̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Greece

Digital Mycenae

zs332 — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 07:57:13 +0000

Explore the ancient Greek city of Mycenae in a newly released digital archive.

New programme to support academic and industrial links with Greece

sc604 — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 07:22:12 +0000

Supported by a donation from Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, a Greek businesswoman, parliamentarian and President of the 2004 Athens Olympics, the Gianna Angelopoulos Programme for Science, Technology and Innovation will be an internationally unique ecosystem of training, research and entrepreneurial activity.

̽��ֱ��Programme will support PhD students and four academic positions based at the ̽��ֱ��’s Cavendish Laboratory in the fields of energy materials and devices and computational multiphysics.

Computational modelling of complex problems is the most efficient method of assessing scientific potential across a range of sectors and will drive some of the key materials and device science of the coming decades, from ultra-efficient batteries and nanotechnology to superconductivity and biologically-inspired systems.

In addition, an embedded Impact for Greece Programme will actively seek opportunities to establish strong links with Greek academic institutions and industry, facilitating a two-way exchange of people and ideas. Joint initiatives and network-building will be at the forefront of this activity.

Mrs Angelopoulos-Daskalaki said: “My hope is for this to be a Programme of real international reach and impact, building on the solid foundation of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge: a programme which will generate opportunities for fundamental research to be channelled to practical uses and business development. My experiences in Greece and elsewhere have shown me the vital importance of cultivating academic and business collaborations in order to contribute to the well-being of society.”

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen Toope, said: “ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� greatly admires Mrs Angelopoulos’ strong commitment to the development of young scientists at the forefront of their fields and her vision to develop their work for world-changing impact. Her vision of strengthening collaboration between industry and academia for mutual benefit is in perfect alignment with the ̽��ֱ��’s mission.”

In the first instance, the Programme will commission projects in two of the strategic areas of research at the Cavendish Laboratory, namely Computational Multiphysics for advanced energy, aerospace, automotive and manufacturing applications, and Energy Materials and Devices for energy generation, storage, transmission and usage.

Dr Nikolaos Nikiforakis, an academic with key expertise in the relevant fields and considerable experience in running similar programmes, has been appointed as the Programme Director. ̽��ֱ��Programme will be hosted by the Cavendish Laboratory at the Maxwell Centre on the West Cambridge Campus, with links to the broader research, teaching and business ecosystem of the Cambridge region.

A new training and research programme at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge will fund PhD students and early-career researchers as they work to develop technologies for the world’s future energy and computational needs.

Maxwell Centre

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Epic issues: epic poetry from the dawn of modernity

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 10:00:42 +0000

Maybe it was the language, architecture, codified legal system, regulated economy, military discipline – or maybe it really was public safety and aqueducts. Whatever the Romans did for us, their reputation as a civilising force who brought order to the western world has, in the public imagination, stood the test of time remarkably well. It is especially strong for an Empire that has been battered by close historical scrutiny for almost 2,000 years.

̽��ֱ��reputation, of course, has more than a grain of truth to it – but the real story is also more complex. Not only did the Empire frequently endure assorted forms of severely uncultured political disarray, but for the kaleidoscope of peoples under its dominion, Roman rule was a varied experience that often represented an unsettling rupture with the past. As Professor Mary Beard put it in her book SPQR: “there is no single story of Rome, especially when the Roman world had expanded far outside Italy.”

So perhaps another way to characterise the Roman Empire is as one of cultures colliding – a swirling melting pot of ideas and beliefs from which concepts that would define western civilisation took form. This is certainly closer to the view of Tim Whitmarsh, the A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge, who is the principal investigator on a project that has examined Greek epic poetry during this period.

“This is perhaps the most important period for thinking about where European culture comes from,” says Whitmarsh. “We really are at the dawn of modernity. To tell the story of an Empire which remains the model for so many forms of international power is to tell the story of what we became, and what we are.”

His interest in the Greek experience stems partly from the fact that few cultures under Roman rule can have felt more keenly the fissure it wrought between present and past. In political terms, Ancient Greek history arguably climaxed with the empires established in the aftermath of the conquests of Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE). In the period when this poetry was written, from the first to the sixth centuries CE, the Greek world had been annexed by the Romans.

