Theodore Spyropoulos
Encyclopedia
Theodore Spyropoulos is a Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 archeologist who is also a regional official of Greece's Central Archaeological Council.

Excavations at Tanagra

At Tanagra
Tanagra
Tanagra is a town and a municipality north of Athens in Boeotia, Greece. The seat of the municipality is the town Schimatari. It is not far from Thebes, and it was noted in antiquity for the figurines named after it...

, Spyropoulos began excavating a large Mycenaean
Helladic period
Helladic is a modern archaeological term meant to identify a sequence of periods characterizing the culture of mainland ancient Greece during the Bronze Age. The term is commonly used in archaeology and art history...

 cemetery in 1968. Every year up until Spyropoulos moved to the ephorate at Sparta
Sparta
Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

, the excavation site yielded larnakes, pottery and terracottas. The chamber tombs uncovered were apparently in use from LH IIIA up until the end of LH IIIB and perhaps beyond.

Excavations near Thebes

Near Thebes
Thebes, Greece
Thebes is a city in Greece, situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain. It played an important role in Greek myth, as the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus and others...

, Spyropoulos excavated the supposed tomb of Amphion
Amphion
There are several characters named Amphion in Greek mythology:* Amphion, son of Zeus and Antiope, and twin brother of Zethus . Together they are famous for building Thebes. Amphion married Niobe, and killed himself after the loss of his wife and children at the hands of Apollo and Artemis...

 and Zethus between 1971 and 1973. He identified the structure of the tomb as a step-pyramid or ziggurat built during the 3rd millennium BC.

Excavations at Pellana

Spyropoulos discovered an alternative site for the palace of Menelaus
Menelaus
Menelaus may refer to;*Menelaus, one of the two most known Atrides, a king of Sparta and son of Atreus and Aerope*Menelaus on the Moon, named after Menelaus of Alexandria.*Menelaus , brother of Ptolemy I Soter...

 at Pellana
Pellana
Pellana , was a city of Laconia, on the Eurotas river, and on the road from Sparta to Arcadia....

 located 25 kilometers north of Sparta. The site itself is near a series of large Mycenean chamber tombs. This has led Spyropoulos to believe that his excavations uncovered the lost Homeric capital of Laconia
Laconia
Laconia , also known as Lacedaemonia, is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the southeastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. Its administrative capital is Sparti...

. The palace itself is 32 meters by 14 meters and is dated to around 1200 BC. Cyclopean walls surround the palace and a wide road leads up to the entrance. During Antiquity, the tombs were all plundered. However, the palace was unscathed since it yielded jewelry, wall paintings, pottery, and a plethora of Linear B
Linear B
Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...

 tablets. Currently, there exists a major clash of interpretation between Spyropoulos and members of the British School at Athens
British School at Athens
The British School at Athens is one of the 17 Foreign Archaeological Institutes in Athens, Greece.-General information:The School was founded in 1886 as the fourth such institution in Greece...

. The former believes that Pellana was the Mycenean capital of Laconia and the latter believe that the Menelaion was the capital.

Sources

  • Carter, Jane Burr and Morris, Sarah P. The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule. University of Texas Press, 1995. ISBN 0292712081
  • Castleden, Rodney. Mycenaeans. Routledge, 2005. ISBN 0415249236
  • Fagan, Garrett G. Archaeological Fantasies: How pseudoarchaeology misrepresents the past and misleads the public. Routledge, 2006. ISBN 0415305934
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