About the project
The ancient Greek city of Kalydon in Aetolia in western Greece is renowned for its rich mythological tradition, most significantly the myth of the Kalydonian Boar Hunt that was first mentioned in Homer’s Iliad in the 8th century Before the Common Era (Homer Il. 9.524-545).
The story relates how the goddess Artemis sent a monstrous boar to ravage the lands of the Kalydonians because king Oineus had neglected to give the costumery offerings. It took a hunting party led by the local prince Meleager with participants from all over the ancient Greek world to hunt down and kill the boar.
The sanctuary of Artemis in Kalydon was partially excavated in a Greek-Danish collaboration in the years from 1926 to 1935, but a larger part of the sanctuary remains archaeologically unexplored. Furthermore, many of the results of the old excavations remain unpublished and numerous old interpretations can today be radically revised.
This project undertakes a complete reinvestigation of the Artemis sanctuary’s topographical and historical development through systematic archaeological excavations, geophysical work, digital documentation, and modern scientific analysis. A major part of the project concerns the integration of almost a hundred-year-old legacy data with the results of modern investigative methodologies.
Aims
The overall aim of the project is to rewrite the historical development of the Artemis Laphria sanctuary and its religious, social, and economic importance for the ancient city and its catchment area. This includes discovering previously unknown buildings, monuments and other archaeological material through archaeological excavations and remote sensing techniques.
The project also aims to collect new data that will afford a re-contextualization of data collected in the 1920s and 1930s by, for instance, studying previous sampling biases and thereby increasing the analytical value of old data.
Another aim of the project is to find archaeological evidence for the crucial transitional period from the Mycenaean period of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600-1200 BCE) into the Greek Iron Age. The importance of the myth of the Kalydonian Boar Hunt in Homer’s poem implies that the site has a long history, an assumption that the project will test through targeted excavations.
In doing so, the project will address the question of the origin of the myth of the Kalydonian Boar Hunt and the role of mythology in early Greek societies.
Financing
Cooperation
The project is carried out in collaboration with
- Ephorate of Antiquities of Aetoloacarnania and Lefkada
- The Danish Institute at Athens
- University of Copenhagen, The Saxo Institute
- Aarhus University, Department of History and Classical Studies
- Eastern Atlas
- Architectural Firm N. Michaelides – E. Pangalou
Duration
01.01.21-31.12.25.