Greek archaeology: theoretical developments over the last 40 years Sofia Voutsaki Introduction Classical archaeology is often perceived as a self-contained, introverted and conservative discipline, concerned mostly with high culture, monumental temples, artistic master- pieces and the urban elites. This perception of classical archaeology as separate and different from the rest of the archaeological discipline is reinforced (and reproduced) by the institutional separation between classical archaeology and other sub-fields, usually local prehistory or medieval archaeology. This conceptual and institutional gap is usually referred to as Renfrew’s ‘Great Divide’. 1 I would like to argue in this paper that the ‘Great Divide’ has been bridged over the last 40 years, during which classical archaeology has undergone pervasive changes. To start with, classical archaeology, and classical studies in general, are no longer privileged fields. The erosion of the ‘Classical Ideal’ already at the end of the 19th century, the onset of modernism during the 20th century, the abuse of classical ideas by fascism (from Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy to the Greek junta (1967-1974)) had already brought about a reaction against what was becoming a body of stale and conservative ideas, used to uphold authoritarian regimes. Most recently, debates within the discipline, triggered by femi- nist 2 , post-colonial 3 , or post-structuralist critique 4 have revealed how classical scholarship had distorted and mythologized the classical past in order to maintain the dom- inant ideology of male / white / bourgeois supremacy, but also, in a more narrow sense, in order to defend and maintain its position in the academic establishment. The notion of the ‘Great Divide’ further implies that clas- sical archaeology is an internally homogeneous field. Noth- ing could be further from the truth. How could classical archaeology possibly be a unified body of knowledge, if it encompasses a millennium of human history, diverse geo- graphical settings and deeply dissimilar political formations ranging from minute Archaic poleis to the Roman Empire? How could it be homogeneous when it operates across differ- ent academic, national and archaeological traditions? Precisely because of its internal heterogeneity classical archaeology has opened itself gradually to different influ- ences. As I will discuss in the rest of the paper, classical archaeology is being transformed under the influence of pre- historic archaeology (and indirectly the influence of anthro- pology and social theory in general). New methods and theories are being adopted and adapted to suit the particular circumstances and opportunities provided by the wealth of data available in the classical world. Influences are also com- ing from other directions, particularly from ancient history in all its different guises, i.e. from economic 5 , social 6 and cultural history. 7 Most interestingly, classical archaeology itself exerts influ- ences on other fields. For instance, the debates surrounding attitudes to death 8 , gender 9 or ethnicity 10 in the classical world – to give just a few examples – are by far more sophis- ticated than the equivalent discussions in prehistoric archae- ology. As a result, classical archaeologists nowadays feature more often than ever in general theoretical discussions. 11 Conversely, ancient historians are becoming more and more aware of the significance and usefulness of archaeological data. It is impossible nowadays to discuss city and country- 21 1 Renfrew 1980. 2 E.g. Fantham et al. 1994. 3 Bernal 1987. 4 Larmour et al. 1997. 5 Scheidel et al. 2007. 6 Wallace-Hadrill 2008. 7 Cartledge 1993. 8 Morris 1992. 9 Loraux 1995. 10 Hall 2002. 11 See references to Morris 1992 by Parker Pearson 1993: 205. TMA jaargang 20 (2008), nr. 40 Voutsaki, pp. 21-28