Dimitri Nakassis

@dimitrinakassis.bsky.social

1280 Followers 565 Following

Greek archaeologist, Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder; Michigan (BA 1997) & Texas (PhD 2006) grad

text from an article by AC Hogarth, "Common sense in archaeology" Antiquity XLVI 1972: "most of all is caution needed when adopting techniques from America"
Odysseus and his dog Argos as a puppy in the trailer for Nolan's Odyssey
Looking towards Chaco from Pueblo Pintado
Greek 1000 drachma bank note
Screenshot: Google books search of "mycenaean sword" yields result of book in preview mode
A rental car mostly driven into a ditch
Cover of "How to Hide an Empire" by Daniel Immerwahr
What are your ethnic origins or ancestry? Select all geographic areas from which your ancestors first originated. * Western Europe *Eastern Europe *North Afrida *Sub-Saharan Africa *West Asia/Middle East *South and Southeast ASia *East and Central Asia *Pacific/Oceania *North America *Central America and Carribean *South America *Self describe *I prefer not to disclose
"No city-state, no community of peers could have emerged out of that environment. The system was perhaps similar to the collectivized farm in modern authoritarian communist societies. Although some private land must have been outside of palatial control, we can be sure the majority of crops was always in the hands of Mycenean [sic] overlords. Wealth was not widely distributed. Food production was tightly controlled. Social life was highly regimented. These conditions of complexity made the entire system both resistant to needed reform and extremely vulnerable to outside challenge."
University of Colorado Boulder Classics 2025 newsletter (photograph of Pompeii)
Photo of article about Assemblage Theory that refers to Delouse and Guitar
The table of contents for AJA 118.3
ra-pi in Linear B
hat
Photo of the ancient sekoma at Messene
A man on a motorcycle rescuing a sheep from a wildfire in Greece
For history can also be generalized: in Greek, the definite article-prefix (i.e. i istoria, "history in general") implies a conflation so total, so schematic, that it is in fact entirely ahistorical. The same argument that excludes certain folksongs from scholarly collections because they are "just about local events" also means that they are not "historical": they do not serve the national entity, but, on the contrary, treacherously reveal its internal fragmentation.
Picture of the book "The Beautiful script: deciphering a lost language"
"[Bret] Stephens: I’d say the lowest-quality institutions created since the 1990s have names like Columbia and Berkeley — these are essentially factories of Maoist cadres taught by professors whose political views ranged almost exclusively from the left to the far left."
Cover of "Ethics in Archaeological Practice" edited by Sarah Kielt Costello and Sarah Lepinski
The cover of the book "Hellas China One Culture" Part Two by Theresa Mitsopoulou
"Key Historical Events: The land that is now Greece was first inhabited between 2000–1700 BC by tribes from the North. This period was followed by the Mycenaean Civilization which was overthrown by the Dorians at the end of the 12th century BC. Its dominant citadels were at Tiryns and Mycenae. What little is known about this period is from stories such as those by Homer written in the 9th or 8th century BC."
Powerpoint slide entitled "The insanity of archaeologists" with the text: * Lerna volume III = "The pottery of Lerna IV" * Lerna volume IV = "The architecture, stratification, and pottery of Lerna III" * Lerna volume VI = "The settlement and architecture of Lerna IV"
A snowy trail leading up towards the Flatirons at Chautauqua Park in Boulder Colorado
Sweet wine by the Glass Parparousis Muscat de Rio Patras Penelopese (six) Greece 2019 18
Book cover, "The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-princes of Mycenaean Greece"
Statue of Drunken old woman at Munich Glyptothek
Table 4.3 in the new Docs: numbers without explanation
"Map of Crete showing where ruins of Minoan palaces have been found": full of mistakes. There is no palace (yet) at "Viannus" or "Amari" or "Myrios" or "Diaskari" or "Palaikastro" or "Stavromenos" and no indications of palaces at Galatas or Archanes
Herm from Delphi with inscription in Greek
A bottle with a label "Zaro's natürliches mineral wasser" with a clear liquid
"Identity, oppression, and diversity in archaeology: career arcs" by Laura Heath-Stout
Franklin Hess · Indiana University, Bloomington · Souvlaki as Style: The Cultural and Political Significance of Greek Street Food, from the Metapolitevsi to the Present
Dimitri spelled out with satellite images
Picture of two books: "Analytical archaeologist" and "The Alternative"
"The narrative function of periodization extends back thousands of years; it is a way of giving meaning to history, from Hesiod’s five ages of Man (sic) to the conjectural histories of the Enlightenment."
The hilly western Argolid, looking north towards Megalovouni (left) and Malandreni (right)
"To all those still engaged in creating or maintaining the polis, more inclusive than Solon's, but still threatened by the negative reciprocity of violence, by the positive reciprocity of powerful networks, and by the unlimited accumulation of private wealth" [Solon fragment 4 quoted in Greek]
The Malia bee pendant
A sofa with two snowboards attached on the back of a pickup truck
Canadian flag
The cover of Naoíse Mac Sweeney, "The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives"
Takis Tsoukalas doing a double mountza