PhD students are invited to submit an application by February 28, 2025, consisting of:

• Cover letter explaining interest in the program;
• CV;
• 500-word abstract (in English) of a research paper related to the theme, to be presented in Greece and, once revised, in Princeton.

The theme of the 2025 PITHOS seminar is “Archaeology in Context: Media, Function, and Meaning.”

PITHOS 2025 will focus on three main axes of inquiry, each of which engages with how the past is studied, transmitted, and received: media (materials), function (use), and meaning (interpretation). Together with chronology, these three axes are critical to the construction of knowledge of the past and the study of archaeological remains in context.

• First, we will discuss material aspects of archaeological finds, the objects themselves. Taking a materialist-based approach to processes of making, we will ask how the physical remains of antiquity were designed, molded, and decorated. We will also consider the vast array of social and other factors that may have had an impact on the end product.
•  Second, we will examine groups of objects as assemblages, whether of ceramics, or metal, or stone.  We will ask how various media would collectively communicate specific ideas about the people who perceived, used, and experienced the objects in question.
•  Lastly, we will expand our chronological scope to consider the historiography of the Greek past.  By examining a range of media (archaeological photography, field books, drawings), we will discuss how knowledge of the past is generated and communicated in scholarship, teaching, museums, and popular culture, within the broader story of humanistic inquiry. 

The application should be sent as a combined pdf to your university representative:

Ioannina: Professor Vlachopoulos, [email protected]
Princeton: Professor Laferrière, [email protected]
Thessaly: Professor Lolos, [email protected]

Each application will be reviewed by a committee consisting of faculty from all three universities.