Theses by Christos Nicolaou
In this dissertation, I investigate the relationships between Greek, Sanskrit, and local religiou... more In this dissertation, I investigate the relationships between Greek, Sanskrit, and local religious practices in the Gandhara region of Northwest India as expressed in a set of the so-called Gandharan palettes (also known as cosmetic or toilet trays, Falk, 2012, 89-92). I will specifically look at how different artistic and religious tropes were utilised in the palettes’ imagery, which traditions they drew from, and how the balance between said tropes changed over the timespan of the palettes’ use from the 2nd Century BCE to the 2nd Century CE. I will then use these insights to show how specifically these tropes were re-appropriated or mixed to create a truly local tradition. My main questions revolve around what the palettes were used for and how their iconography borrowed and re-interpreted tropes from other cultural spheres. I use these to understand how these tropes were mixed together to bring forth a new symbolic vocabulary.
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Papers by Christos Nicolaou
ARC 38.2, 2023
It has been exactly 40 years since the publication of one of the earliest ARC issues: Volume 2:1 ... more It has been exactly 40 years since the publication of one of the earliest ARC issues: Volume 2:1 Archaeology and the Public (1983), emerged from a Theoretical Archaeology Group conference put on by Mike Parker Pearson and others in 1982. Our publication likewise has strong theoretical underpinnings. Archaeology as a discipline has never been more concerned with its positionality within public discourses and its relativity to different segments of the publics. This is because the Information Age has brought with it new challenges with respect to what defines public spaces and who are accepted as authorities in these spaces (Stephens et al 2023). By pluralising the 'public' in our volume title, Archaeology and the PublicS, we hope to demonstrate and highlight the multivocality and diversity inherent in the public-and the opportunities and challenges that come with this diversity.
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Colonial and National Tensions in Cypriot Archaeology: An Attempt at a Cosmopolitan Resolution, 2023
Trauma and ambivalence are common aspects of the post-colonial condition and themes in Cypriot po... more Trauma and ambivalence are common aspects of the post-colonial condition and themes in Cypriot poetry. Yaşın's (1998) poem acknowledges the present de facto political partition of Cyprus since the Greek coup and Turkish invasion of 1974, with Michanikos' (1975) poem providing a complementary question as to the lack of necessity of this partition with references to the intercommunal violence of 1963-1964. These questions are linked to both a shared, albeit segregated, trauma from political tragedies and upheaval and a shared nostalgia either for a nationalist past or a bicommunal garden of Eden, the main cleavages of the island's separation. The question of history and nostalgia in Cyprus, as well as its own identities have been entangled in the context of British colonialism as well as Greek and Turkish nationalism. This article investigates the relationship between archaeology, nationalism, and colonialism in Cyprus, producing segregated archaeological narratives and hidden bicommunal and minority experiences. It outlines a history of Cyprus, its nationalisms, and their effects on intercommunal imaginaries (Ioannou 2020). It will then discuss how ideology has shaped archaeological research in Cyprus (Karageorgis 1969). Lastly, the paper looks at how archaeology has moved towards a more nuanced discussion of ethnicity, the possibility of a common history, and reconciliation through the use of spatial, non-ethnic frameworks.
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The cities of Taxila in Pakistan, and Ai Khanoum in Afghanistan, are emblematic of the post-Alexa... more The cities of Taxila in Pakistan, and Ai Khanoum in Afghanistan, are emblematic of the post-Alexandrian and post-Mauryan political landscapes of the broader South and Central Asian regions. While both have been thoroughly excavated, there has been little comparison of their material culture. Through the construction of repositories with artefacts of religious nature for both cities and through illustrating maps for the two cities with the distribution of variables such as material or item categorization can serve as a springboard for studies of hybridity in the ancient world. In addition, I hope to build on larger depositories of said resources for other scholars to use in the future and to have a common resource of artefact databases to build upon. The databases can provide research with templates for the two cities and a corpus of their artefacts for future research.
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An Updated List of Gandhara Palettes and Their Utility for the Study of Hybridity, 2023
The Gandhara palettes have been studied in the field of Gandharan art, particularly for their con... more The Gandhara palettes have been studied in the field of Gandharan art, particularly for their connection to the broader school and its cultural trajectories. A complete repository of the palettes is useful for the study of the artefacts and their relation to Gandharan art. The database seeks to produce a new depository for the palettes as well as more ambiguous artefacts which may have fulfilled similar roles. The dataset described in this paper provides other information such as bibliography, material and estimated chronology which allows for statistical analysis or unpacking correlations of types and chronologies.
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Books by Christos Nicolaou
Archaeology and the Publics, 2023
It has been exactly 40 years since the publication of one of the earliest ARC issues: Volume 2:1 ... more It has been exactly 40 years since the publication of one of the earliest ARC issues: Volume 2:1 Archaeology and the Public (1983), emerged from a Theoretical Archaeology Group conference put on by Mike Parker Pearson and others in 1982. Our publication likewise has strong theoretical underpinnings. Archaeology as a discipline has never been more concerned with its positionality within public discourses and its relativity to different segments of the publics. This is because the Information Age has brought with it new challenges with respect to what defines public spaces and who are accepted as authorities in these spaces (Stephens et al 2023). By pluralising the 'public' in our volume title, Archaeology and the PublicS, we hope to demonstrate and highlight the multivocality and diversity inherent in the public-and the opportunities and challenges that come with this diversity.
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Theses by Christos Nicolaou
Papers by Christos Nicolaou
Books by Christos Nicolaou