Jack Davis | |
|---|---|
 Jack L. Davis | |
| Born | Jack Lee Davis August 13, 1950 |
| Nationality | American, Irish |
| Occupation | Classical archaeologist |
| Spouse | Sharon R. Stocker |
Jack L. Davis (born August 13, 1950) is Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio and is a former Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. [1]
Jack L. Davis has directed or co-directed regional archaeological projects in several areas of Greece, including the Nemea Valley, the island of Keos, and Messenia near the Palace of Nestor (Pylos Regional Archaeological Project). In addition he has directed regional studies and excavations in Albania in the hinterlands of the ancient Greek colonies of Dyrrachium/Epidamnos and Apollonia. Davis is a recognized authority in the archaeology of the Aegean Islands. He has published reports on excavations on the islands of Keos (at Ayia Irini) and Melos (at Phylakopi).
Davis is the author of "Review of Aegean Prehistory: The Islands of the Aegean" in Aegean Prehistory: A Review, a collection of papers edited by Tracey Cullen for the Archaeological Institute of America. He has also contributed to the Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age (2008) and to the Oxford Handbook of Aegean Prehistory (2010). In addition to prehistoric topics his research interests include the history and archaeology of Greece in the Ottoman and early modern periods and the relationship between the history of Classical archaeology and national movements in the Balkans. He is an occasional contributor to "The Archivist's Notebook." [2]
Davis is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute, and has served on advisory boards of the American Journal of Archaeology, Hesperia, and Sheffield Studies in Aegean Prehistory, among other journals. Since 1993 his primary academic appointment has been in the Department of Classics of the University of Cincinnati, where he is Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology. From 2007-2012 he was on leave from that post to direct the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece. In 2012 he was elected to the Institutional Council of the National and Capodistrian University of Athens. In 2016 he was a co-recipient of the Premio Giuseppe Scicca in Archaeology, jointly with Sharon R. Stocker. In 2017 he received the medal for Special Civil Merits from the Republic of Albania. [3] He has been awarded the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement for 2020 by the Archaeological Institute of America. [4] In 2021 Davis was made a Commander of the Order of the Phoenix (Greece) by the President of Greece. [5] He has been an honorary member of the Archaeological Society at Athens since 2021.
Davis completed his undergraduate education at the University of Akron in 1972, where he first studied public speaking, theater, and radio broadcasting, then Latin, Greek, ancient Egyptian history and language, and ancient history. In the autumn of 1972, he began post-graduate studies at the University of Cincinnati under the supervision of John L. Caskey and Gerald Cadogan. As a student he had the opportunity to work with Cadogan at Knossos and with Caskey at Ayia Irini on the Cycladic island of Keos.
From 1974-76, Davis was in Greece, as a student at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, where he held in successive years the James Rignall Wheeler and Eugene Vanderpool fellowships. In Athens he met John Cherry, then a graduate student at the University of Southampton, and, through him, later had the opportunity to study finds from the recent British excavations at Phylakopi on the Cycladic island of Melos and to learn the methods and aims of systematic intensive archaeological surface survey.
After completing his Ph.D., Davis taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago until 1993, under the auspices of which, in the early 1980s, he organized two intensive surveys with Cherry, one on the island of Keos (1983-1984), the other in the Nemea Valley (1984-1989), as part of the Nemea Valley Archaeological Project, directed by James C. Wright of Bryn Mawr College. The results of the former, presented in a monograph co-authored with Eleni Mantzourani, constituted one of the first fully published presentations of the results of an intensive archaeological survey in the Mediterranean. [6]
At the same time, he completed publication of excavated finds from the later Middle Bronze Age at Ayia Irini. [7]
In 1990, Davis, together with colleagues from the Nemea and Keos surveys, organized the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project, an exploration of areas of the western Peloponnese near the Mycenaean Palace of Nestor at Pylos in the province of Messenia. The project was sponsored by the University of Cincinnati, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Michigan. Investigations were completed in 1996 and results have been extensively discussed in a series of articles in Hesperia, journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and in a book, Sandy Pylos (also available in Greek translation). [8] Most recently the results were reviewed in The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project: A Retrospective (American School of Classical Studies at Athens 2018).
In 1994, after joining the faculty of Classics at the University of Cincinnati, Davis and his wife, Sharon Stocker, traveled to Albania for the first time. In 1996, plans to begin an intensive archaeological survey in the hinterland of the Greek colony of Apollonia, co-directed with Muzafer Korkuti, director of the Institute of Archaeology in Tirana, were interrupted by the collapse of pyramid banking schemes and the ensuing chaos. Subsequently, fieldwork was conducted from 1998-2003 at Apollonia, in 2002 in the hinterland of Dyrrachium/Epidamnos, and the remains of a hitherto unknown Greek temple were investigated in three campaigns of excavation in 2004-2006. [9]
Problems in interpreting medieval and post-medieval archaeological remains led Davis to explore, together with colleagues Siriol Davies, Fariba Zarinebaf, and John Bennet, previously underexploited documentary sources that can be employed for reconstructing a social and economic history for Greece during periods of Venetian and Ottoman occupation, particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries. [10] [11]
While serving as director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Davis’s research was focused on analysis and publication of his fieldwork. He also continued to pursue the study of the institutional history of foreign schools of archaeology in Greece and assisted his wife in publishing unpublished finds from Carl W. Blegen’s excavations at the Palace of Nestor.
