John K Papadopoulos
Biographic Data
| ID | 371428 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John K Papadopoulos |
| GIVEN NAMES | John K |
| FAMILY NAME | Papadopoulos |
| SIGNATURE | PAPADOPOULOS J K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Los Angeles |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2481-0246 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 149 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Athens, ca. 1200–600 BCE
Late Bronze – Early Iron Age Agro-systems in Northern Greece
The Emergence of the Polis
The bookends to this chapter are two watersheds, the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial system and the Battle of Salamis (ca. 1200–480 BC). The chapter explores the landscape of the living and the dead, the emergence of the Athenian polis , and the broader issue that determined and defined the period.
Alexander Cambitoglou, 1922-2019
A Middle Helladic Tomb in the Athenian Kerameikos and Some Thoughts on the Early Connections of Attica
This paper focuses on a presentation and discussion of the solitary Middle Helladic tomb found in the Athenian Kerameikos. Our purpose is twofold: first of all, to present in detail the tomb offerings that we were able to relocate, and to suggest a MH I date for the burial. Secondly, given the significant presence of ceramic imports from various Aegean islands, we outline the connectedness that Attica enjoyed at the beginning of the Middle Bronze…
A Cist Tomb on the South Bank of the Eridanos in the Athenian Agora and the Middle Bronze Age in Athens
Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens - Volume 87, Number 2, April-June 2018
Greek protohistories
Following some definitions and etymologies of key terms – archaeology, history, prehistory, protohistory – the purpose of this paper is to review the history of Greek protohistories, chronologically beginning with the earliest writing in the Greek world, in the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1800 BC). Ironically, this early writing did not lead to a period that anyone would call 'historic' or 'protohistoric'. From there, the author traces the passage of …
To Write and to Paint
In 1994 I published a paper on Protogeometric and Geometric potters′ marks in Greece, which, up to that time, were largely overlooked. Since then not only has the number of potters′ marks-symbols inscribed or painted prior to firing- more than doubled, from 70 to at least 172, but so too the number of postfiring marks, including the new corpus from the "Ypogeio" at Methone. The first part of this paper assembles and discusses the growing number o…
Komai, Colonies and Cities in Epirus and Southern Albania
The early history of the Greek alphabet
The Charitonidis Class
This article assembles and publishes a group of distinctive large Athenian Late Protogeometric skyphoi. Aspects of shape and decoration are fully discussed, so too the evidence for establishing the date of the group, as well as their distribution. The group, if not the potter, is named after the man who published two complete examples of the class from the South Slope of the Athenian Acropolis: Serapheim Charitonidis
The Making of the Middle Sea
The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean From the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World. By Cyprian Broodbank. Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford. 2013. IS
Always Present, Ever Changing, Never Lost from Human View
Money, Art, and the Construction of Value in the Ancient Mediterranean
The Construction of Value in the Ancient World
Scholars from Aristotle to Marx and beyond have been fascinated by the question of what constitutes value. The Construction of Value in the Ancient World makes a significant contribution to this ongoing inquiry, bringing together in one comprehensive volume the perspectives of leading anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, philologists, and sociologists on how value was created, defined, and expressed in a number of ancient socie…
Temesa
Taphians
Archaeology, Homeric
Helike
Aigai
The bronze headbands of prehistoric Lofkënd and their Aegean and Balkan connections
This paper begins with an overview of the bronze headbands from the prehistoric (Late Bronze to Early Iron Age) burial tumulus of Lofkënd in Albania, which were found among the richest tombs of the cemetery, all of them of young females or children. It is argued that these individuals represent a class of the special dead, those who have not attained a critical rite de passage: marriage. In their funerary attire these individuals go to the grave …