Yet the relationship between the two cultures was ambiguous. Greek-speaking peoples were subordinate in one sense, but their language continued to dominate the eastern Empire – increasingly so as it became a separate entity centred on Byzantium, as Christianity emerged and as the Latin-speaking west declined. Greek remained the primary medium of cultural transmission through which these changes were expressed. Greek communities therefore found themselves linked closely to their past, while also coming to terms with a fast-metamorphosing future.

Epic poetry, which many associate with Homer’s tales of heroic adventure, seems an odd choice of lens through which to examine the transformation. Whitmarsh thinks its purpose has been misunderstood.

“In the modern West, we often get Greek epic wrong by thinking about it as a repository for ripping yarns,” he says. “Actually, it was central to their sense of how the world operated. This wasn’t a world of scripture; it wasn’t primarily one of the written word at all. ̽��ֱ��vitality of the spoken word, in the very distinctive hexametrical pattern of the poems, was the single way they had of indicating authoritative utterance.”

It is perhaps the most important tool available for understanding how the Greeks navigated their loss of autonomy under the Romans and during the subsequent rise of Christianity. In recent years, such questions have provoked a surge of interest in Greek literature during that time, but epic poetry itself has largely been overlooked, perhaps because it involved large, complex texts around which it is difficult to construct a narrative.

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Whitmarsh and his collaborators set out to systematically analyse the poetry and its cultural history for the first time. “We would argue it’s the greatest gap in ancient cultural studies – one of the last uncharted territories of Greek literature,” he adds.

̽��ֱ��final outputs will include books and an edited collection of the poems themselves, but the team started simply by establishing “what was out there”. Astonishingly, they uncovered evidence of about a thousand texts. Some remain only as names, others exist in fragments; yet more are vast epics that survive intact. Together, they show how the Greeks were rethinking their identity, both in the context of the time, and that of their own past and its cultural legacy.

A case in point is Quintus of Smyrna, author of the Posthomerica – a deceptive title since chronologically it fills the gap between Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, even though it was written later. Quintus’ style was almost uber-Homeric, elaborately crafted to create an almost seamless connection with the past. Yet there is evidence that, having done so, he also deliberately disrupted it. “His use of similes is quite outrageous by Homer’s standards, for example,” Whitmarsh says. ̽��ֱ��reason could be Quintus’ painful awareness of a tension between the Homeric past and his own present. Conflicted identity is a theme that connects many poems of the period. ̽��ֱ��poet Oppian, for instance, who wrote an epic on fish and fishing, provides us with an excellent example of how his generation was seeking to reconceive Greek selfhood in the shadow of Rome.

̽��ֱ��work ostensibly praises the Emperor as master over land and sea – a very Roman formula. Oppian then sabotages his own proclamation by questioning whether anyone truly can command the sea’s depths, a feat that must surely be a journey of the intellect and imagination. Having acknowledged the Emperor’s political power, he was, in effect, implying that the Greeks were perhaps greater masters of knowledge.

̽��ֱ��researchers expected to find that this tension gave way to a clearer, moralistic tone, with the rise of Christianity. Instead, they found it persisted. Nonnus of Panopolis, for example, wrote 21 books paraphrasing the Gospel of St John, but not, it would seem, from pure devotion, since he also wrote 48 freewheeling stories about the Greek god Dionysus. Collectively, this vast assemblage evokes parallels between the two, not least because resurrection themes emerge from both. Nonnus also made much of the son of God’s knack for turning water into wine – a subject that similarly links him to Dionysus, god of winemaking.

Beyond Greek identity itself, the poetry hints at shifting ideas about knowledge and human nature. Oppian’s poetic guide to fishing, for instance, is in fact much more. “I suspect most fishermen and fisherwomen know how to catch fish without reading a Greek epic poem,” Whitmarsh observes. In fact, the poem was as much about deliberately stretching the language conventionally used to describe aquaculture, and through it blurring the boundaries between the human and non-human worlds.

Far from just telling stories, then, these epic poems show how, in an era of deeply conflicted identities, Greek communities tried to reorganise their sense of themselves and their place in the world, and give this sense a basis for future generations. Thanks to Whitmarsh and his team, they can now be read, as they were meant to be, on such terms.

