Excavation and Conservation of the Early Christian Basilica, Sanctuary of Zeus, Ancient Nemea

Nemea Greece

The multi-year project of the Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology (DAGRS), the Excavation and Conservation of the Early Christian Basilica, at the Sanctuary of Zeus in Ancient Nemea, Greece, continued in 2023. The center and east ends of the 5thc. CE building were investigated including the nave, aisles, and apse, had been excavated in the 1920s and 1960s. We recorded all of the walls and individual blocks by drawing, photographing, and 3D scanning.

(Re)Performing Death in the Mycenaean World

My dissertation uses Performance Theory as a tool to examine the three major innovations to mortuary practices which take place at the beginning of the Mycenaean period: the creation of new tomb types, the use of these tombs for multiple burials, and the transition from intramural to extramural cemeteries. In particular, I use the work of performance theorists such as Schechner, Schneider, Austin, Butler, and Taylor, to explore how these developments altered the Mycenaeans’ experience of and relationship to death, as well as the wider cultural and social impacts of these innovations.

TAPHOS. Tombs of Aidonia Preservation, Heritage, and explOration Synergasia

Tomb 102 in the lower cemetery. View of stomion entrance from the dromos.

The Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology excavated, in the 2017 season, at the Late Bronze Age site of Aidonia in Greece, in collaboration with the director of the Korinthian Ephorate of Antiquites, Dr. Konstantinos Kissas. Kim Shelton and her team of graduate and undergraduate students excavated three chamber tombs, one of which was heavily looted. The largest tomb contained seven primary burials, on the floor or in cists in the floor, within a collapsed bedrock chamber. The burials range in date from the 15th to the 13th centuries BCE.