Affiliation: McMaster University
Many will be familiar with the myth of Theseus and Ariadne, where the smitten young royals escape Knossos to head back to Athens, the former abandoning the latter on Naxos, where she then meets and marries Dionysus, becoming a deity in her own right. But have you ever asked why did they go to Naxos in the first place? Connecting myth and archaeology is notoriously challenging, however the world described by Homer and others of a paramount Knossos and subservient Athens might best fit our vision of Second Palace period Crete, when ‘Minoan’ (or Knossian) influence is clearly documented overseas. Until recently, this was best documented in the Cyclades by the Minoanised harbor-towns of Akrotiri (Thera), Phylakopi (Melos), and Ayia Irini (Kea), with Naxos considered socio-economically peripheral. New work at Stelida on Naxos challenges this view, with excavations revealing a Minoan-type peak sanctuary that attests to major Cretan connections in this period. Moreover, with Dionysus potentially being worshipped at the same time at nearby Yria, we ask: who was Stelida’s sanctuary dedicated to? Come and listen to the project director to find out.
www.stelida.org
A key question in archaeology, is what makes us special – what were the winning evolutionary traits that led to Homo sapiens’ survival, and the demise of the Neanderthals, Denisovans inter alia? Much ink has been spilled on discussing the significance of language, art, and technology in this debate, and here we consider the idea that seafaring was exclusive to Homo sapiens, an index of ‘behavioral modernity’, by considering data from the key regions: Southeast Island Asia, and the Aegean – the latter most recently represented by excavations at the chert source of Stelida on Naxos, whose raw materials were being used for toolmaking at least 233-217,000 years ago. Who were these early stone workers, how did they get to Stelida (by land, or sea), and how is this helping us understand how *we* are the only form of human living on the planet? Come and listen to the project director to find out.
This lecture asks (1) what makes us (Homo sapiens) special? and (2) why did Theseus and Ariadne go to Naxos? These radically different questions are answered through the archaeology of Stelida, a site on the northwest coast of Naxos (Cycladic islands, Greece), whose deep-time history takes us from Neanderthal toolmakers, via Bronze Age worshippers, to the Canadian / Greek project that has been investigating the site since 2013. From the earliest seafarers of the northern hemisphere to Ariadne’s hill, follow this remarkable thread with the project’s director.