“ ̽��ֱ��poetry represents a cultural statement from the time, but it is also trying to be timeless,” he adds. “Each poem was trying to say something about its topic for eternity. ̽��ֱ��fact that we are still reading them today, and finding new things to say about them, is a token of their success.”

Inset image: Wine jar made in Athens around 535 BC. © ̽��ֱ��Trustees of the British Museum.

Epic poems telling of cultures colliding, deeply conflicted identities and a fast-changing world were written by the Greeks under Roman rule in the first to the sixth centuries CE. Now, the first comprehensive study of these vast, complex texts is casting new light on the era that saw the dawn of Western modernity.

Each poem was trying to say something about its topic for eternity. ̽��ֱ��fact that we are still reading them today, and finding new things to say about them, is a token of their success

Tim Whitmarsh

Achilles killing Penthesilea, as described in the epic poem Posthomerica written by Quintus of Smyrna in the 3rd century CE; detail from a wine jar made in Athens around 535 BC

Yes

Sleepwalking into the Euro nightmare

sjr81 — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 08:59:23 +0000

Professor Jesper Jespersen, an economics expert and visiting overseas fellow at Churchill College, will use his lecture ‘A European Nightmare: How could the economists be so wrong on the Euro?’ to suggest Greece’s need for another multi-billion bailout - and call for a fundamental shift in economic practice to prevent the break-up of the Eurozone as we know it today.

Jespersen, who previously advised the Danish Parliament on monetary union policy, says that despite reports of limited growth and rising optimism in some quarters, recession, social unrest and political turmoil will only worsen while crushing austerity measures continue to bite in central and southern Europe.

“This is a nightmare that could have been prevented. But the real nightmare is yet to come,” said Jespersen. “ ̽��ֱ��economists who said monetary union would bring growth and stability were entirely wrong. Instead of trusting mathematical models that claimed such a crash would happen only once every thousand years - and losing sight of the realities - they should have stuck to real economics.

“People were blinded by the perceived benefits of integration rather than the actualities. They said the system could be detached from political interference; but those who imagined that were either naïve in the extreme or were part of the elite that stood to gain from monetary union.”

Now, argues Professor Jespersen, only a profound and fundamental rebalancing of economic hierarchies and financial policy can save from ruin those parts of Europe most affected by the unemployment and social crises.

He argues the most effective way to save Europe from its looming nightmare would be for Germany to accept its hegemony and reduce its huge balance of payments surplus – a surplus larger than that of China’s. Germany could display solidarity with its struggling European neighbours by using more money domestically and abroad, rather than strengthening its own position by accumulating more foreign assets. Then, the notion of a fairer, better balanced Eurozone, could be more likely.

However, the idea of Germany or any other surplus country eschewing national gains for the necessary stabilization of the common currency is not respected, perhaps hardly understood, and therefore largely inconceivable; a problem Jespersen argues has dogged the notion, and reality, of European monetary union from the beginning.

“ ̽��ֱ��Euro countries are too different to make the idea of a single currency work by itself,” added Jespersen. “ ̽��ֱ��EU Commission, the surplus countries and most economists say that countries in difficulty should just do as Germany has done. But that is a political and logical impossibility because all countries within a monetary union cannot run balance of payments surpluses. For every surplus country there has to be a deficit country otherwise the equation does not add up. So, Germany and other surplus countries have to reduce their balance of payments surpluses.”

Jespersen will also use his lecture to frame today’s current woes in an historical context; looking at the position of Germany before and after both World War One and Two and examining its status as Europe’s economic superpower.

He will also contemplate that for some nations, falling out of the Eurozone and returning to a sovereign currency, may be in the best long-term interests of the country as well as the EU as a whole, even if it proves inconvenient for the European elite in Brussels and for the economists who misjudged the consequences of a single currency.

Jespersen pointed to the 15 years of growth Britain enjoyed following ‘Black Wednesday’ and its exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism – as well as Argentina’s departure from the currency board arrangement – as positive examples of what can be achieved. Jespersen argues that the European economy would ‘definitely benefit’ and begin growing from such a rebalancing; pointing to the growth of all EU member states outside the Euro (except Britain) since 2010.

