No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Sacralising the Past
Cults of archaeology in modern Greece1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Abstract
The paper discusses the religious undertones classical Greek heritage is vested with in Greece. Drawing on the argument that nationalism and religion need to be seen as similar cultural systems, we show that classical antiquities have become powerful emotive icons for performances of national memory in the process ot imagining the topos of the Hellenic nation. This process is open to all social actors and not simply to State bureaucrats and intellectuals. We offer an explanation of this phenomenon by examining the position of antiquity in the construction of the imagined community of the Hellenic nation, as well as the ways by which Orthodoxy and classical antiquity became enmeshed in the formation of Hellenic national identity.We finally explore some of the implications that this phenomenon has for archaeology as a discipline and as social practice.
Information
- Type
- Discussion Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s) 1999
References
Alexopoulos, G., 1995: O teleutaios romantikos kai oi chriseis tou parelthontos, I lexi 126, 142–155.Google Scholar
Anderson, B., 1991: Imagined communities. Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism, London.Google Scholar
Andreadis, G., 1989: Ta paidia tis Antigonis. Mnimi kai ideologia sti Neoteri Ellada, Athens.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A., 1995: The production of locality, in Fardon, R. (ed.), Counterworks. Managing the diversity of knowledge, London and New York, 204–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnakis, G., 1963: The role of religion in the development of Balkan nationalism, in Jelavich, B. and Jelavich, C. (eds), The Balkans in transition, Berkeley, 115–144.Google Scholar
Astuti, R., 1995: ‘The Vezo are not a kind of people’: identity, difference and ‘ethnicity’ among a fishing people of western Madagascar, American ethnologist 22, 464–482.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atkinson, J.A., Banks, I. and O'Sullivan, J. (eds), 1996: Nationalism and archaeology, Glasgow.Google Scholar
Augustinos, G., 1989: Culture and authenticity in a small state: historiography and national development in Greece, East European quarterly 23(1), 17–31.Google Scholar
Balibar, E., 1990: The nation form: history and ideology, Review: Fernand Braudel centre 13, 329–61.Google Scholar
Brow, J., 1990: Notes on community, hegemony and the uses of the past, Anthropological quarterly 63, 1–6.Google Scholar
Chapman, J., 1994: The destruction of a common heritage: the archaeology of war in Croatia, Bosnia, and Hercegovina, Antiquity 68, 120–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clogg, R., 1985: Sense of the past in pre-independence Greece, in Sussex, R. and Eade, J.C. (eds), 7–30.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J., 1995: Ethnicity, nationalism and the politics of difference in an age of revolution, in Comaroff, J.L. and Stern, P.C. (eds), Perspectives on nationalism and war, Luxembourg, 243–276.Google Scholar
Danforth, L., 1995: The Macedonian conflict. Ethnic nationalism in a transnational world, Princeton.Google Scholar
Diamandouros, N., 1972: Political modernization, social conflict and cultural cleavage in the formation of the modern Greek state: 1821–1828, Columbia (Unpublished Ph.D).Google Scholar
Díaz-Andreu, M., 1996: Islamic archaeology and the origin of the Spanish nation, in Díaz-Andreu, M. and Champion, T. (eds), 68–89.Google Scholar
Díaz-Andreu, M., 1997: Nationalism, ethnicity and archaeology. The archaeological study of Iberians through the looking glass, Journal of Mediterranean studies 7, 155–168.Google Scholar
Díaz-Andreu, M. and Champion, T., 1996: Nationalism and archaeology in Europe: an introduction, in Díaz-Andreu, M. and Champion, T. (eds), 1–23.Google Scholar
Díaz-Andreu, M., and Champion, T. (eds), 1996: Nationalism and archaeology in Europe, London.Google Scholar
Douglas, M., 1966: Purity and danger. An analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo, London.Google Scholar
Doumanis, N., 1997: Myth and memory in the Mediterranean. Remembering fascism's empire, London.Google Scholar
