Malthi revisited. The (mis)fortunes of a fortified Bronze Age settlement in Messenia, Greece

Malthi is among the most completely excavated settlements dating to the Middle and Late Bronze Age in Mainland Greece. The wealth of information it yielded, however, is not reflected in scholarly discourse, where the settlement has been largely ignored due to its widely acknowledged misinterpretation by the original excavator. This lecture summarizes what went wrong, how such a scholarly blooper could have occurred, and what work is currently underway to salvage the significance of this settlement’s extensively exposed architecture and its associated finds. Malthi is important for our understanding of political geography in the early Mycenaean period and the incipient palatial economy of the Messenian state centered around Pylos.

This event is free and open to the public!