“Things are getting worse from a social point of view,” said Jespersen. “ ̽��ֱ��welfare systems of some southern European countries are in ruins in an unfair attempt from Berlin (and Brussels) to require balanced public sector budgets. Unemployment is still running at more than 25 per cent in Spain and Greece. Tensions are huge. Greece will need one more rescue package – they will default if they don’t get it. But there is an elite and a bureaucracy in Greece that has really benefited from the Euro and is still in favour of the Euro. There is huge Greek wealth abroad while the working people get their pensions cut.”

Jespersen said a worst-case scenario might see the Euro being dissolved all together except for a ‘greater German area’ including Germany, Austria and perhaps the Netherlands and Belgium. Breaking up the German/French axis would herald the dawn of an entirely different European landscape.
He added: “ ̽��ֱ��present talk of tiny green shoots of growth as a vindication that ‘the medicine was right’ is misplaced. One should not forget that a balanced growth process implies 1.5-2 per cent yearly growth. Britain and Europe at large are still far below the normal growth rates. Growth, due to austerity policies, has been much slower than it could have been; therefore total unemployment in Europe is higher than ever before in the entire post-war period. Austerity is wrong from a growth perspective. Something has to change before prosperity will return to Europe.”

Professor Jespersen’s lecture takes place at 6pm on Monday, November 11 in the Bevin Room, Churchill College. All are welcome to attend.

Eurozone countries are still careering towards a financial and social ‘nightmare’ of their own making according to a leading academic speaking at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� on November 11.

This is a nightmare that could have been prevented. But the real nightmare is yet to come.

Jesper Jespersen

Avij

Euro bank notes and coins

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Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike

Hay gears up for Greek marathon

bjb42 — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:32:18 +0000

Ancient Greece is all the rage this year as the UK gears up for Olympic fever and this year's Hay Festival [www.hayfestival.com] is no exception. It is putting on a series of debates on classical Greece covering everything from Plato to heroisation and sex.

̽��ֱ��idea for the series came after Professor Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, gave a very popular talk at Hay 2010 on how the Greeks would view contemporary democracy. He will be taking part in three of the 10 Greek Classics sessions this year.

On 7^th June he will speak on the first panel on Herodotus, described in the Festival programme as “the Father of History, who pioneered the systems of ‘inquiry’ and holds a mirror up to our own concerns about East and West”. His fellow panellist is author and Cambridge alumnus Tom Holland.

̽��ֱ��two are collaborating on a new hardback translation of Herodotus for Penguin so at least part of the focus of their session will be the translation process. “Tom is not a classicist. His degree was in English,” says Professor Cartledge, “but he has turned himself into a master historian and translator.”

Tom's books include Persian Fire, the first world empire, battle for the West which draws extensively on Herodotus.

̽��ֱ��new translation, which will be completed by the time the Hay Festival begins, will be printed on high quality paper and will only be out in hardback. There could be an e-version as well, which would be the first digital version of Herodotus.

Later that day Professor Cartledge will also be speaking at a session entitled the Greek Idea. This will cover the aspirations and concepts of civilisation, democracy, drama, virtue, victory, liberty and xenia, and discuss what the study of Classics has meant in the wider world.

̽��ֱ��panel consists of Tom Holland, popular historian Bettany Hughes, ̽��ֱ�� of Warwick philosopher and former Cambridge alumna Angela Hobbs and Professor Cartledge and the session is based on a proposal which Professor Cartledge and Bettany Hughes are putting forward for a 15-part BBC Radio Four series. This will be consist of 15 minute programmes on Greek ideas that have had a major impact down the ages.

̽��ֱ��third session he is taking part in on 8^th June is on Plato with Angela Hobbs, a Plato specialist and a former pupil of Professor Cartledge and Bettany Hughes who has a book out on Socrates, Plato's mentor. Professor Cartledge has also written a chapter on Socrates in his book, Ancient Greek Political Thought in Practice. ̽��ֱ��panellists will consider the influence and impact of ̽��ֱ��Republic and ̽��ֱ��Symposium.

