The State of Approaches to Archaeological Human Remains in Greece

Abstract

In this chapter, we trace the development of anthropological approaches to human skeletal remains in Greece, from their inception in the late nineteenth century to the proliferation of bioarchaeological studies in the 1990s to the present. The early work of European scholars in the region and the educational background of the first Greek scholars introduced nineteenth and early twentieth century European anthropology to Greece and shaped research and educational agendas until the 1970s. Beginning in the late 1930s and lasting well into the 1980s, the fundamental research of J.L. Angel was disseminated in the eastern Mediterranean, establishing the basis for bioarchaeology. Following political changes in the 1970s, institutional advancements in Greece accelerated. The study of human skeletal remains, originally anchored in the medical sciences, entered the curricula of other University departments such as biology, history and ethnology and archaeology. The presence of independent scholars, often supported by foreign schools of archaeology, has resulted in important contributions to bioarchaeological research in Greece. The management of human skeletal remains, inextricably linked to that of other archaeological finds, should advance through acknowledgment of the dual role of human skeletal remains in research and through the establishment and operation of open access research institutions for the study of these finds.