Ghosts between the lines: local workers in Italian archaeological excavations in Crete (1899–1910)

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1899, the Italian Archaeological Mission was established in Crete, and soon became an important player in the rediscovery of Minoan and post-Minoan civilization. The paper analyses the relationships between the archaeologists of the Mission, directed by Federico Halbherr, and the local workforce through the key of imperial hierarchies. Thanks to diaries, excavation notebooks, private correspondence and images, the analysis sheds light on the perceptions archaeologists had of locally recruited workers. At the same time, it brings out the agency of the workers, trying to enlighten their relationships with the antiquities and their way of interacting with the archaeologists. By comparing Italian sources with those produced by other foreign archaeologists, the paper shows how this agency was silenced in the official discourse of archaeology, which incorporated the authority/subalternity and superiority/inferiority dichotomies elaborated on the excavation. After analysing the role of some local actors – such as Halbherr’s collaborator, Manoli Iliakis – the paper explores the popular narrative of Cretan archaeology, showing how the themes and images elaborated in Crete were proposed to the Italian public. Here again, the inferiorizing view of local actors, who were condemned to remain as ghosts between the lines of an archaeological discourse based on modernity and the hierarchies of imperialism, emerges.