Professor Cartledge is a veteran of the Cambridge series at the Hay Festival – now in its fourth year - and last year he was in a discussion with Guardian journalist and author Charlotte Higgins which drew an audience of around 400 people.

“It shows how Cambridge, Classics, outreach and impact are just bubbling at the moment. It's terrific publicity and I'm very thrilled to be taking part,” he says.

He has also written the introduction to ̽��ֱ��Sites of Ancient Greece, a book of aerial photos of Greece published by Phaidon which will be launched on 3^rd May at Heffers and he will be on the Today programme talking about it this week. “There's a huge buzz about ancient Greece right now thanks to the Olympics,” he says.

Next year, the Hay Festival will run a series on Rome which will be organised by Professor Mary Beard.

For the full line-up of the Cambridge series at the Hay Festival, click here. Tickets can be booked through the Hay Festival site.

Following a successful talk at Hay in 2010, Professor Paul Cartledge will be playing a major part in a series of 10 discussions on Ancient Greece at this year's festival, alongside Cambridge's own regular programme.

It shows how Cambridge, Classics, outreach and impact are just bubbling at the moment.

Paul Cartledge

Michailk via Creative Commons

Herodotus

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̽��ֱ��question of life in the ancient world

bjb42 — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:21:06 +0000

There’s a general feeling that we don’t get the Greeks – ancient or modern. Many, including heads of state like Angela Merkel, visibly shake their head in exasperation, rightly or wrongly, at the Greek response to the(ir) economic crisis. And most newspaper articles either start or round up their coverage of the modern situation with some expression of nostalgic comparison to the glory days of ancient Greece. But to what exactly are we referring? Just what was life like in ancient Greece?

It sounds a simple question, one which scholars around the world have been working on in various ways for hundreds of years. Surely, we should have a pretty good answer by now. And yet, the moment you scratch beneath the surface of the traditional comparison, the issue becomes more confusing. Compare, for a moment, the Romans. Most people, I would argue, have a pretty good picture in their heads about what the Romans were like. But the Greeks? If the heavily divided reactions to portrayals of ancient Greece in recent Hollywood movies are anything to go by (remember the furor around Oliver Stone’s Alexander in comparison to the more general triumph of Gladiator), we are much more divided over how to imagine the ancient Greeks than we might initially think. In short, while we know we owe them a lot, we struggle to agree on what they were really like.

In part, that continuing uncertainty and conflict over what life was like in the ancient Greek world is a product of the very fact that we have been so interested and absorbed in the question. Since the 15^th century, at the moment when people began to become interested in the surviving ruins of ancient Greece (as opposed to only its surviving literature), what life in ancient Greece was like has been an increasingly busy battleground not just for academics interested in the ancient world, but for artists, collectors, writers, politicians and philosophers to name but a few. For much of that time, ancient Greece has been held up as an ideal, and as such, something in which much of Western Europe has a heavy stake. But an ideal of what? In part because so little was known about the realities of ancient Greece in the 15^th-17^th centuries, the articulation of ancient Greece as an ideal rested upon modern re-imaginings of the pictures conjured up by ancient literature, populated with increasing numbers of pieces of ancient ‘art’ and architecture as they came to light, which were then ‘fitted in’ to that model. It was in effect something of a blank canvas, an ‘ideal’ ancient world which in fact could be fashioned to look like whatever the modern world wanted their ‘ideal’ to be.

As a result, our picture of life in ancient Greece not only became a fundamental part of the geology of the mental landscape of Western Europe, but also, more importantly, was fundamentally fashioned by the events, needs and ideas of that world. And as those events, needs and ideas have changed and been debated in our world over the centuries since, so too has the resulting – often conflicted – picture of ancient Greece. At times it has been a place of ideal grandeur, at others primitive reality. Sometimes the epitome of noble simplicity and at other times one of savage cruelty. A perpetual holiday realm, a foreign distant never-never land, a ‘twin’ of the modern era, a waste of space – ancient Greece has been all of these things and more to us over the centuries.

