Articles with keyword: Greece

This paper is written in a narrative style to enhance points made about different cultural stories. It compares Newfoundland author Al Pittman’s play, West Moon, with ancient monuments in Greece in order to underscore how important it is for different cultures to understand each other’s monuments and ruins. While there are no ancient ruins in Newfoundland comparable to those in Greece, the ruins spoken of in West Moon (the mostly deserted traditional outports, or fishing villages) carry an importance similarity to ancient Greek monuments. They speak of traditions, a connection between past and present, and cultural ways, and they ultimately make one aware of the importance of a culture. The paper considers how some cultures have oral “ruins” as much as oral continuance, the latter based on the passing down of stories, and how both oral and written monuments are equally important. Inevitably, this paper turns briefly to a consideration of today’s refugee crises and posits that the recognizing of cultural continuance and remnants of monuments (carried with people through memory and narrative) might help break down the hopeless divides between “us” and “them.”

Before the recent economic crisis, both in Greece and in Italy there was an extraordinary development in various kinds of urban activities. Some of them have considerably affected museums and archaeological sites and have made them more attractive to the new post-modern tourism of sensory and emotional character. The new Acropolis Museum in Athens was almost a symbol of this change, but also the new exhibition spaces in commercial centres and underground stations must be taken into account. In Italy a similar change occurred in some of its major towns, such as Rome, Turin, Naples, Cagliari and Reggio Calabria. The outbreak of the crisis has subsequently brought to a halt the proliferation of these initiatives and has induced critical reflections on what has happened and what may yet happen. Urban policies, gentrification and beautification processes must be reconsidered. It is no longer time for archaeology without finds and atmosphere without contents, accordingly to the post-modern model. However, the de-intellectualization of today’s societies obliges even the most serious scholars to take into account the potential of some forms of edutainment, such as living history and re-enactment, which up-to-now have been under-evaluated and despised by archaeologists and historians.