The Tourists Gaze, the Cretans Glance
A New Type of Early Iron Age Fibula from Albania and Northwest Greece
This article presents a hitherto unknown type of Early Iron Age fibula from Lofkënd in Albania, together with related examples from Kënet in northeastern Albania and Liatovouni in northwestern Greece. Dubbed the "Lofkënd type," this group of fibulae can be securely dated to the late 10th or 9th century B. C. The author discusses the evidence provided by archaeological context, as well as the date, distribution, and cultural affinities of the new …
The Archaic wall of Athens
This paper reviews the philological and archaeological evidence for an Archaic, pre-Persian, city wall of Athens, and concludes that there was no Archaic enceinte separate from the fortifications of the Acropolis and Pelargikon. The extant testimonia, primarily Thucydides and Herodotos, can be interpreted in different ways, but there is nothing in these sources to suggest categorically fortifications other than those of the Acropolis/Pelargikon. …
Reconstructing the prehistoric burial tumulus of Lofkënd in Albania
When a monument is excavated it removes a piece of cultural property from the landscape. So modern thinking in field archaeology rightly includes the maintenance of monumentality in its initial design. Better still if that value is enhanced. Reconstructing their excavated tumulus in Albania, the authors found they could leave the monument in place and give it added value from the new knowledge of its relevance to local people, not to mention the …
Inventing the Minoans
This study explores the modern history of Minoan culture and the myth of Minoan archaeology. Emerging from the cultural milieu of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the genesis of this culture formed in the mind of Arthur Evans soon after he began excavations at Knossos in 1900. By 1930, he had transformed the site previously excavated by Minos Kalokairinos and earlier known as Tou Tseleve he Kephala and Ta Pitharia into the so-called Palace…
Phantom Euboians
This paper critically examines interpretations of social and economic pre-eminence and ethnicity in the eastern and central Mediterranean in the EIA. More particularly, it challenges the conventional view of Aegean, especially Euboian, primacy in early maritime trade and colonial ventures. To focus on one particular group - whether Greek, Levantine or other - to the neglect of others, is to miss the broader Mediterranean perspective and to impose…
Early Iron Age Potters' Marks in the Aegean
Le but de cet article est de reetudier 5 vases protogeometriques attiques portant chacun une petite croix peinte sur le col, sous une anse, ou sur le fond, etc., et de dresser une liste commentee des exemples de poteries protogeometriques ou geometriques portant le meme genre de croix, laquelle peut raisonnablement etre interpretee comme une marque de potier heritiere de la tradition de l'âge du Bronze consistant a apposer une marque precise sur …
The Cultural Biography of a Cycladic Geometric Amphora
Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens - Volume 71, Number 2, April-June 2002
A Ketos in Early Athens
This article publishes a fragment of a scapula of a fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) found in an Early Geometric well in the area of the later Athenian Agora. Deriving from the carcass of an immature beached whale, the bone was brought to Athens and was used probably as a cutting surface, before being discarded ca. 850 B.C. The context of this extraordinary artifact is analyzed and discussed, as are its possible functions. The occurrence of whal…
To Kill a Cemetery
The purpose of this article is to set out the history of scholarship on the graves of the Athenian Kerameikos and, from there, to review critically the two most recent offerings on the subject by Morris (1987) and Whitley (1991). Both of these works focus on the Athenian Early Iron Age, the earlier part of which is generally referred to as the 'Dark Age', and both are concerned with changes in the structure and symbolism observed in the archaeolo…
Minting Identity
This article focuses on the early coinage of the Akhaian cities of South Italy — Sybaris, Kroton, Metapontion, Kaulonia, Poseidonia — against the backdrop of colonization. Minting an early and distinctive series of coins, these centres were issuing coinage well before their ‘mother-cities’, a phenomenon that has never been fully appreciated. With its origins in a colonial context, the Akhaian coinage of Magna Graecia not only differs from that of…
Mendaian as Chalkidian Wine