Nor has the growing ‘academic’ study of ancient Greece and particularly that of archaeology – itself born from and motivated by the perception of Greece as an ideal – been able to settle that debate. Sometimes, early Greek sculpture was brutally transfigured to ensure it fitted with modern morality (like the hacking off genitals and the covering up of nudity). At other times, it has fired up the debate even further, for example when the detailed study of the Parthenon marbles led many scholars to deny they were Greek at all, so far did they diverge from what was thought to be ‘the’ nature of ancient Greek art and ancient Greece. Today’s scholarship continues to complicate the debate by making clear just how much Greece was not a monolithic unchanging entity in the ancient world either, but rather a flexible grouping of peoples with sometimes very different ideals, forces and attitudes, all responding to a harsh and constantly changing world.

̽��ֱ��result of all this is two-fold. First, it makes the question ‘who were the ancient Greeks?’ far more interesting: we need to think not only about the complexities of their ancient reality, but also about how they have been represented over the centuries. Second, it means that studying the ancient Greeks actually offers us a mirror with which to study ourselves. How we have chosen to envisage them at any one time tells us as much about us as it does about them. And as the Greeks come to the fore once again as the barometer of the world financial crisis, coupled with nostalgic longings for ‘the good old days’ of ancient Greece, at the same time as the Olympics, with its own ancient Greek heritage, hits London in 2012, it seems clear that the question ‘what was life like in the ancient world’ has a long life of its own still to live.

Dr Michael Scott’s lecture ‘Life in the Ancient World’ is at 5.30pm at the Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Site, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB39DA. All welcome. Please arrive by 5.15pm to ensure a seat. For more on Michael Scott’ work www.michaelcscott.com or follow him on Twitter at @drmichaelcscott

Just what was life like in the ancient world? Dr Michael Scott, Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics and Research Associate at Darwin College, shares some of his thoughts as he prepares to talk this Friday on ‘Life in the Ancient World’ as part of the Darwin Lecture series 2012. http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/30610

A perpetual holiday realm, a foreign distant never-never land, a ‘twin’ of the modern era, a waste of space – ancient Greece has been all of these things and more to us over the centuries.

Michael Scott

M Scott

Michael Scott

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Yes

A Greek tragedy in health?

bjb42 — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:22:28 +0000

̽��ֱ��Greek debt crisis threatens not just its economy, but the health of its people, according to a new report which shows a significant rise in homicides, suicides, heroin use, HIV infections, and people losing access to healthcare.

Writing in the journal ̽��ֱ��Lancet, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� researchers Alex Kentikelenis and Dr David Stuckler report a marked decline in the health of Greece’s population since 2007, with the most vulnerable groups in society suffering the most.

̽��ֱ��study combined authoritative Greece healthcare reports with an analysis of representative household surveys of over 10,000 people, taken in 2007, before the economic crisis began, and again in 2009.

“ ̽��ֱ��trends in Greece are deeply disturbing,” Dr Stuckler, senior author of the report, said. “They pose a warning for hard-hit European countries like Spain, Ireland and Portugal.”

New HIV infections in Greece have risen by a third in 2011 and are projected to be over 50% higher than in 2010 by the year’s end. Cases of HIV from injection drug use rose 10-fold during 2010 and account for half the rise in HIV. ̽��ֱ��rest of the increases appear to be linked to prostitution and unsafe sex. Expert reports also suggest that some cases of deliberate self-infection may have occurred among poorer groups so as to obtain public welfare benefits of 700 Euros per month.

̽��ֱ��researchers also found that there was a 14% rise in the number of Greeks reporting that their health was “bad” or “very bad”. They also found that when Greek citizens felt it was necessary to see a doctor or dentist, they were 15% less likely to do so in 2009 than in 2007. ̽��ֱ��researchers suggest this may reflect 40% cuts to hospital budgets and a 40% decline in access to sickness benefits.

Alexander Kentikelenis, lead author on the report and a PhD researcher at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Sociology, said: “Public hospitals have less money to deal with growing care needs. This creates backlogs in healthcare delivery, rising waiting times, staff shortages and limited medical supplies.”

In spite of this, admission to public hospitals increased by 24% in 2010 compared with the previous year – which researchers argue is probably a reflection of fewer people being able to afford private care.