Since 2015, Davis and Stocker have directed renewed excavations at the Palace of Nestor, uncovering a Bronze Age shaft tomb, (later named the Griffin Warrior Tomb) on May 28, 2015. [12] In 2018 they discovered two new monumental beehive tombs at Pylos. [13]
Pylos, historically also known as Navarino, is a town and a former municipality in Messenia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform, it has been part of the municipality Pylos-Nestoras, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit. It was the capital of the former Pylia Province. It is the main harbour on the Bay of Navarino. Nearby villages include Gialova, Pyla, Elaiofyto, Schinolakka, and Palaionero. The town of Pylos has 2,345 inhabitants, the municipal unit of Pylos 5,287 (2011). The municipal unit has an area of 143.911 km2.
Cycladic culture was a Bronze Age culture found throughout the islands of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea. In chronological terms, it is a relative dating system for artifacts which serves as a roughly contemporary dating system to Helladic chronology and Minoan chronology (Crete) during the same period of time.
Helladic chronology is a relative dating system used in archaeology and art history. It complements the Minoan chronology scheme devised by Sir Arthur Evans for the categorisation of Bronze Age artefacts from the Minoan civilization within a historical framework. Whereas Minoan chronology is specific to Crete, the cultural and geographical scope of Helladic chronology is confined to mainland Greece during the same timespan. Similarly, a Cycladic chronology system is used for artifacts found in the Aegean islands. Archaeological evidence has shown that, broadly, civilisation developed concurrently across the whole region and so the three schemes complement each other chronologically. They are grouped together as "Aegean" in terms such as Aegean art and, rather more controversially, Aegean civilization.
Carl William Blegen was an American archaeologist who worked at the site of Pylos in Greece and Troy in modern-day Turkey. He directed the University of Cincinnati excavations of the mound of Hisarlik, the site of Troy, from 1932 to 1938.
The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) is one of 19 foreign archaeological institutes in Athens, Greece. It is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). CAORC is a private not-for-profit federation of independent overseas research centers that promote advanced research, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, with focus on the conservation and recording of cultural heritage and the understanding and interpretation of modern societies.
A heroön or heroon, also latinized as heroum, is a shrine dedicated to an ancient Greek or Roman hero and used for the commemoration or cult worship of the hero. They were often erected over his or her supposed tomb or cenotaph. They were erected from the time of archaic Greece to the Augustan Roman period, and as far afield as Ai-Khanoum in Afghanistan.
A Mycenaean chamber tomb is the type of chamber tomb that was built in Mycenaean Greece. Mycenaean chamber tombs originated in Messenia at the end of the Middle Helladic period, and were built and used throughout the Late Bronze Age across the Aegean area.
William Andrew "Bill" McDonald was a Canadian archaeologist.
The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project is a diachronic and multi-disciplinary archaeological expedition established in 1990. Its purpose is to study the history of prehistoric and historic settlement in southwestern Greece. The focus of the expedition entails surveying the Bronze Age administrative center known as the Palace of Nestor. Its directors were Professors Jack L. Davis, John Bennet, Susan E. Alcock, Cynthia Shelmerdine, and Yannis Lolos.
Elizabeth Denny Pierce Blegen was an American archaeologist, educator and writer. She excavated at sites in Greece and Cyprus, contributed reports on archaeological discoveries in Greece to the American Journal of Archaeology from 1925 to 1952, and was involved in several organisations promoting women's professional advancement in Greece and the United States.
Ida Carleton Hill was an American archaeologist, classical scholar and historian. Hill had a strong interest in the relationship between history, geography, and archaeology, which was reflected in her research and publications over her fifty-year career.
Marion Rawson was an American archaeologist. She is known for her work with Carl Blegen at Pylos in Greece and ancient Troy in modern Turkey. After her death, the University of Cincinnati established the Marion Rawson Professorship of Aegean Prehistory "in honor of her contributions to the field of Bronze Age Archaeology."
The Nemean baths are an athletic bathing house at the Panhellenic sanctuary of Nemea in the Argolis. The baths are located on the south most part of the Hellenistic complex. They are directly west of the similarly dated Xenon, which served as athlete's lodging.
Sharon (Shari) Stocker is an American archaeologist who is best known, along with her husband, archaeologist Jack L. Davis, for leading an international team of researchers who discovered a previously undisturbed tomb of a Bronze Age warrior in southwest Greece. The 3500 year old intact grave was named the Griffin Warrior Tomb by the research team during the initial excavation in May 2015.
The Griffin Warrior Tomb is a Bronze Age shaft tomb dating to around 1450 BC, near the ancient city of Pylos in Greece. The grave was discovered by a research team sponsored by the University of Cincinnati and led by husband-and-wife archaeologists Jack L. Davis and Sharon Stocker. The tomb site was excavated from May to October 2015.
Elizabeth Virginia Schofield (1935-2005) was a British-American archaeologist and classical scholar.
Richard "Dick" Hope Simpson (1930–2016) was a British Classical archaeologist, known for his work in archaeological survey and the study of Mycenaean Greece. For most of his career, he taught at Queen's University at Kingston in Kingston, Ontario.
The University of Minnesota Messenia Expedition (UMME) was an archaeological expedition in Messenia, Greece, conducted between 1953 and 1975. It was devised and begun by William McDonald, who also served as its director for most of its duration.
PY Ta 641, sometimes known as the Tripod Tablet, is a Mycenaean clay tablet inscribed in Linear B, currently displayed in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Discovered in the so-called 'Archives Complex' of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Messenia in June 1952 by the American archaeologist Carl Blegen, it has been described as "probably the most famous tablet of Linear B".