Greek Towers and Slaves
This article reviews the archaeological and documentary evidence for stone towers built in rural and urban Greece in classical and Hellenistic times. The history of scholarship reveals how prevailing agendas have unduly influenced interpretation. A new contextual and transregional approach situates these structures more securely within the exploitation of the Greek landscape through extractive and productive technologies, and emphasizes their rel…
A Social Outcast in Early Iron Age Athens
La mise au jour d'un squelette dans la tombe U-V 19:1a en 1959 puis son etude ont mis en evidence des traumatismes dont les AA tentent d'analyser la cause. Il n'est pas possible de determiner si l'individu souffrait de troubles neurologiques ou d'une epilepsie post-traumatique. Quoi qu'il en soit sa tombe semble avoir recu un traitement particulier apres sa mort. Dans ce contexte, les AA analysent le contexte social de l'inhumation des parias de …
Euboians in Macedonia? A Closer Look
A number of recent studies, both archaeological and philological, have revived old arguments, in addition to presenting new evidence, for Euboian colonisation and pre‐colonisation in Macedonia, particularly the Chalkidike. As a result, a virtual consensus has arisen in current scholarship which views Euboia as an active early agent in the north Aegean Early Iron Age. A closer look at the evidence at hand, however, undermines rather than supports …
The “Rich Athenian Lady” Was Pregnant
Recent reexamination of the cremated remains in the celebrated tomb of the "rich Athenian lady" brought to light the presence of a fetus four to eight weeks short of full term and established that the adult female died during pregnancy or premature childbirth. The physical anthropology of mother and child is reviewed and a facial reconstruction of the deceased woman presented. Other examples of pregnancy and death in the Greek world are discussed…
Drawing Circles
This study explores a variety of multiple brushes that have been used by potters of different periods and places to decorate their wares. Following an overview of the history of scholarship on these devices, special attention is given to the mechanically drawn circles and semicircles of various Mediterranean wares in the Early Iron Age, particularly Aegean Protogeometric. Earlier arguments put forward to show that such concentric motifs could not…
The early history of the Greek alphabet
Excavations at the Prehistoric Burial Tumulus of Lofkënd in Albania
Exploration of an Early Iron Age burial tumulus at Lofkënd in Albania offered a unique opportunity to examine the formative period immediately preceding the founding of Greek colonies on the coast and how such a prominent burial place functioned in relation to a particular group, or groups, of people in Illyria. We anticipated that the investigation of a major burial site predating both the colonial foundations and the majority of the so-called p…
A Cist Tomb on the South Bank of the Eridanos in the Athenian Agora and the Middle Bronze Age in Athens
Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens - Volume 87, Number 2, April-June 2018
A New Type of Early Iron Age Fibula from Albania and Northwest Greece
This article presents a hitherto unknown type of Early Iron Age fibula from Lofkënd in Albania, together with related examples from Kënet in northeastern Albania and Liatovouni in northwestern Greece. Dubbed the "Lofkënd type," this group of fibulae can be securely dated to the late 10th or 9th century B. C. The author discusses the evidence provided by archaeological context, as well as the date, distribution, and cultural affinities of the new …
Magna Achaea
Imported Akhaian and locally produced Akhaian-style pottery occurs in South Italy, Sicily, and beyond, found not only in the Akhaian apoikiai, but also in other settlements. The most characteristic Akhaian shape-the kantharos-is discussed within the context of its home region, including Elis. Examples of Archaic Akhaian pottery in the West are assembled and the distribution is compared to that of Akhaian and West Greek imports in the Late Bronze …
Greek protohistories
Following some definitions and etymologies of key terms – archaeology, history, prehistory, protohistory – the purpose of this paper is to review the history of Greek protohistories, chronologically beginning with the earliest writing in the Greek world, in the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1800 BC). Ironically, this early writing did not lead to a period that anyone would call 'historic' or 'protohistoric'. From there, the author traces the passage of …
