21 April 2015, 15:00
Swedish Institute at Athens (Mitseon 9, Akropolis metro station)

Elene Balomenou (University of Athens)
“Were Gods Meant to Entertain? Exploring Performativity, Theatricality and Entertainment in the Aegean Bronze Age Religion.’’

The religious cult in the Aegean Bronze Age has been thoroughly explored by the study of the available iconographical and architectural data of the Minoan and the Mycenaean material culture, by its extensive comparison with other contemporary prehistoric cultures and evidently by its relation to the posterior ancient Greek religion. Subsequently, in light of the various theoretical patterns and of the recent disciplines emerging in the past century, the Aegean Bronze Age religion was developed as a component of socioeconomic investigation while the remaining evidence of its ritual practice was observed at some length in the field of anthropological interpretation. Since this religious ritual practice has been highlighted as religious ritual action, the foundations have been laid in order to extend our notion of the Aegean Bronze Age religion and situate it as center of live experience, demonstration activity and subsequently as the scenery of a staged spectacle and display. The aim of this paper will be to point out the dialectic infusion among these dimensions, which seems to source as religious symbolic action but could as well flow as a vivid entertaining performance.

The Swedish Institute at Athens and Aegeus – Society for Aegean Prehistory invite you to the lecture:

The traditional paradigm of the Indo-European problem and the “Coming of the Greeks” (in Greek)

by Theodoros G. Giannopoulos (Open University of Cyprus)

Friday 17 April 2015, 19:00.

From 2010 onwards the Swedish Institute and the Archaeological Ephorate in Lamia have jointly been carrying out archaeological investigations in the western Spercheios Valley, in the modern municipality of Makrakomi, as part of the Makrakomi Archaeological Landscapes Project (MALP) under the general direction of the director of the Ephorate, Maria-Photeini Papakonstantinou…

Lecture Hall, Acropolis Museum, Dionysiou Areopagitou 15

The work of the Swedish Institute at Athens in 2014
Arto Penttinen, Director

Meandering liquids – libation rituals in Minoan open-air contexts
Monica Nilsson, Assistant Director

Gustav Karlsson (1909–1995) was a Swedish classicist and Byzantinologist who donated his library to the Institute.

Held since 2009, the Gustav Karlsson lectures are organized biannually in order to enhance the status of Byzantinology as an academic topic in Sweden.

Martin Persson Nilsson (1874–1967) was a Swedish philologist, and a scholar of the Greek and Roman religious systems. In his prolific studies, he combined the literary evidence with the archaeological evidence, linking historic and prehistoric evidence for the evolution of the Greek mythological cycles…

Kursen belyser samspelet mellan människa, miljö och klimat på Peloponnesos, Grekland. Historiska källor och arkeologiskt material kombineras med miljö- och klimatrekonstruktioner till ett tvärvetenskapligt angreppssätt som ger en ökad förståelse av kopplingen mellan miljöhistorisk och kulturhistorisk förändring från stenåldern till och med den romerska perioden (6800 f.Kr.– 300 e.Kr.)...

Lecture Hall, Acropolis Museum, Dionysiou Areopagitou 15

The Work of the Swedish Institute at Athens in 2013
Arto Penttinen, Director

Climate, environment and past societies. What do we want to know – and why?!
Karin Holmgren, Professor, Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Director, Navarino Environmental Observatory (NEO) and Erika Weiberg, Researcher, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University