Pharos 22(1), 1-8. doi: 10.2143/PHA.22.1.3284998 © 2016 by Pharos. All rights reserved. Greek iconographies: meandering paths to understanding images PANAGIOTIS P. IOSSIF WINFRED VAN DE PUT What do pictures want?* 1 It is only natural that methods of studying sculpture, coins, painted pottery or wall-painting are often dissimilar. The difference in material, size of the corpus and uses prompt different strategies and vantage points. But how do different archaeological sub-disciplines deal with the iconographic interpretation of their material? Are there common approaches, or does every class of material and every period know its own methods and interpretative preferences? In 2015, the Neth- erlands Institute at Athens and the Belgian School at Athens organized a lecture series around this question, inviting prominent scholars from different fields to reflect on their manner of interpretation. Some did so analytically, some by exam- ple, some by overview. The present issue of Pharos contains most of these lectures (Anne Chapin, Olga Palagia, Dimitris Paleothodoros and Eric Moormann), with the addition of a small number of essays discussing fields not covered by the lec- tures (Fritz Blakolmer, François de Callataÿ and John Ma). One answer to the question prompting this lecture series arose when we tried to merge the separate bibliographies, expecting a substantial overlap. We actually found only a couple of titles shared by two contributions out of about 500 titles in the combined bibliography. Needless to say we decided to keep the bibliogra- phies separate. This seems to indicate that the iconography of Minoan, Myce- naean, sculptured, numismatic imagery and of the depictions on pottery and walls indeed live if not in separate worlds, then at least in separate sections of the library. In spite of the obvious disparities, there are elements common to all approaches of iconography represented in this volume. 1 Mitchell 2005.