By Catherine Curan

Nine graduate students working on topics in ancient Greek art and archaeology. 

Seven days at Princeton University sharing research, exploring collections of Hellenic material at Princeton University Library and the Department of Art & Archaeology, and enjoying fellowship at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies.

Twenty+ faculty, staff, and scholars from Princeton, the University of Ioannina, and the University of Thessaly. 

Twelve lectures by scholars and students on topics from Greek panel painting to burial sites to ancient pottery to Greek temples.

Two excursions to museums in Philadelphia and New York City. 

One visit to the Institute for Advanced Study to visit the Krateros project, the digital repository for the collections of three-dimensional, mirror image impressions of inscriptions.

The sum total? Innumerable opportunities for learning and fellowship at the fall 2024 session of PITHOS, the Seeger Center’s new program to foster collaboration and intellectual exchange among scholars of ancient Greek art and archaeology at Princeton, the University of Thessaly, and the University of Ioannina in Greece. (PITHOS stands for Princeton-Ioannina-Thessaly-On-site-Seminars, a contemporary repurposing of πὶθος, the Greek word for the large clay storage jars used in ancient Greece.) 

Launched in May 2023 at the Princeton Athens Center, PITHOS brings together an annual cohort of three graduate students from each of the participating universities. Each cohort has two meetings, a spring gathering in Greece and a fall seminar in Princeton. PITHOS is co-sponsored by the Seeger Center and the Department of Art & Archaeology. The theme for 2024 is “elite cultures.”

“The fall 2024 PITHOS seminar provided Princeton graduate students and their Greek counterparts a range of opportunities for collaborative learning and intellectual exchange. The Seeger Center was thrilled to host PITHOS on campus, fostering connections begun in Greece last May and strengthening our partnerships with Greek universities,” said Seeger Center Director Dimitri Gondicas, the 2022-25 Princeton coordinator of PITHOS.

Samuel Holzman, associate professor of Art & Archaeology and Hellenic Studies, serves as the 2023-24 coordinator, and Carolyn M. Laferrière, associate curator of ancient Mediterranean art at the Princeton University Art Museum, will serve as coordinator for 2024-25. 

“PITHOS is a mutually beneficial exchange that offers our graduate students the opportunity to workshop papers based on their dissertation research, building professional networks between Greece and the United States,” said Holzman. 

Faculty from Greece included Alexandra Alexandridou, assistant professor of classical archaeology in the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Ioannina, and Yannis A. Lolos, associate professor of classical archaeology in the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology at the University of Thessaly, and a 2022-25 PITHOS coordinator.

The 2024 student cohort included:

• Princeton University, Department of Art & Archaeology: Mark Paul, Eirini Spyropoulou and Robert Yancey
• University of Ioannina: Maria Giamalidi, Maria Lazopoulou and Artemis Maniaki 
• University of Thessaly: Maria Niarou, Dimitrios Papadimitriou and Maria-Chrysoula Staikou

On Monday, September 30, the Seeger Center welcomed participants with a mid-morning reception at Scheide Caldwell House. That afternoon, Alexandra Alexandridou gave the opening lecture, “The Early ‘Biography’ of the Temenos on the Island of Despotiko. Paving the Route to the Consolidation of Cult in the Cyclades,” followed by a reception.

“We enjoyed the Seeger Center’s hospitality and warmth, and the positive atmosphere that made us feel welcome and at home,” said Alexandridou. 

A full program on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday began with students presenting their research. Each day, one student from each participating university gave a lecture, incorporating feedback from the May PITHOS gathering. 

For her Princeton presentation, Artemis Maniaki delved more deeply into written sources, iconography and the society of the early modern age than she had during her first PITHOS presentation in Greece. Maniaki said she valued the exchange of knowledge and the positive feedback she received, noting that the 2024 PITHOS theme “aligned perfectly” with her Ph.D. research into “Distinguished Female Burials of the Early Iron Age Aegean.”

Maria Giamalidi observed that Princeton’s doctoral candidates took a more theoretical approach to their topics than the Greek students did. 

“This reflects differential access to primary excavation material, as well as different academic education in general. This difference is a fundamental element of the PITHOS program, as it brings us into contact with different perspectives on study and work,” said Giamalidi. 

That afternoon, PITHOS participants visited the numismatics collection at Princeton University Library. Curator of Numismatics Alan Stahl discussed the University’s academic collection of roughly 115,000 items and provided students and scholars with an opportunity to handle some coins. 

A visit to the Visual Resources Collection at the Department of Art & Archaeology was another highlight. Visual Resources Collection director Julia Gearhart showed the group a broad range of archival material. The selection spanned drawings and notebooks from Howard Crosby Butler’s expeditions to Syria – including account books and sherds from the excavation of Antioch-on-the-Orontes – historic photographs of sites in Greece, drawings from the Athenian Agora excavations that are part of the Homer A. Thompson collection, and a 1960s-era scrapbook from one of the Swedish members of the excavation of Morgantina in Sicily.

As the seminar drew to a close, the group visited the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia, PA. They toured the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) with Director Marie-Claude Boileau and Vanessa Workman, teaching specialist for archaeometallurgy. (CAAM is a collaboration between the Penn Museum and the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences.)

The fall 2024 PITHOS seminar culminated in a trip to Manhattan to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

“The second part of PITHOS was as unforgettable as the first! During our visits to the Institute for Advanced Study, Firestone Library, and Visual Resources, we had the chance to explore the extensive resources available at Princeton University, while our trips to the Penn and the Met museums allowed us to observe how major collections are curated and to encounter remnants of material culture that are not accessible in Greece,” said Eirini Spyropoulou.

“PITHOS offered us a truly holistic experience, blending a deep focus on archaeology and the ancient Greek world with enriching insights into American culture, history, architecture, and of course, food!”