Dubisch, J., 1995: In a different place. Pilgrimage, gender, and politics at a Greek island shrine, Princeton.Google Scholar
Edwards, C., 1999: Introduction: shadows and fragments, in Edwards, C. (ed.), Roman presences. Perceptions of Rome in European culture, 1789–1945, Cambridge, 1–18.Google Scholar
Field, L.W., 1999: Complications and collaborations: anthropologists and the ‘unackowledged tribes’ of California, Current anthropology 40(2), 193–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, R.G., 1990: Introduction, in Fox, R.G. (ed.), National ideologies and the production of national cultures, Washington D.C., 1–14.Google Scholar
Friedman, J., 1992: The past in the future: history and the politics of identity, American anthropologist 94, 837–859.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, J., 1994: History and the politics of identity, in Cultural identity and global process, London, 117–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gourgouris, S., 1996: Dream nation. Enlightenment, colonization and the institution of modern Greece, Stanford.Google Scholar
Haley, B.D. and Wilcoxon, L., 1997: Anthropology and the making of Chumash tradition, Current Anthropology 38, 761–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., 1996: Through the looking glass: nationalism, archaeology and the politics of identity, Antiquity 70, 975–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., 1998: Archaeology and the politics of identity in Cyprus, Journal of Mediterranean archaeology 11, 107–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilakis, Y, 1999a: La trahison des archéologues? Archaeological practice as intellectual activity in postmodernity, Journal of Mediterranean archaeology 12, 60–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilakis, Y, 1999b: Stories from exile: fragments from the cultural biography of the Parthenon (or ‘Elgin’) marbles, World archaeology 31, 303–320.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., and Yalouri, E. 1996: Antiquities as symbolic capital in modern Greek society, Antiquity 70, 117–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Handler, R., 1994: Is ‘identity’ a useful cross-cultural concept?, in Gillis, J.R. (ed.), Commemorations. The politics of national identity, Princeton, 27–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, O., 1996: The temporalities of tradition: reflections on a changing anthropology, in Hubinger, V. (ed.), Grasping the changing world. Anthropological concepts in the postmodern era, London, 1–16.Google Scholar
Hassan, F., 1998: Memorabilia: archaeological materiality and national identity in Egypt, in Meskell, L. (ed.), 200–216.Google Scholar
Heller, Y., 1992: Macedonia puts its faith in ancestor worship, Guardian weekly 12-4-92, 14.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, M., 1982: Ours once more. Folklore, ideology, and the making of modern Greece, Austin.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, M., 1987: Anthropology through the looking-glass. Critical ethnography in the margins of Europe, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, M., 1991: A place in history. Social and monumental time in a Cretan town, Princeton.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, M., 1992: The social production of indifference. Exploring the symbolic roots of western bureaucracy, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E.J., 1992: Nations and nationalism since 1780. Programme, myth and reality, Cambridge (second edition).Google Scholar
Hourmouziadis, G., 1984: Sholia stin elliniki mouseiologia, Epistimoniki skepsi 18, 15–20.Google Scholar
James, W., and Johnson, D.H. (eds), 1988: Vernacular christianity. Essays in the social anthropology of religion, Oxford.Google Scholar
Jeffreys, M., 1985: Adamantios Korais: language and revolution, in Sussex, R. and Eade, J.C. (eds), 42–55.Google Scholar
Jones, S., 1997: The archaeology of ethnicity. Constructing identities in the past and present, London.Google Scholar
Just, R., 1988: Anti-clericism and national identity: attitudes towards the Orthodox Church in Greece, in James, W. and Johnson, D.H. (eds), 15–30.Google Scholar
