Ancient Monuments and Modern Identities: A Critical History of Archaeology in 19th and 20th Century Greece ed. by Sofia Voutsaki and Paul Cartledge (review)

Ancient Monuments and Modern Identities is a valuable work for academics and students of classical archaeology, providing a nuanced and multifaceted investigation of the use and impact of Greek archaeology on modern and contemporary European identity. The volume manages to be at once pleasant to read, historically informative, and critically elucidating, without overbearing or heavy-handed authorial perspectives on the processes investigated.

The association of ancient Greek art and archaeology, particularly of the Classical period, with the legitimation of power structures, national identities, and cultural markers is no new observation. The value of this interdisciplinary volume, however, is that Voutsaki and Cartledge have brought together a diverse—even somewhat eclectic—group of writers from a variety of backgrounds to prod, critique, and inspect this process in its many incorporations over the centuries.

A glance through the contributors list includes archaeologists, political scientists, an architect, and a lawyer. Each author in the volume lends a distinctive perspective, while avoiding the temptation to indulge in the particular jargon and esotericisms of their own fields. Every chapter begins afresh from a new vantage point and leads the reader to see the particular benefits of each alternative approach. Fortunately, each chapter is well annotated and is accompanied by its own references list, allowing the authors to overview the perspectives of their own field and provide resources for the interested, without needing to outline specifics in the body of the text. The book values richness in breadth over scrutiny of particulars.

The editors’ stated aim of the volume is the examination of the role archaeology has played in the natural and guided formation of national identity over the history of modern Greece (2). This aim should be taken more as a uniting theme than an imperative guideline, however, with several chapters discussing topics that can be seen as connected in only broad and tangential terms. It may be said that the volume would be just as useful to the historian of modern Europe as it is to the archaeologist.

Following an introductory chapter overviewing the themes and aims of the volume, Chapter 1 begins on traditional grounds: the analysis of painted Greek vases. With engaging writing selecting only the most salient moments to discuss, G. Ceserani deftly notes how the contemporary pedestalling of Greek vase painting was no sure thing (26). Rather, the contemporary belief in the exemplary artistic quality and value of these vases is contended to be the product of a fortuitous inter-weaving of public interest, scholarship, and economy. With the delicate touch that characterizes most of the authors in this volume, Ceserani’s argument is never an evaluative one—the argument is not that these vases ought not to be valued as they are, only that it is worth understanding the process by which this valuation was formed.

In Chapter 2, P. Matalas takes the reader on a self-described “ghost story.” Contrasting Sparta to the more monument-rich Athens (53), Matalas outlines how the “ghosts” of Sparta—the imagined phantoms of its historical peoples—have come to (re)populate the spare ruins of the classical city, and how, by their spectral influence on modern peoples, these phantoms impact modern-day decision making. Most dramatically, Matalas connects the romanticism of classical Sparta with the destruction of heritage, outlining how the selective veneration of historical periods causes in its wake the destruction of “less desirable” heritage—a theme touched on by many authors in the volume. The piece is fun and lives up to its promise of the excitement of a ghost story. It displays the vibrancy of an author who is eager to share his thoughts with his audience. However, the focus of this chapter is less on the impact of archaeology than that of European classical romanticism. There is only passing reference to actual archaeological...