Some areas of the territory of present-day Greece were under Ottoman rule for more than 500 years. To date, the study of this period has largely been neglected, with academic research generally focused on Prehistoric and ancient Greece. However, over the course of the last 20 years, there have been noteworthy developments in the study of the Ottoman history and archaeology of Greece. This paper has two aims: (1) to summarize research conducted in the fields of Ottoman archaeology and material culture in Greece, focusing on demographics, settlement layouts and ceramics, particularly table wares; and (2) to present recent efforts to record and protect the Ottoman monuments of Greece.

This overview discusses the recent scholarly literature on Greek terracottas of the first millennium BC. Figurative terracottas, once seen as meaningless trinkets, are now given their full meaning through rigorous study and anthropological approaches. Perhaps the most explicit and universal source on the piety of a great number of people, they now contribute decisively to the archaeology of religion, particularly in the field of votive and funerary practices. At the same time, research on figurative terracottas, renewed by a technological approach, reveals a craft that is surprisingly modern in its manufacturing and distribution processes.

This article, covering the roughly decade-long ‘Greek crisis’ (2008–2018), uses official statistics in order to examine the effects the prolonged recession has had on archaeology in Greece. As the data show, although revenues from museums and archaeological sites have risen considerably (a side effect of ‘crisis tourism’, among other factors), state spending on archaeological research is insufficient. Furthermore, the steady collapse of the state apparatus during this long decade has seriously affected archaeology and the ways it is practised in the country, ultimately leading to the loss of an entire generation of Greek archaeologists.

This paper provides a brief overview of the history and main achievements of archaeobotanical work in Greece to date, with the aim of highlighting its potential and creating a framework in which future work can be contextualized. The term “archaeobotany” is used here in its narrow sense, referring to the study of plant macroremains, such as seeds, fruits and other plant parts, and excluding charcoal studies or “anthracology” and analyses of microremains (for example pollen, phytoliths), which have developed to become separate subdisciplines.

It has been ten years since the publication of Lorenzo Lazzarini's monumental volume on the quarrying, use and properties of the coloured marbles of Greece: Poikiloi Lithoi, Versiculores Maculae: I Marmi Colorati della Grecia Antica (Lazzarini 2007). The first study since Angelina Dworakowska's Quarries in Ancient Greece (Dworakowska 1975) to attempt a large-scale examination of quarrying across Greece, Lazzarini's approach is fundamentally an archaeometric one. Analysis of the evidence for quarrying in different regions is set alongside minero-petrographic and geochemical analyses of the materials extracted. Lazzarini focuses on 12 lithotypes: marmor lacedaemonium from Laconia, variously referred to as serpentino and porfido verde antico; three stone types from the Mani peninsula: rosso antico tenario, nero antico tenario and cipollino tenario; from Chios, the famous marmor chium or portasanta, breccia di Aleppo and nero antico chiota; the breccia di settebasi and semesanto of Skyros; the intensively exploited marmor carystium or cipollino verde, as well as the marmor chalcidicum or fior di pesco from Euboea; and from central and northern Greece, marmor thessalicum or verde antico and the breccia policroma della Vittoria. For each of these lithotypes, Lazzarini considers the evidence for their use and distribution, illustrated with a distribution map in each case, and provides a thorough overview of what is known about their quarries. Archaeological and geological approaches are here combined, and this is a hallmark of much recent work on the question of quarrying and stone use through Greek history.