayed nowhere else on the tour, including a striking crown of oak leaves and flowers in engraved and embossed gold leaf and a magnificent embroidered sperveri (bed tent).

The Museum of Civilization will be the only venue in Canada for the international tour of The Greeks. The exhibition is presented from May 30 to September 28, 2008.

"Helen" - More Than Just a Pretty Face

DNA explodes Greek myth about women British researchers have unearthed evidence that proves Helen was much more than a chattel By Robie McKie, science editor The Observer, Sunday June 1 2008 Women in Ancient Greece were major power brokers in their own right, researchers have discovered, and often played key roles in running affairs of state. Until now it was thought they were treated little better than servants. The discovery is part of an investigation by Manchester researchers into the founders of Mycenae, Europe's first great city-state and capital of King Agamemnon's domains. 'It was thought that in those days women were rated as little more than chattels in Ancient Greece,' said Professor Terry Brown, of the faculty of life sciences at Manchester University. 'Our work now suggests that notion is wrong.' Mycenae is one of the most important and evocative archaeological sites in Europe. According to legend, Agamemnon led his armies from Mycenae to Troy to bring back Helen - the wife of his ally, Menelaus - who had run off with the Trojan prince Paris. The citadel was first excavated in the 1870s by Heinrich Schliemann, who uncovered tombs containing crumbling bones draped with jewels and gold face masks. 'I have discovered the graves of Agamemnon, Eurymedon, and their companions, all slain at a banquet by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthos,' he told the King of Greece. In fact, the graves have since been dated and shown to be too old for those of Agamemnon. Nevertheless, Mycenae has since proved to be a treasure trove of archaeological riches. Most recently, these have involved scientists using a range of new techniques, including facial reconstruction work carried out by Manchester researchers John Prag and Richard Neave. They recreated the faces of seven individuals whose skeletons had been excavated at a circle of graves inside the citadel. The images provided scientists with a family picture album for the rulers of Europe's first great city-state. However, genetics experts have now taken this work a stage further by attempting to extract DNA from 22 of the 35 bodies found in the grave circle. 'The facial reconstructions were carried out 10 years ago, but it is only now that scientists have developed sensitive enough techniques to get DNA from skeletons as old as these,' said Brown. 'In each case we had to deal with a single cell's worth of DNA.' The genetic material isolated by the scientists is known as mitochondrial DNA, which humans inherit exclusively from their mothers. However, of the 22 skeletons that were tested, only four produced enough DNA for full analysis. Nevertheless, findings from these provided a shock for the team from Manchester. While two of the males had DNA that indicated they were unrelated, the genetic material extracted from the remaining pair, a man and a woman, revealed they were brother and sister. They had been thought to have been man and wife. 'To be precise, our DNA evidence suggests the pair were closely related, possibly siblings or possibly cousins. However, the facial reconstruction work of Prag and Neave also shows they were very similar in appearance which indicates they were brother and sister,' said Brown. The critical point, he said, was that the woman was thought to have been buried in a richly endowed grave because she was the wife of a powerful man. That was in keeping with previous ideas about Ancient Greece - that women had little power and could only exert influence through their husbands. 'But this discovery shows both the man and the woman were of equal status and had equal power,' he said. 'Women in Ancient Greece held positions of power by right of birth, it now appears. 'The problem has been that up until recently our interpretation of life in Ancient Greece has been the work of a previous generations of archaeologists, then a male-oriented profession and who interpreted their findings in a male-oriented way. That is changing now and women in Ancient Greece are being seen in a new light.'

Egyptian Antiquities To Go On Display At Athens Museum

From PRInside.com Athens museum to show its priceless Egyptian collection © AP 2008-05-13 19:09:00 - ATHENS, Greece (AP) - A priceless ancient Egyptian collection opens to the public Wednesday, featuring a wooden body tag for a mummy, a stunning bronze statue of a princess, and a 3,000-year-old loaf of bread with a bite-sized chunk missing. The National Archaeological Museum in Athens is putting more than 1,100 pieces from the collection on permanent exhibition, as more of its halls open to the public following years of renovation. The previous Egyptian display, shelved six years ago, included just 350 artifacts. Most of the current collection, which museum officials say is one of the best in the world, has never been shown to the public before due to lack of space. A further 6,000 Egyptian artifacts remain in underground storage. One piece that made it into the display is the round, brown loaf of bread, which is missing a bite-sized chunk. Baked during the New Kingdom, between 1550-1075 B.C., it was placed in a tomb for the occupant's use in the afterlife. Museum officials are unsure what happened to the missing bit. [Well obviously, darlings, it was the Ka of the deceased enjoying a bit to eat after the grand ceremonies...] Archaeologist Lena Papazoglou, curator of the museum's prehistoric, Egyptian and eastern collections, said Egypt's dry, hot climate helped preserve organic materials - food, wood and leather - for thousands of years. "The exhibition includes intact birds' eggs," she said Tuesday. "If you shake them gently you can hear the yolks rattling inside." The exhibition centerpiece is a bronze statue of the princess-priestess Takushit, dating to around 670 B.C. Standing 70 centimeters (27 inches) high and wearing a gown covered in hieroglyphs, the statue was found south of Alexandria in 1880. "This kind of bronze statue is very rare," said archaeologist Eleni Tourna. At the other end of the sculptural scale is a thumb-sized bronze figurine of an African boy at a street market. "He has his wares spread in front of him and has dozed off in the heat, his pet monkey perched on his shoulder," Tourna said. The miniature was made in the 3rd century B.C. in Alexandria, the Greek-Egyptian port city founded by Alexander of Macedon that grew into a major intellectual and administrative center. "Alexandria was the center of the then-known world," Tourna said, "Like the New York of antiquity." The exhibition includes products from what Tourna calls Egypt's "death industry," such as pierced wooden tags from embalmers' workshops. They were inscribed with the name and designated grave of the corpse, to avoid embarrassing mix-ups. The core of the museum's Egyptian collection was donated more than 100 years ago by two rich merchants from Alexandria's then-thriving Greek community. "They had access to the art market and were able to buy top-quality pieces," Papazoglou said. Other pieces were donated by the Egyptian government in the late 19th century, while some were excavated in Greece. The relationship between Greece and Egypt, two of the ancient world's major powers, peaked in the Hellenistic era, between 304 and 30 B.C. But interaction began some 4,000 years ago, during the Minoan period in Greece. Mycenaean pottery has been found in large quantities in Egypt, while Egyptian artifacts were excavated in the royal tombs and citadel of Mycenae, in southern Greece. Another display due to reopen Wednesday at the National Archaeological Museum is the Stathatos collection, which focuses on ancient jewelry. In the future, museum officials plan to display important groups of glass, terra-cotta and ivory artifacts. [I'll bet there are some ancient game pieces in that collection that have yet to be identified as such!] Built in 1866-89, the museum hosts some 20,000 exhibits from prehistoric to late Roman times. On the Net: odysseus.culture.gr/h/1/eh151.jsp?obj_id=3249