You are invited to an IIHSA Online Lecture on October 27th, 2022 at 5.30 pm (Irish time) / 7.30 pm (Greek time) by Mnemosyne Rice (Trinity College Dublin).

The ‘discovery’ of Minoan civilisation at the beginning of the twentieth century came at a unique political moment in 1909, when powerful states (Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and the United States) established ‘administrative’ presences on the island. Corresponding archaeological schools operated against this colonial backdrop. This political situation allowed for Minoan artefacts to be exported from the island to foreign museum collections almost as soon as excavation began. The acquisition of Minoan artefacts by museums in the major cities of the colonial powers has influenced the display of that material and its impact. Despite this clear influence, no in-depth, diachronic analysis of the dispersal and display of Minoan material in different museums has been attempted, nor has there been systematic study of trends in those exhibitions. This paper will begin to fill that gap in scholarship, by employing a postcolonial approach which is indispensable to such a study. Specifically, the paper focuses on the early period of collection of Minoan artefacts in the British and Ashmolean Museums, from the very end of the nineteenth century to the period after the First World War.

The lecture is co-hosted by the Department of Classics, Trinity College Dublin.