Notes from the Tins 2
Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens - Volume 71, Number 4, October-December 2002
Archaeology, Myth‐History and the Tyranny of the Text
By focusing on Thucydides’‘Chalkidic Torone’ against the backdrop of modern historians’ neglect of archaeological evidence, this paper highlights not only another case of ‘history being written by the winners,’ but the persistent problem of privileging written documents over archaeological material in Aegean prehistory and classical archaeology. The practice of using literary historical records as direct historic analogues continues to be one of …
Late Bronze – Early Iron Age Agro-systems in Northern Greece
Sella Cacatoria
Kathleen M. Lynch, John K. Papadopoulos, Sella Cacatoria: A Study of the Potty in Archaic and Classical Athens, Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 2006), pp. 1-32
Euboica
Evelyn Lord Smithson, 1923-1992
Λ A ΣANA, Tuyeres, and Kiln Firing Supports
The correspondence of A. J. B. Wace in the library of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens
In 1986 a donation of books deriving from the library of A. J. B. Wace was presented to the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens. It was Wace's habit to keep some of his correspondence with scholars and friends in books either written by those scholars or closely connected with their work. Over fifty letters and other papers were tucked away in eight volumes, mostly dating from 1946–51 though including some earlier items. The corresponde…
To Kill a Cemetery
The purpose of this article is to set out the history of scholarship on the graves of the Athenian Kerameikos and, from there, to review critically the two most recent offerings on the subject by Morris (1987) and Whitley (1991). Both of these works focus on the Athenian Early Iron Age, the earlier part of which is generally referred to as the 'Dark Age', and both are concerned with changes in the structure and symbolism observed in the archaeolo…
A Western Mediterranean amphora fragment from ed‐Dur
A previously published amphora fragment from ed‐Dur with incuse Latin letters is discussed. Comparanda are adduced from sites in the western portion of the Roman empire
Early Iron Age Potters' Marks in the Aegean
Le but de cet article est de reetudier 5 vases protogeometriques attiques portant chacun une petite croix peinte sur le col, sous une anse, ou sur le fond, etc., et de dresser une liste commentee des exemples de poteries protogeometriques ou geometriques portant le meme genre de croix, laquelle peut raisonnablement etre interpretee comme une marque de potier heritiere de la tradition de l'âge du Bronze consistant a apposer une marque precise sur …
Evelyn Lord Smithson, 1923-1992
Euboians in Macedonia? A Closer Look
A number of recent studies, both archaeological and philological, have revived old arguments, in addition to presenting new evidence, for Euboian colonisation and pre‐colonisation in Macedonia, particularly the Chalkidike. As a result, a virtual consensus has arisen in current scholarship which views Euboia as an active early agent in the north Aegean Early Iron Age. A closer look at the evidence at hand, however, undermines rather than supports …
A Bucket, by Any Other Name, and an Athenian Stranger in Early Iron Age Crete
A Social Outcast in Early Iron Age Athens
La mise au jour d'un squelette dans la tombe U-V 19:1a en 1959 puis son etude ont mis en evidence des traumatismes dont les AA tentent d'analyser la cause. Il n'est pas possible de determiner si l'individu souffrait de troubles neurologiques ou d'une epilepsie post-traumatique. Quoi qu'il en soit sa tombe semble avoir recu un traitement particulier apres sa mort. Dans ce contexte, les AA analysent le contexte social de l'inhumation des parias de …
Phantom Euboians
This paper critically examines interpretations of social and economic pre-eminence and ethnicity in the eastern and central Mediterranean in the EIA. More particularly, it challenges the conventional view of Aegean, especially Euboian, primacy in early maritime trade and colonial ventures. To focus on one particular group - whether Greek, Levantine or other - to the neglect of others, is to miss the broader Mediterranean perspective and to impose…
Drawing Circles
This study explores a variety of multiple brushes that have been used by potters of different periods and places to decorate their wares. Following an overview of the history of scholarship on these devices, special attention is given to the mechanically drawn circles and semicircles of various Mediterranean wares in the Early Iron Age, particularly Aegean Protogeometric. Earlier arguments put forward to show that such concentric motifs could not…
