The Life and Death of Tombs: The Excavation of the Mycenaean Cemetery at Ayia Sotira in the Nemea Valley, Greece

From 2006 to 2008 an international team conducted archaeological excavations at the threatened late Bronze Age site of Ayia Sotira near Nemea, Greece.  These excavations saved a cemetery of Mycenaean tombs from looting and revealed new information about the complex mortuary rituals that surrounded the use and reuse of communal tombs during the 14th and 13th centuries BCE. This talk will describe the excavations and what these tombs revealed, and put them in the larger context of death in Mycenaean Greece.

Dr. R Angus K. Smith is Associate Professor of Greek Archeology with the Classics Department of Brock University; he holds his degrees from Dartmouth College, Cambridge University (M.Phil) and Bryn Mawr College (MA, PhD). His research interests are Greek archaeology, Aegean prehistory, ceramic analysis and mortuary analysis.  He is currently Associate Director of excavations at the Minoan town of Gournia on Crete, and he was Co-Director of the recently completed Ayia Sotira excavation project at Nemea.  Professor Smith is the 2018 recipient of the Brock University Faculty of Humanities Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activity.  He was President of the Canadian Institute in Greece and is President of the Niagara Peninsula Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Presented jointly by the Ottawa and Toronto Chapters.