The Archaeological Museum of Heraklion will present on Wednesday 25 June 2025 a lecture as part of the temporary exhibition EKATOMPOLIS: The World of Archaic Crete.
The speaker will be Didier Viviers, Professor of Ancient Greek History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Brussels and co-director of archaeological research in Itano. Professor Viviers will talk to us about the major social and political changes that Crete experienced in the Archaic period, starting with the impressive new finds from the Itanos.
From communal burials and ritual meals to the imprint of natural phenomena on people’s lives, the lecture reveals an unknown side of Archaic Crete. And perhaps most unexpected: an environmental factor, a natural disaster, seems to have contributed to the radical transformations of the era.
The lecture sheds light on a period long considered ‘silent’ and invites us to see how society, memory and nature intertwine in a fascinating narrative from ancient Crete.
What happens when the ancient cities of Crete change radically in the 6th century BC and what role might natural disasters have played in this?
Date: Wednesday 25 June 2025
Time: 19:00
Venue: Archaeological Museum of Heraklion – Lecture Hall
Admission free
The lecture will be broadcast live via the Museum’s YouTube channel.
ΒΙΟ
Prof. Didier Viviers is Professor of Ancient Greek History and Classical Archaeology at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and, since 2018, President (Permanent Secretary) of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts, as well as Secretary General of the International Academic Union (Union Académique Internationale). He was Rector of ULB (2010-2016) and currently holds positions at leading research institutions. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the FRS-FNRS (Belgium) and the Scientific Council of the Casa de Velázquez (Madrid), and chairs the Scientific Committee of the French School of Athens. He has been appointed Honorary Professor of Beijing University (Beijing, China) and Honorary Doctorate of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
A historian and archaeologist, his research work focuses on the Greek Mediterranean area during the 1st millennium BC, with an approach that combines a variety of sources: philological, epigraphic, archaeological and art history. He has published extensively in the fields of ancient history, classical archaeology and cultural heritage management. Among his recent works is the edited volume “Le Monde des Grecs au VIe siècle av. J.-C.”, in collaboration with Fr. Prost and J.-M. Roubineau. As a field archaeologist, he has directed excavations in Thassos and was director of the excavation of Apamea in Syria. He is currently co-directing the excavation of Itanos (Crete).
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