Open meeting – Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece – 2012

March 08, 2012 19:00. Speaker: Lorenzo Amberg (Swiss ambassador), Karl Reber (ESAG), Martin Guggisberg (Basel University). National Hellenic Research Foundation, 48 Vas. Constantinou, 11635 Athens

The Fieldwork of the School in 2011

Karl Reber, Director of the Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece, will present the work of the School in 2011, in particular the discovery of Roman Baths at Eretria.

Conference by Martin Guggisberg (Basel University)

This year’s conference will on Colonial Encounters: First results of the excavations conducted by the University of Basel in the necropolis of Francavilla Marittima near Sybaris, Calabria.
Ancient Francavilla Marittima played a major role in the process of the Greek and Phoenician expansion towards the Western Mediterranean in the early 1st millenium BC. Thanks to the excavations conducted by the University of Groningen over the past decades the early Iron Age settlement has emerged as one of the leading centers within this process of acculturation. In addition to the Duch excavations the University of Basel is currently investigating the vast necropolis situated on a coastal terrace in front of the settlement. The first results underline the complexity of the (pre-) colonial encounter characterised by cultural resistance and willing adoption of foreign cultural achievements at the same time.

Martin Guggisberg is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Basel. In 1993 he received his doctorate from the University of Basel with a PhD-thesis on the zoomorphic pottery of the late Bronze and early Iron Age in Greece. In 1998 he finished his postdoctoral thesis on the Celtic gold hoard from Erstfeld in Switzerland. His research interests include the archaeology of Greece from the Mycenaean to the Archaic periods, the archaeology of early elites, acculturation and cultural identity in contact zones of the Mediterranean as well as Celtic art and the art of late antiquity. He is currently directing an excavation project at Francavilla Marittima, Calabria.