Mendaian as Chalkidian Wine
Archaeology, Myth‐History and the Tyranny of the Text
By focusing on Thucydides’‘Chalkidic Torone’ against the backdrop of modern historians’ neglect of archaeological evidence, this paper highlights not only another case of ‘history being written by the winners,’ but the persistent problem of privileging written documents over archaeological material in Aegean prehistory and classical archaeology. The practice of using literary historical records as direct historic analogues continues to be one of …
Euboica
Notes from the Tins
Magna Achaea
Imported Akhaian and locally produced Akhaian-style pottery occurs in South Italy, Sicily, and beyond, found not only in the Akhaian apoikiai, but also in other settlements. The most characteristic Akhaian shape-the kantharos-is discussed within the context of its home region, including Elis. Examples of Archaic Akhaian pottery in the West are assembled and the distribution is compared to that of Akhaian and West Greek imports in the Late Bronze …
The Cultural Biography of a Cycladic Geometric Amphora
Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens - Volume 71, Number 2, April-June 2002
Notes from the Tins 2
Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens - Volume 71, Number 4, October-December 2002
Minting Identity
This article focuses on the early coinage of the Akhaian cities of South Italy — Sybaris, Kroton, Metapontion, Kaulonia, Poseidonia — against the backdrop of colonization. Minting an early and distinctive series of coins, these centres were issuing coinage well before their ‘mother-cities’, a phenomenon that has never been fully appreciated. With its origins in a colonial context, the Akhaian coinage of Magna Graecia not only differs from that of…
A Ketos in Early Athens
This article publishes a fragment of a scapula of a fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) found in an Early Geometric well in the area of the later Athenian Agora. Deriving from the carcass of an immature beached whale, the bone was brought to Athens and was used probably as a cutting surface, before being discarded ca. 850 B.C. The context of this extraordinary artifact is analyzed and discussed, as are its possible functions. The occurrence of whal…
Theory and Practice in Mediterranean Archaeology
Ceramicus Redivivus
John K. Papadopoulos, Michael R. Schilling, Ceramicus Redivivus: The Early Iron Age Potters' Field in the Area of the Classical Athenian Agora, Hesperia Supplements, Vol. 31, Ceramicus Redivivus: The Early Iron Age Potters' Field in the Area of the Classical Athenian Agora (2003), pp. iii-v+vii+ix-xvii+xix-xxiii+xxv+1-189+191-269+271-335+337-370
The Achaian Vapheio Cup and Its Afterlife in Archaic South Italy
This article publishes an Archaic Greek cup of individual form from the extramural sanctuary of the Achaian colony of Sybaris at Francavilla Marittima in south Italy. The Francavilla cup, which is Achaian or Achaian‐style, is fully discussed and similar Archaic cups from the site of Incoronata, near the Achaian apoikia of Metapontion, are assembled. These vessels find no immediate parallel among contemporary Greek or indigenous pottery of the sev…
The “Rich Athenian Lady” Was Pregnant
Recent reexamination of the cremated remains in the celebrated tomb of the "rich Athenian lady" brought to light the presence of a fetus four to eight weeks short of full term and established that the adult female died during pregnancy or premature childbirth. The physical anthropology of mother and child is reviewed and a facial reconstruction of the deceased woman presented. Other examples of pregnancy and death in the Greek world are discussed…
Inventing the Minoans
This study explores the modern history of Minoan culture and the myth of Minoan archaeology. Emerging from the cultural milieu of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the genesis of this culture formed in the mind of Arthur Evans soon after he began excavations at Knossos in 1900. By 1930, he had transformed the site previously excavated by Minos Kalokairinos and earlier known as Tou Tseleve he Kephala and Ta Pitharia into the so-called Palace…
History (46 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (34 works) · Archaeology (33 works) · Ancient history (28 works) · Art (28 works) · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History (27 works) · History (25 works) · Geography (15 works) · Classics (13 works) · Ancient Near East History (10 works)