Archaeology Matters: British School In Athens

Wednesday, 24 February 2010

Athens Bench Mark

A collaborative initiative of ‘The World of Athens‘ with the City of Athens united in the effort to change the benches of Athens and help improve city life!

Athens Bench Mark is comprised of two competitions and a volunteer program:

The first competition is the Athens Bench Mark industrial design contest sure to give a makeover of new benches throughout the city. The public will view and vote for the best 100 proposals and a jury will decide the final three works whose creators will receive cash and prizes. At least one project will be implemented and produced en masse to gear up Athens for the change!

The second competition is a visual arts competition called Future Bench, where artistic imagination runs rapid. Fifty (50) projects will be voted by the public whose art works will be showcased in the great art exhibition Future Bench! The artistic work rated most popular will receive the Audience Award of the Future Bench. Cash prizes will be awarded to the top three winners selected by an evaluating committee.

The Volunteer Program of Athens Bench Mark concerns all those who love Greece and believe that citizen participation is the way to a better life in our city. City technicians will organize and guide teams to refurbish old benches into new.

Your opinion counts! With a simple and brief registration process, everyone can take part in votes that will reward the creators and show off new benches in Athens.

ANNUAL OPEN MEETING OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL IN ATHENS

ANNUAL OPEN MEETING OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL IN ATHENS (23.02.2010)

Researches on the hill of Kefalas (Κεφαλάς) of Knossos revealed findings from the most ancient rural habitation in Greece and maybe in Europe, dated between 7000 and 6400 B.C. The finds were presented by the director of the British School in Athens, Professor Catherine Morgan during the annual open meeting of the School in the building of the Archaeological Society.

The discovery was made using high technology radars and working with Dutch scientists during research which had started in May 2009 aiming to map and visualise archaeological and geological remains in the Knossos region.

Professor Morgan also presented the finds from similar research conducted on the isle of Keros in the Cyclades and more precisely on the Dhaskalio settlement which flourished during the early Bronze Age (see Keros Cambridge Project), on Kavos of Kerkyra (Corfu), in Thessaly, on Kythera and Antikythera.

Professor Morgan also spoke of the archaeological research conducted on the island of Aigina, where, as she noted, the making of clay vessels flourished from the Bronze Age till the 1960’s because of the natural resources and the commercial potential of the island. Today only a single family continues this five millennia-old tradition.

The Professor of History of Art of the University of Londor, Robin Cormack was the guest of honour. Professor Cormack spoke on the influence of Byzantium on the culture of the British Empire (“Byzantium in the British Empire: the architects of the Byzantine Research Fund overseas”). As an example he used Walter Sykes George, who worked between 1906 and 1911 for the British School in Athens and participated in digs and the restoration of ancient and byzantine monuments in Greece.

Sykes was one of the designers of the city of New Delhi and was especially influenced by Byzantine Architecture and his whole experience in Greece.

Mr Cormack also spoke of Robert Weir Schultz and his colleague and co-worker Sidney Barnsley, who both came to Greece with a scholarship for Byzantine studies. Schultz, deeply influences by his studies in Greece built the Cathedral of Hartoum in Sudan following the plan of Ag. Demetrios in Thesalonike.