24 Oct 2011

October + November 2011

24 October 2011 at 7:30 pm
Lemnos: The Story of a Greek Island
Professor Hector Williams
UBC Department of Classics

This illustrated talk will present the sprawling history and archaeology of the northern Aegean island of Lemnos from its 12,000 BC first inhabitants (among the earliest in the Greek islands) to its key role as an Allied base in the First World War campaign at Gallipoli. In between we'll see two of the largest and most important Early Bronze Age settlements in the Aegean at Myrrina and Poliochni with their well built houses and rich burials, the mysterious pre-Greek culture of the Pelasgi, the sprawling ancient theatre at the Greek capital of Hephaisteia, the strange cult of the Kabeiroi, and the castles of the Byzantine and Italian settlers of the Middle Ages. Professor Williams recently spent some time on Lemnos with the Italian excavators at Hephaisteia and will talk about their work too.



28 November 2011 at 7:30pm
Amorgόs
Gwyneth Lewis, Coordinator, Classical Studies
Langara College

Pirates and priests and politicians, refugees and exiles, lovers and scholars and monks and misogynists: since it was first settled more than 5000 years ago, the remote Cycladic island of Amorgόs has seen a tremendous variety of people arrive at its shores. The traces of some, like the Cycladic farmers, are to be found only in the landscape; of others, like Molly Mackenzie, an Ottawa woman who fell in love with the island and lived there into her nineties, only in the written record