Homicides and theft rates doubled between 2007 and 2009. Heroin use rose by 20% in 2009. Suicides also rose by 17% between 2007 and 2009, and unofficial data quoted in the country’s Parliament mentions a 25% rise in 2010. Calls to the Greek national suicide helpline reported in 2010 that approximately 25% of its callers were facing financial difficulties.

Despite many adverse signs, the report identifies some areas of improvement, such as a decline in alcohol use and drink-driving, which is most likely a reflection failing income.

Overall, the report concludes that the data places a much needed “human face” on the economic crisis. “ ̽��ֱ��picture of health in Greece is concerning,” the researchers write. “It reminds us that, in an effort to finance debts, ordinary people are paying the ultimate price: losing access to care and preventative services, facing higher risks of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, and in the worst cases losing their lives. Greater attention to health and health-care access is needed to ensure that the Greek crisis does not undermine the ultimate source of the country’s wealth – its people.”

Cambridge-led research documents rises in HIV, heroin use, prostitution, homicides and suicides in the wake of the Greek financial crisis.

̽��ֱ��trends in Greece are deeply disturbing. They pose a warning for hard-hit European countries like Spain, Ireland and Portugal.

David Stuckler

Brykmantra from Flickr.

Lubbock Heart Hospital, Dec 16-17, 2005

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Yes

Island of broken figurines

lw355 — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 09:05:36 +0000

On a June morning in 1963, Colin Renfrew stepped from a caïque boat onto the scrub-covered Aegean island of Keros on the basis of a tip-off. In search of material for his graduate studies, the young Cambridge graduate had been intrigued by rumours of a recent looting of the almost uninhabited island relayed to him by a Greek archaeologist.

Sure enough, evidence of looting abounded. As he reported back to the Greek Archaeological Service, on whose permit he had been surveying the Greek Cycladic islands, smashed marble statues and bowls and broken pottery lay scattered over the hillside.

Despite the destruction, it was clear that the fragments were Early Cycladic, an interesting find in itself. In fact, as he was to discover, he had also stumbled upon the first evidence of an astonishing Bronze Age ritual.

Broken bodies

A year later, the Greek Archaeological Service carried out a major recovery, finding fragments of a type of sculpture found previously mainly in Cycladic Bronze Age graves. ̽��ֱ��simplicity of these eerily beautiful figurines, with their folded arms, sloping feet and featureless faces, are said to have inspired Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore.

On Keros, however, apart from a single intact figurine, all others were broken. There were ‘body parts’ in their hundreds – an elongated foot, a single breast, a folded arm, a pair of thighs, a face – all jumbled together with broken bowls and pots.

When the ‘Keros Hoard’, a collection widely believed to be part of the looted material, appeared on the antiquities market in the 1970s and all the fragments were also broken, the mystery deepened. Was the site on Keros an ancient burial ground that, perhaps in haste, had been destroyed by looters, or was the site something else entirely?

A special deposit

A new opportunity to investigate came in 1987, when Renfrew, by then a Professor in the Department of Archaeology, and two Greek archaeologists were permitted to excavate and survey the looted area, which they called Special Deposit North. “We recovered great quantities of broken material and yet as we excavated more we found no indications of tombs,” said Professor Renfrew.

Not only were the fragments not grave goods but the first of several astonishing features came to light, as Professor Renfrew explained: “As I studied the marble materials for publication, I realised that nearly all of the breakages seemed to be ancient and not the result of the looting. They had been deliberately broken before burial.”

“Although this excavation didn’t resolve the puzzle, it did emphasise how rich the site was and how puzzling.” ̽��ֱ��archaeologists felt sure that more light would be shed by the investigation both of an area a few hundred metres further south that also seemed to be a Special Deposit and of the tiny steep-sided islet of Dhaskalio that lay 80 metres offshore from Keros.

Return to Keros

It was another two decades before Professor Renfrew was able to return, this time for three seasons of excavation, ending in 2008, and with an international team of almost 30 experts. ̽��ֱ��post-excavation analyses of the finds are now nearing conclusion.