Just, R., 1989: Triumph of the ethnos, in Tonkin, E., MacDonald, M. and Chapman, M. (eds), History and ethnicity, London, 71–88.Google Scholar
Kapferer, B., 1989: Nationalist ideology and a comparative anthropology, Ethnos 54, 161–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenna, M.E., 1985: Icons in theory and practice: an Orthodox Christian example, in History of Religions 24, 345–368.Google Scholar
Kitromilides, P., 1989: ‘Imagined communities’ and the origin of the national question in the Balkans, European history quarterly 19, 149–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knapp, A.B. and Antoniadou, S., 1998, Archaeology, politics, and the cultural heritage of Cyprus, in Meskell, L. (ed.), 13–43.Google Scholar
Kohl, P.L., 1998: Nationalism and archaeology: on the constructions of nations and the reconstructions of the remore past, Annual review of anthropology 27, 223–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohl, P.L., and Fawcett, C. (eds), 1995: Nationalism, politics and the practice of archaeology, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Kokkou, A., 1977: I merimna gia tis archaiotites stin Ellada kai ta prota mouseia, Athens.Google Scholar
Kotsakis, K., 1991: The powerful past: theoretical trends in Greek archaeology, in Hodder, I. (ed.), Archaeological theory in Europe. The last thirty years, London, 65–90.Google Scholar
Kotsakis, K. 1998: The past is ours-images of Greek Macedonia, in Meskell, L. (ed.), 44–67.Google Scholar
Kremmydas, V., 1992: Ypodohi ton evropaikon ideon apo ton Ellinismo sto telos tis Tourkokratias, O politis 120, 40–42.Google Scholar
Lampeter Archaeology Workshop, 1997: Relativism, objectivity and the politics of the past, Archaeological dialogues 4, 164–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lavvas, G., Stephanidou-Tiveriou, Th., Mentzos, A., Zaharopoulos, N., Konidaris, I., Akanthopoulos, P., Mauropoulou-Tsioumi, Ch., and Manitakis, A., 1997: I Rotonda ston “kyklome tin kimolia”, Thessaloniki.Google Scholar
Leontis, A., 1991: Cultural politics and popular uses of the ancients, Journal of modern Greek studies 9, 191–214.Google Scholar
Llobera, J.R., 1994a: The god of modernity. The development of nationalism in western Europe, Oxford.Google Scholar
Llobera, J.R., 1994b: Durkheim and the national question, in Pickering, W.S.F. and Martins, H. (eds), Debating Durkheim, London, 134–158.Google Scholar
Loukas, I., 1996: I noimatodotisi tou 1821 kai i naftiki ischis tou Ellinismou, Athens.Google Scholar
Loukatos, D., 1978: Tourist archeofolklore in Greece, in Dorson, R.M. (ed.), Folkore in the modern world, The Hague, 175–182.Google Scholar
Lowenthal, D., 1988: Classical antiquities as global and national heritage, Antiquity 62, 726–35.Google Scholar
MacGregor, A., 1998: Museums and ‘national antiquities’ in the mid-19th century, in Brand, V. (ed.), The study of the past in the Victorian Age, Oxford, 125–138.Google Scholar
MacNeal, R.A., 1991: Archaeology and the destruction of the later Athenian Acropolis, Antiquity 65, 49–63.Google Scholar
Mango, C., 1965: Byzantinism and romantic Hellenism, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 18, 29–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merriman, N., 1996: Understanding heritage, Journal of material culture 1, 277–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meskell, L. (ed.), 1998: Archaeology under fire. Nationalism, politics, and heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, LondonGoogle Scholar
Morris, I., 1994: Archaeologies of Greece, in Morris, I. (ed.), Classical Greece. Ancient histories and modern archaeologies, Cambridge, 3–47.Google Scholar
Moskof, K., 1979: Eisagogika stin istoria tou kinimatos tis ergatikis taxis. I diamorphosi tis ethnikis kai koinonikis syneidisis stin Ellada, Thessaloniki.Google Scholar
Mosse, G.L., 1976: Mass politics and the political liturgy of nationalism, in Kamenka, E. (ed.), Nationalism. The nature and the evolution of an ideal, London, 39–54.Google Scholar
Odermatt, P., 1996: Built heritage and the politics of (re)presentation, Archaeological Dialogues 3,95–136.Google Scholar
Petrakos, V., 1987a: I en Athinais Archaiologiki Etaireia: i istoria ton 150 chronon tis, Athens.Google Scholar
Petrakos, V., 1987b: Ideographia tis en Athinais Archaeologikis Etaireias, Archaeologiki ephimeris, 25–197.Google Scholar
