The Emergence of States and Social Complexity in Greece: The Pylos Excavation Project

FAIN: RZ-50866-08

University of Missouri, St. Louis (St. Louis, MO 63121)
Michael Basil Cosmopoulos (Project Director: November 2007 to July 2009)
Michael L. Galaty (Project Director: July 2009 to December 2009)
Michael Basil Cosmopoulos (Project Director: January 2010 to June 2012)

Excavation, technical analysis, and interpretation of archaeological finds at Bronze-Age Iklaina on the southern Peloponnesus. (36 months)

The project examines the emergence of states and social complexity in Greece, through a systematic interdisciplinary investigation of the earliest recorded state, that of Pylos. We seek to analyze the specific mechanisms that led to the unification of regional centers of power (chiefdoms) into the centralized state of Pylos during the beginning of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1600-1100 BC). This will be done through the study of one of those chiefdoms-turned districts of the state of Pylos and its relation to the main capital of the state.

Media Coverage

RZ5086608 (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Amanda Summer
Publication: Archaeology
Date: 7/1/2012
Abstract: At the site of Iklaina, in Pylos, on Greece’s southwestern Peloponnese, excavations directed by Michael Cosmopoulos of the University of Missouri, St. Louis, are revealing new evidence of how the Mycenaean state functioned during the period from approximately 1650 to 1100 B.C., a time famous for such mythical sagas as the Trojan War.
URL: http://www.archaeology.org/1207/features/iklaina_pylos_greece_mycenean_state.html