In the first year, the Cambridge–Keros project team excavated at the southern site and confirmed the presence of another Special Deposit, but this time undisturbed by looters. Many of the materials were bundled together in small pits up to two metres in diameter. ̽��ֱ��breakages were old and deliberate. Moreover, the absence of marble chips, expected in the case of breakages on the spot, showed the fragments had been broken elsewhere. As later radiocarbon dating confirmed, they had been deposited over a 500-year period from 2800 BC to 2300 BC.

“But the strangest finding of all was that hardly any of the fragments of the 500-odd figurines and 2,500 marble vessels joined together,” said Professor Renfrew. “This was a very interesting discovery. ̽��ֱ��only conclusion we could come to was that these special materials were broken on other islands and single pieces of each figurine, bowl or pot were brought by generations of Cycladic islanders to Keros.”

Bronze Age guesthouse?

Meanwhile, across the short stretch of water to Dhaskalio, a very different picture was emerging. From the outset, the islet showed evidence of having been a major Bronze Age stronghold with structures built on carefully prepared terraces circling a summit, on which a large hall was erected. ̽��ֱ��settlement dates from around the time of the Special Deposits, and then continued to operate before being abandoned around 2200 BC.

Examination of its geology showed that the beautifully regular walling of the settlement was imported marble rather than the flaky local limestone found on Keros. Remarkably, in the same era that the pyramids were being built and Stonehenge was being erected, Cycladic islanders were shipping large quantities of building materials, probably by raft, over considerable distances to build Dhaskalio.

Here, too, there were puzzling finds: a stash of about 500 egg-shaped pebbles at the summit and stone discs found everywhere across the settlement. And, although there was evidence that the olive and vine were well known to the inhabitants of Dhaskalio, the terrain there and on Keros could never have supported the large population the scale of the site implies, suggesting that food also was imported.

One answer is to hypothesise a largely transient population. Several strands make this plausible, as Dr Michael Boyd, who is collating the results of the post-excavation analyses, explained: “Archaeobotanical evidence implies that the site was not intensively occupied year-round, and the imported pottery and materials suggest the possibility of groups coming seasonally from elsewhere.”

“A possible attractor to the site,” he added, “would of course be the Special Deposit on the immediately opposite shore.” In fact, team geologists believe that Dhaskalio and Keros were probably one land mass during the Early Bronze Age and that tectonic movement and rising sea levels created the divide.

Sanctuary

As the team members conclude their analyses of the finds, all indications point towards Keros having been a major ritual centre of the Cycladic civilisation. “We believe that the breaking of the statues and other goods was a ritual and that Keros was chosen as a sanctuary to preserve the effects,” said Professor Renfrew.

He speculates that the objects were used repeatedly in rituals in the home islands, perhaps carried in ritual processions in much the same way that icons are paraded today in Greek villages: “They had a use-life, probably being painted and repainted from year to year. Perhaps the convention was that when a figure had reached the end of its use-life, it could not simply be thrown away or used conventionally, it needed to be desanctified in an elaborate process.”

“Strangely,” he added, “there seems to have been some obligation to bring a piece of the broken figure and deposit it on what must have been the sacred island of Keros, possibly staying a few days on Dhaskalio while the ceremony was completed.” ̽��ֱ��missing pieces of the statues, bowls and pottery have never been located on other islands, and Professor Renfrew wonders if they were thrown into the sea during transit and have long since disintegrated.

This wouldn’t be the first time a sanctuary has been identified in the Greek islands - Delphi, Olympia and Delos, for instance – but it would be the earliest by about 2,000 years and certainly the most mysterious.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge–Keros project was authorised by the Greek Archaeological Service and supported by the British School at Athens, with funding from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Society of Antiquaries of London, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, British Academy, Leventis Foundation and Leverhulme Trust. For more information, please visit

https://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/current-projects/keros-project

Why were Bronze Age figurines smashed, transported and buried in shallow pits on the Aegean island of Keros? New research sheds light on a 4,500-year-old mystery.

I realised that nearly all of the breakages seemed to be ancient and not the result of the looting. For some reason, all of the objects had been deliberately broken before burial.

Professor Colin Renfrew

Cambridge-Keros Project

Fragments of figurines found on Keros

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