The Power of Place in Greek Archaeology: The Impact of Text on Sensory Experience
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 25/01/2021

This paper examines the interplay between archaeological material, textual description and physical experience of place on the development of Classical Archaeology in Greece. Unlike elsewhere, archaeologies in Greece often started from textual representations of place, with text serving as an axle around which archaeological practice, interpretation, and experiences of place revolve (Stewart 2013). Far from being fixed, however, texts are often subject to repeated re-interpretation and re-reading, resulting in a complex mix of relationships/outputs akin to film that has seen multiple exposures. The result is a contemporary archaeology that is a curious superimposition of different experiences of place from different times, presented as a single image (cf. Lightfoot and Witmore 2019). These ideas will be explored though the case study of the Temple of Hephaistos, Athens.


The best-preserved temple in mainland Greece, it was long identified as the ‘Theseum’ or temple to Theseus, due to a (mis)reading of the 2nd-century AD author Pausanias’. Experiences of this place in the 19th century, by antiquarians (Leake and Dodwell), early archaeologists (Stuart & Revett, Frazer), and artists (Müller and Lear), were framed around a sense of place emanating from this textual reading. This reading changed in the 1950s, when the temple was re-interpreted as a Temple of Hephaistos, though this identification is not universally accepted (Wycherley 1959; Harrison 1979; Emerson 2007).By examining the shifting readings of text and monument through time, this paper will highlight the power of selective readings of text on determining the nature of the sensory experience in Greece.


Dr Dan Stewart, School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester