John Papadimitriou

John K. Papadimitriou
Ιωάννης Κ. Παπαδημητρίου
During the excavation of Grave Circle B at Mycenae, 1953
Born	September 4 [O.S. August 22] 1904 Skyros
Died	April 11, 1963(1963-04-11) (aged 58) Athens
Occupation	Archaeologist
Awards	Gold Cross of the Order of George I
Academic background
Education	University of Athens Humboldt University of Berlin
Thesis	Αἰ λευκαὶ λήκυθοι τοῦ ζωγράφου τοῦ Χάρωνος (The White-Ground Lekythoi of the Charon Painter) (1946)
Academic work
Institutions	University of Athens Greek Archaeological Service

John K. Papadimitriou (Greek: Ιωάννης Κ. Παπαδημητρίου, romanized: Ioannis K. Papadimitriou; September 4 [O.S. August 22] 1904 – April 11, 1963) was a Greek archaeologist. Along with George Mylonas, he excavated Grave Circle B, the oldest known monumentalized burials at the Bronze Age site of Mycenae.

The son of a schoolteacher, Papadimitriou studied archaeology and literature at the University of Athens. He served briefly in the Hellenic Navy and entered upon an academic career, before taking a post with the Greek Archaeological Service in 1929. Early in his career, he excavated on Corfu and at Nicopolis, and published two short studies on archaeological history. He also studied abroad at the Humboldt University of Berlin, which awarded him a doctorate in 1935.

During the Axis occupation of Greece, Papadimitriou joined the communist-led National Liberation Front; his left-wing views attracted suspicion and sometimes hostility from the Greek establishment in the years after the war, under Greece's strongly anti-communist regime. He excavated at the Sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron in Attica, and at the Sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus, though both projects were largely sidelined by the discovery of Grave Circle B, of which he became the excavation's co-director. Work on the grave circle continued until 1954.

Following a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Papadimitriou returned to his excavations in Greece, where he unearthed the Temple of Artemis at Brauron, identified the Cave of Pan at Oenoe, and excavated the Piraeus Artemis. He was placed in charge of the Archaeological Service in 1958, and presided over a period of reform, expansion, and improvement. He was in post at the time of his death, from a heart attack, on April 11, 1963.

Early life and career

John K. Papadimitriou was born on August 22, 1904, on the Greek island of Skyros. His father, Konstantinos, was a schoolteacher from the island of Euboea. Papadimitriou received his school education on Syros and in Chalcis on Euboea, before studying archaeology and literature at the University of Athens, graduating on January 29, 1926. In the same year, he joined the Hellenic Navy; the death of his father, also in 1926, meant that he was given reduced duties to support his mother.

Papadimitriou was appointed to a post as an assistant teacher of philology in Mouzaki, in northern Greece, but resigned it in 1927 to accept an offer of a job at the University of Athens, succeeding Ioannis Sykoutris. He joined the Archaeological Society of Athens, a learned society with a prominent role in archaeological research and excavation in Greece, on February 10, 1928. In the autumn of 1929, he left his university position, having passed the selection process to become an epimelitis (junior archaeological official) in the Greek Archaeological Service. His first post was at the Numismatic Museum of Athens, from November 1929, and he was granted a request for a transfer to Thebes the following July. He carried out excavations in the city with Antonios Keramopoulos, the ephor (archaeological superintendent) of the region.

In March 1931, Papadimitriou transferred, again at his own request, to the island of Corfu in March 1931. He acted as an assistant to Ioannis Miliadis, the ephor of the island. Papadimitriou's first archaeological publication, in 1933, was a short study of the Corfiot archaeologist Andreas Moustoxydis, the director of Greece's first national archaeological museum, based on a study of his surviving manuscripts. While on Corfu, he worked largely on Byzantine archaeology, publishing a study of the medieval Church of St Jason and St Sosipater.

Between November 1933 and February 1934, Papadimitriou spent a semester at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he studied Roman art under Gerhart Rodenwaldt and attended courses by Robert Zahn, director of the Antikensammlung. He was promoted to the rank of ephor in 1934, and was awarded a doctorate by the Humboldt University in 1935. He returned to Berlin for a two-year stint between 1936 and 1938, and again studied under Rodenwaldt while also taking courses from Antal Hekler. He may also have been taught by Ernst Buschor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. During his time in Germany, in 1937, he published a brief study of the German classicist Friedrich Thiersch. In 1939, he excavated a fifth-century BCE temple in the village of Roda on Corfu. In 1940, he made a short excavation of the site of Nicopolis, the city founded by the Roman statesman Octavian in 29 BCE to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Actium.

Second World War

Greece entered the Second World War on October 28, 1940, when Italy invaded northwestern Greece. Papadimitriou was called up as a reservist in the Hellenic Army on November 13, but stood down on December 2. Still on Corfu, he was tasked with hiding the artefacts held in the island's museum, a task that was reported to be complete on March 21, 1941. On April 2, four days before the outbreak of war with Germany, he was again called up to the reserves, this time reporting to a command in Athens; he was demobilized on May 1, following the defeat of Greek forces and the German occupation of Athens. During the ensuing Axis occupation, Papadimitriou joined the National Liberation Front (EAM), the communist-led national resistance movement. He became a leading member of the EAM on Corfu. In 1942, he carried out restoration work on the basilica of Palaeopolis, which had been damaged by bombing.

Post-war archaeology

After the war, Papadimitriou was considered politically suspect by the new anti-communist government, set up following the dismantling of the armed communist organizations in February 1945. Angelos Tsoukalas, the governor-general of the Ionian Islands, wrote to the Ministry of Internal Affairs advising against removing Papadimitriou from Corfu, despite his role in spreading communist ideology there, on the grounds that it would create unrest among the rural population. On October 29, 1946, the prefect of Corfu wrote to the Minister of Education, who had ultimate oversight of the Archaeological Service, that Papadimitriou had "seduced most of the inhabitants of the island to communist ideology", and would have taken part in the Dekemvriana (the armed conflict between communist and royalist forces in December 1945) had he been able. No action was taken against Papadimitriou, and he was promoted to senior ephor in 1946. He received a doctorate in the same year; he defended his dissertation, on white-ground lekythoi, on June 12.

In March 1947, Papadimitriou was moved to a supervisory position in Nafplio on the mainland, and shortly thereafter sent to the Greek embassy in Rome to assist with the repatriation of antiquities looted by Italian forces during the Axis occupation of Corfu. He applied unsuccessfully in November 1947 for the post of ephor of the Acropolis of Athens, which had been vacant since the resignation of Yannis Miliadis in 1941. Instead, following a decision of June 25, 1948, he was transferred to a more prestigious post in Piraeus, the harbor of Athens, with responsibility as ephor for the region of Attica. His promotion was partly due to the support of Georgios Oikonomos, a professor at the University of Athens and former Minister for Education. The news was greeted with outrage by two of Corfu's newspapers, Eleftheria and Promachos, which both expressed disgust in August 1948 that "intellectuals [who] not only did not disavow the Dekemvriana ... but also reinforced the communist betrayal" were being promoted rather than fired. He retained responsibility for Nafplio, since there was no candidate to fill his post. Papadimitriou's office was in the National Archaeological Museum; he worked alone until 1950, when Dimitrios Theocharis was appointed as his assistant; Theocharis was succeeded by Euthemios Mastrokostas in July 1954.

Most archaeological excavation in Greece was suspended following the end of the Second World War in 1945; the ban was not fully lifted until 1952. In 1948, Papadimitriou began work at the Sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus in the Argolid, which had been excavated by Panagiotis Kavvadias until the latter's death in 1928. Much of his work was simply clearing the site, though he made a systematic study of the nearby Sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas, of which Kavvadias had made only precursory excavations. Papadimitriou began excavation of the Sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron in eastern Attica later in 1948, and continued until 1950, whereupon the project was halted until 1955. He returned to Epidaurus in 1949, 1950 and 1951. In 1950, he made his first excavation at the Bronze Age site of Mycenae, working in collaboration with Fotis Petsas.

In July 1951, following the death of Oikonomos on June 21, Papadimitrou was elected to the council of the Archaeological Society. The same July, he was tasked with handing over the German Archaeological Institute at Athens (DAIA), surrendered by the Nazi occupying force to the Greek Ministry of Education in 1944, to Emil Kunze, representing the government of West Germany. Papadimitriou was brought in to replace Foivos Stavroupoulos, who had held responsibility for the DAIA since 1944, who was felt politically unsuitable for the task given his reactionary views and previous efforts to dismantle the bioethics and photographic archives of the DAIA. Papadimitriou took post on 20 July and handed over the institute to Kunze the following day.

Grave Circle B

Grave Circle B at Mycenae, excavated by Papadimitriou and Mylonas in 1952–1953

On December 22, 1951, Papadimitriou visited, along with George Mylonas, what would become known as Grave Circle B at Mycenae. The grave circle had been discovered that November by the ephor Seraphim Charitonidis during restoration of the nearby Tomb of Clytemnestra. Mylonas and Papadimitriou cleared the area of the grave circle between January 5 and 11 1952, funded by Washington University in St. Louis, where Mylonas was employed. Papadimitriou was appointed to lead the excavation, and organized a committee of archaeologists, consisting of Mylonas, Charitonidis, Antonios Keramopoulos and Spyridon Marinatos, to oversee the work.

The first season of excavation began on July 3, 1952, and continued until October 10, by which point seven tombs had been fully uncovered. The excavation was visited by King Paul of Greece and Queen Frederica, and Papadimitriou's work established his standing and reputation within the Archaeological Service: he was also awarded the Gold Cross of the Order of George I, Greece's second-highest order of merit. On October 18, 1952, he was interrogated by the Legality Council of the Archaeological Service concerning his involvement in EAM: he gave a declaration that he had been a member of EAM for six months, and had resigned in September 1944 on the grounds of a disagreement with the organization's position on Northern Epirus. In the fall of 1952, he found and investigated the Cave of the Nymphs at Penteli in Attica.

Papadimitriou co-directed the second season at Grave Circle B, which ran from July 31 to the first third of October 1953, with Mylonas; in this season, a further eleven tombs were excavated. The two returned to co-direct the third and final season of excavation, which Mylonas considered the most productive, between July 8 and September 6, 1954. This time, six more tombs were uncovered, leaving the central area of the grave circle fully excavated, and remains of Middle Helladic buildings in the eastern area of the site were investigated. During the excavation, Marinatos quarrelled with Papadimitriou, criticizing his leadership of the excavation and his methods, which he claimed were both too slow and insufficiently scientific. He made a complaint against Papadimitrou to the council of the Archaeological Society on June 15, 1953, and again by letter on June 28, but the council elected not to uphold either.

Later career

In the 1955–1956 academic year, Papadimitriou was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1957, he gained responsibility for the island of Euboea, as part of a deal by which the ephorate of Thebes transferred its oversight of the region to Papadimitrou's ephorate of Attica, in exchange for the site of Eleusis and those in Megaris. 1956 and 1957, he excavated the Temple of Artemis Tauropolos in Attica, which had previously been unearthed by Nikolaos Kyparissis. In 1958, he discovered the site of the Temple of Artemis at Brauron, using references in the works of the ancient Athenian playwright Euripides. In February of the same year, he identified a cave at Oinoe, near Marathon, as the Cave of Pan described by the second-century CE geographer Pausanias. Papadimitriou had previously been tasked by the Archaeological Society of Athens with locating the cave, and made a small-scale excavation there, uncovering parts of an inscribed stele showing that it had indeed been dedicated to the god Pan and to the Nymphs in the first century BCE. In July 1959, he uncovered a bronze statue of Artemis in the Piraeus, alongside three other marble statues.

Stele in memory of Papadimitriou at the Archaeological Museum of Bruaron

Since the 1930s, the Greek Archaeological Service had gradually declined in prestige and independence. Following the dismissal in 1909 of its head, Panagiotis Kavvadias, as Ephor General of Antiquities, it had generally been led by university professors rather than archaeologists trained within its ranks. Marinatos, who had been director of the Archaeological Service since 1955, was forced to resign in 1958 by the Prime Minister, Konstantinos Karamanlis. Following pressure from members of the Archaeological Service, Papadimitriou was appointed as his successor, and took office in August 1958. The service's autonomy was also increased by moving it from the purview of the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of the Presidency, where it was supervised by the Prime Minister. Papadimitrou resumed the publication of the Archaeological Bulletin, the service's journal, which had lapsed in 1938.

Papadimitriou secured additional funding for the Archaeological Service and expanded its staffing: in addition to the thirty-eight archaeologists employed in early 1959, he hired seventeen new epimelites (junior archaeologists) by March 1960. He was given the new title of Head of the Antiquities and Restoration Service of the Ministry of the Presidency in October 1960, and appointed to the revived position of Ephor General in September 1961. The American archaeologist John Caskey credited him with successfully reorganizing, expanding and consolidating the Archaeological Service during his tenure. The newspaper Akropolis ran an article criticizing his appointment on August 5, 1961, claiming that the transfer of the Archaeological Service to the Ministry of the Presidency would leave it open to a communist takeover, while the newspaper of the United Democratic Left political party, expressed its hope that Papadimitriou would impress leftist ideals upon the future archaeologists of Greece.

Papadimitriou died of a heart attack, during an excavation season he was conducting at Brauron, in Athens during the night of April 11, 1963. He was succeeded as head of the Archaeological Service by Ioannis Kontis, who continued Papadimitriou's reforms until his dismissal by the Greek junta which came to power in 1967. Much of Papadimitriou's work was undone by Marinatos, who was reappointed upon the junta's accession and strongly opposed Papadimitriou's left-wing politics. A Festschrift in Papadimitriou's honor was published by the Archaeological Society of Athens in 1997. He was married to Katherine (née Laskaris); they had one son, Constantine, who also studied archaeology.

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