Petrakos, V., 1988: Ta prota chronia tis ellinikis archaiologias, Archaiologia 26, 90–99.Google Scholar
Philippidis, D., 1994: ‘O apothavmasmos tou Parthenona apo tin elliniki koinonia’, in Tournikiotis, P. (ed.), O Parthenonas kai i aktinovolia tou sta neotera hronia, Athens, 287–309.Google Scholar
Pina-Cabral, J.D., 1989: The valuation of time among the peasant population of the Alto Minho, nortwest Portugal, in Layton, R.H. (ed.), Who needs the past? Indigenous values and archaeology, London, 59–69.Google Scholar
Politis, A., 1993: Romantika chronia. Ideologies kai nootropies stin Ellada tou 1830–1880, Athens.Google Scholar
Protopsaltis, E., 1967: Istorika engrafa peri archaeotiton kai loipon mnimeion kata tous chronous tis epanastaseos kat tou Kapodistia, Athens.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, P., 1976: Interpretation theory. Discourse and the surplus of meaning, Texas.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, C.M., 1990: Introduction, in Rosenberg, C.M. (ed.), Art and politics in late Medieval and early Renaissance Italy, 1250–1500, Indiana, 1–10.Google Scholar
Seremetakis, C. N., 1991: The last word. Women, death and divination in Inner Mani, Chicago.Google Scholar
Seremetakis, C. N., 1994: The senses still. Perception and memory as material culture in modernity, Chicago.Google Scholar
Shanks, H., 1998: Israel's archaeological crisis, Biblical archaeological review 24/5:6, 68.Google Scholar
Silberman, N.A., 1989: Between past and present. Archaeology, ideology and nationalism in the modern Middle East, New York.Google Scholar
Silberman, N.A., 1995: Promised land and chosen people: the politics and poetics of archaeological narrative, in Kohl, L. P. and Fawcett, C. (eds), Nationalism, politics and the practice of archaeology, Cambridge, 249–262.Google Scholar
Skopetea, E., 1988: To protypo vasileio kai i Megali Idea: opseis tou ethnikou provlimatos stin Ellada (1830–1880), Athens.Google Scholar
Smart, N., 1983: Religion, myth and nationalism, in Merkl, P.H. and Smart, N. (eds), Religion and politics in the modern world, New York, 15–28.Google Scholar
Stewart, C., 1989: Hegemony or rationality? The position of supernatural in modern Greece, Journal of modern Greek studies 7, 77–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, C., 1994: Syncretism as a dimension of nationalist discourse in modern Greece, in Stewart, C. and Shaw, R. (eds), Syncretism/anti-syncretism. The politics of religious synthesis, London, 127–144.Google Scholar
Stewart, C., 1998: Who owns Rotonda? Church versus State in Greece, Anthropology today 14, 3–9.Google Scholar
Stoianovich, T., 1960: The conquering Balkan orthodox merchant, Journal of economic history 20,234–313.Google Scholar
Sussex, R. and Eade, J.C. (eds), 1985: Culture and nationalism in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, Ohio.Google Scholar
Sutton, D., 1998: Memories cast in stone. The relevance of the past in everyday life. Oxford.Google Scholar
Sutton, D., 1999: Rescripting women's collective action: nationalist writing and the politics of gendered memory, Identities 5, 469–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsigakou, F.M., 1981: The rediscovery of Greece. Travellers and painters of the romantic era, London.Google Scholar
Tsoukalas, K., 1977: Exartisi kai anaparagogi. O koinonikos roros ton ekpaideftikon michanismon stin Ellada (1830-1922), Athens.Google Scholar
van der Veer, P. and Lehmann, H. (eds), 1999: Nation and religion. Perspectives on Europe and Asia, Princeton.Google Scholar
Veloudis, G., 1982: O Jacob Fallmerayer kai i genesi tou ellinikou istorismou, Athens.Google Scholar
Walsh, K., 1992: The representation of the past. Museums and heritage in the post-modern world, London.Google Scholar
Weiner, A., 1992: Inalienable possessions. The paradox of keeping-while-giving, Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yalouri, E., 1993: Classical or Byzantine heritage. Conflicting pasts in modern Greek society, Cambridge (Unpublished M.Phil. dissertation).Google Scholar
Yalouri, E., in prep.: Global fame, local claim. The Athenian Acropolis as an objectification of Greek identity, PhD thesis, University College London.Google Scholar
- 46
- Cited by